Virginia Woolf & the Raverats: A Different Sort of Friendship

Rating:
Summary: Especially recommended to students and admirers
Review: Writer and critic Virginia Woolf was a close and personal friend of the painter Jacques Raverat and his wife Gwen. Jacques died from multiple sclerosis at the age of 40. In Virginia Woolf & The Raverats: A Different Sort Of Friendship, William Pryor has collected correspondences between Virginia, Jacque and Gwen. These letters embodied gossip, thoughts on the nature of friendship, religion, the endurance of pain, Jacques' anti-Semitism, Virginia's Sapphism, the differences between painting and writing, and other elements of their bohemian life styles. Of special note are the illustrations which include some of Jacques paintings. Unique, informative, compelling reading, Virginia Woolf & The Raverats is especially recommended to students and admirers of Virginia Woolf's literary writings, and offers a very special set of "windows in time" through which we can perceive glimpses of greatness amid the ordinary concerns of specially gifted (and troubled) friends.