Selected Essays (Oxford World’s Classics)

In her lifetime, Woolf was known more for essays than her fiction. These luminous essays show why.

Magnificent writing.

This is a wonderful collection of Virginia Woolf's essays, essential for anyone interested in Woolf and her art but completely engaging for the casual reader as well. Woolf covers a great deal of ground here in her distinctive prose, engaging in matters artistic, political, social and personal (often, of course, questioning and subverting the distinctions among these categories). All of the essays are charged with her extraordinary intelligence and wit. Many of them are at moments playful, many poignant, and almost all of them surprising in the best possible ways. It's particularly interesting, for instance, to read Woolf's musings on the nascent art of cinema. She also writes very movingly about her father. Best of all, though, for me, are the extraordinary "On Being Ill" and the essays containing Woolf's observations of modern life ("Thunder at Wembley" and "Street Haunting: A London Adventure" particularly). Although each piece is a delight to read on its own, taken as a whole this volume shines a light into Woolf's values, concerns, methods, and personality--it's a valuable companion to her novels. And it contains a wonderfully insightful and companionable introduction and very helpful notes. Most highly recommended.

These writings take us far into Woolf’s family life and recall her courage as a writer and intellectual.

Woolf in her best. The essays are written in an exceptional way, bringing the writer's best features. 10/10!

Eine sehr gute Auswahl der Essays, die voller Ironie, Witz und Nachdenklichkeit sind.Sie verlieren auf keinen Fall ihre Aktualität.

Some of these essays were written to be read aloud but most were for the reading audience. As ever Virginia Woolf's command of prose is awe-inspiring; she argues elegantly. Her wit and passion are evident throughout. I was very taken with a Mrs Brown, a metaphor for how different authors approach the characters that people their novels. She also demonstrates a great deal of humanity and dispels the notion that essays on such esoteric subjects as "Memories of a Working Women's Guild" by such an illuminatory will be academic and bloodless.However, I got a sense of history in these essays and how society and writing have moved on since Mrs Woolf argued her case for getting to the heart of her subjects along with Joyce as opposed to the Victorian writers who excelled in extensive descriptions of place and situations. But maybe on reflection the same comparison can also be drawn with contemporary novelists.....So a thought provoking read. Also, not to be missed for the brilliant essay "On being ill". Here is a lady who knows something about being unwell.

Woolf is a unique and lightning quick modern thinker who in these essays put her finger directly on what it is like for women to try and work in a male dominated world, as well as what exactly the lifeblood of the modern novel was. Well worth a read, she's wickedly dry to top it all off.