Bibliography - Woolf, Virginia
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The Flight of the mind: The Letters of Virginia Woolf, 1888-1912, edited by Nigel Nicolson and Joanne Trautmann, published 1975 (xxiv + 531 pp., London: The Hogarth Press, ISBN-10: 0701204036 & ISBN-13: 9780701204037) accessible at: East Sussex Libraries

A collection of Virginia Woolf's correspondence from age six to the eve of her marriage twenty-four years later.

Catalogue of books from the library of Leonard and Virginia Woolf: taken from Monks House, Rodmell, Sussex and 24 Victoria Square, London, and now in the possession of Washington State University, Pullman, U.S.A., by George A. Holleyman, published 1 October 1975 (386 pp., Holleyman and Treacher Ltd., ISBN-10: 0950450103 & ISBN-13: 9780950450100) accessible at: British Library & East Sussex Libraries

The Question of Things Happening: The Letters of Virginia Woolf, 1912 - 1922, edited by Nigel Nicolson and Joanne Trautmann, published 1976 (xvii + 627 pp., London: The Hogarth Press, ISBN-10: 0701204206 & ISBN-13: 9780701204204) accessible at: West Sussex Libraries & East Sussex Libraries

Novels of Virginia Woolf: From Beginning to End, by Mitchell A. Leaska, published 1977 accessible at: West Sussex Libraries

Change of Perspective: The Letters of Virginia Woolf, 1923 - 1928, edited by Nigel Nicolson and Joanne Trautmann, published 1977 (xxiv + 600 pp., London: The Hogarth Press, ISBN-10: 0701204435 & ISBN-13: 9780701204433) accessible at: West Sussex Libraries & East Sussex Libraries

Opening soon after Virginia Woolf met Vita Sackville-West and culminating with the publication of Orlando, this volume of letters covers Bloomsbury's most triumphant period. This was the time when Woolf wrote five of her best-known books, including Mrs Dalloway and To the Lighthouse, and whilst she became one of the most famous writers of her generation, many of her friends - Lytton Strachey, T.S. Eliot, E.M. Forster - had become equally eminent. The slow evolution of Virginia's affair with Vita is traced through some of her wittiest letters, while her correspondence with her sister Vanessa and other friends reveals a strong sympathy with people beneath her ironic view of life.

Reflection of the Other Person: The Letters of Virginia Woolf, 1929 - 1931, edited by Nigel Nicolson and Joanne Trautmann, published 1978 (xxii + 442 pp., London: The Hogarth Press, ISBN-10: 0701204486 & ISBN-13: 9780701204488) accessible at: West Sussex Libraries & East Sussex Libraries

Virginia Woolf is 47 at the beginning of this volume, and struggling to complete her masterpiece, "The Waves" - rewriting it three times, interrupted by illness and unwanted visitors. But she continued to meet and correspond with old friends such as Roger Fry, Lytton Strachey, Vita Sackville-West and Ottoline Morrell, and made several new ones. The most important of these was the composer Ethel Smyth - over 70, explosively energetic, and openly in love with Virginia - who gradually replaced Vita as her most intimate friend. Virginia's letters to Ethel, in which she discussed frankly her madness, sex, her literary aspirations and even her thoughts of suicide, are among the strongest and most personal she ever wrote.

Sickle Side of the Moon: The Letters of Virginia Woolf, 1932 - 1935, edited by Nigel Nicolson and Joanne Trautmann, published 1979 (xviii + 476 pp., London: The Hogarth Press, ISBN-10: 0701204699 & ISBN-13: 9780701204693) accessible at: West Sussex Libraries & East Sussex Libraries

In the early 1930s, Virginia Woolf was writing "The Years", as well as "Flush", the second volume of "The Common Reader", and her only play, "Freshwater", while leading an active social and business life in Bloomsbury, and accompanying Leonard on holidays abroad. She made an important new friend in Elizabeth Bowen, and lost two, Lytton Strachey and Roger Fry, whose deaths affected her deeply. Her growing feminism and concern about the rise of fascism emerge in letters to Vanessa Bell, Ethel Smyth, Vita Sackville-West, and some of the other 70-plus correspondents in this volume, such as Stephen Spender, Ottoline Morrell, Hugh Walpole, and her nephews Julian and Quentin Bell, to whom she wrote many of her merriest letters.

Leave the Letters Till We're Dead: The Letters of Virginia Woolf, 1936-41, edited by Nigel Nicolson and Joanne Trautmann, published 1 September 1980 (xviii + 556 pp., London: The Hogarth Press, ISBN-10: 0701204702 & ISBN-13: 9780701204709) accessible at: West Sussex Libraries & East Sussex Libraries

The last volume of Virginia Woolf's "Collected Letters" runs from 1936, when she was finishing "The Waves", to 1941, when she drowned herself. But there is little or no shadow of impending tragedy over her sparkling correspondence with Vanessa, Vita, Ethel Smyth and her many other friends, such as T.S. Eliot, John Lehmann and Stephen Spender; nor did it curtail her writing: apart from "The Years", she published "Three Guineas" and her biography of Roger Fry, and wrote "Between the Acts". When war came Virginia and Leonard, bombed out of Bloomsbury, lived at their cottage in Sussex, exposed to the air-battles and under threat of invasion, and it was here that she committed suicide in March 1941.

The Letters of Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolf, edited by Louise DeSalvo and Mitchell A. Leaska, published 1985 (448 pp., New York: William Morrow and Co., ISBN-10: 0688039634 & ISBN-13: 9780688039639) accessible at: West Sussex Libraries

Woman of Letters: Life of Virginia Woolf, by Phyllis Rose, published 23 January 1986 (xxi + 298 pp., London: Pandora, ISBN-10: 0863580661 & ISBN-13: 9780863580666) accessible at: East Sussex Libraries

Congenial Spirits : The Selected Letters of Virginia Woolf, edited by Joanne Trautmann, published 1989 (xviii + 472 pp., London: The Hogarth Press, ISBN-10: 0701208651 & ISBN-13: 9780701208653) accessible at: East Sussex Libraries

A one volume selection of Virginia Woolf's letters, including eleven which have not previously been published. This collection ranges from notes written during her childhood to correspondence with other literary figures right up to the year of her death.

A passionate apprentice : the early journals 1897-1909, by Mitchell A. Leaska, published 1990 (xlv + 444 pp., London: Chatto & Windus, ISBN-10: 0701208457 & ISBN-13: 9780701208455) accessible at: West Sussex Libraries

Covering the years 1897-1909, these journals complete the autobiographical sequence of Virginia Woolf's diary and letters and provide a picture of the circumstances in which she taught herself her craft. Many of the incidents of these years were to influence the rest of her life.

Leonard and Virginia Woolf : a literary partnership, by Peter Alexander, published 1992 (xi + 265 pp., London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, ISBN-13: 9780745009230) accessible at: East Sussex Libraries

This work, an "anti-Bloomsbury" book, aims to restore perceptions of Leonard and Virginia Woolf to a more realistic level and to try to answer the question of how much literary influence, if any, they had on each other.

The Letters of Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolf, edited by Louise DeSalvo and Mitchell A. Leaska, published 12 March 1992 (480 pp., London: Virago Press Ltd., ISBN-10: 1853815055 & ISBN-13: 9781853815058) accessible at: East Sussex Libraries

This is a collection of Vita Sackville-West's letters to Virginia Woolf, assembled with extracts from Virginia's replies and a linking narrative. It illuminates each woman's contemporaries, times, travels, their moments of levity, their periods of despair. And it reflects the private voices of two women, as their friendship deepened from formal admiration to become one of the most searingly intense affairs in modern literary history.

Last glimpse of Virginia Woolf's house [Asham House near Firle], by Country Life contributor(s), published 9 June 1994 in Country Life (vol. 180 no. 23, article, p.130)

Staying at Monks House: echoes of the Woolfs, by Sarah Bird Wright, published 1995 (The Bloomsbury heritage series; 9, 24 pp., London: Cecil Woolf, ISBN-10: 1897967454) accessible at: British Library

Virginia Woolf, by Hermione Lee, published 1996 (Chatto and Windus, ISBN-10: 0701165073 & ISBN-13: 9780701165079) accessible at: West Sussex Libraries

Virginia Woolf, by Hermione Lee, published 2 October 1997 (xvii + 892 pp., Vintage, ISBN-10: 0099732513 & ISBN-13: 9780099732518) accessible at: East Sussex Libraries

Hermione Lee sees Virginia Woolf afresh, in her historical setting and as a vital figure for our times. Her book moves freely between a richly detailed life-story and new attempts to understand crucial questions - the impact of her childhood, the cause and nature of her madness and suicide, the truth about her marriage, her feelings for women, her prejudies and obsessions. This is a vivid, close-up portrait, returning to primary sources, and showing Woolf as occupying a distinct, even uneasy position with 'Bloomsbury'. It is a writer's life, illustrating how the concerns of her work arise and develop, and a political life, which establishes Woolf as a radically sceptical, subversive, courageous feminist. Incorporating newly discovered sources and illustrated with photos and drawings never used before, this biography is a revelation -informed, intelligent and moving.

Granite and rainbow : the hidden life of Virginia Woolf , by Mitchell A. Leaska, published 1998 (vi + 513 pp., Picador, ISBN-10: 0330354361 & ISBN-13: 9780330354363) accessible at: West Sussex Libraries & East Sussex Libraries

Granite and Rainbow contains new and revealing material on Virginia Woolf's relationships with her parents and the deeper story of how she sought to create harmony out of such profound divisions.

Virginia Woolf And Vanessa Bell: A Very Close Conspiracy, by Jane Dunn, published 1 February 2001 (353 pp., Virago, ISBN-10: 1860498515 & ISBN-13: 9781860498510)

This is the story of a deep and close relationship between two sisters - Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell. The influence they exerted over each others lives, their competitiveness, the fierce love they had for each other and also their intense rivalry is explored here with subtlety and compassion. The thoughts, motives and actions of these two remarkably artistic women who jointly created the Bloomsbury Group is revealed with all its intricacies in this moving biography.

Trespassing Boundaries: Virginia Woolf's Short Fiction, edited by Kathryn N. Benzel and Ruth Hoberman, published 17 December 2004 (256 pp., Palgrave Macmillan, ISBN-10: 1403964831 & ISBN-13: 9781403964830)

In Trespassing Boundaries, ten contemporary Woolf scholars discuss a broad range of Woolf's short stories. Despite being now easily available these stories have not yet received the attention they deserve. Complex yet involving, they deserve to be read not only for the light they shed on the novels, but in their own right, as major contributions to the short fiction as a genre. This volume places Woolf's short stories in the context of modernist experimentalism, then explores them as ambitious attempts to challenge generic boundaries, undercutting traditional distinctions between short fiction and the novel, between experimental and popular fiction, between fiction and nonfiction. Collectively the essays suggest that Woolf's contribution to the short story is as important as her contribution to the novel.

The Hidden Houses of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell, by Vanessa Curtis, published 29 April 2005 (224 pp., London: Robert Hale, ISBN-10: 070907512X & ISBN-13: 9780709075127) accessible at: East Sussex Libraries

Looking at the 'hidden houses' of both Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell in conjunction with their letters and diaries, this book provides a glimpse into the upper-middle class world of the time, as well as providing a portrait of one of the most enduring and enigmatic writers of the 20th century.

Snapshots of Bloomsbury: the private lives of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell, by Maggie Humm, published 20 December 2005 (240 pp., London: Tate, ISBN-10: 1854376721 & ISBN-13: 9781854376725) accessible at: & West Sussex Libraries & East Sussex Libraries

In this enthralling portrait, Maggie Humm makes available, for the first time, a wealth of barely known photographs, both amateur and professional, that cast new light on the private lives of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell, as well as the historical, cultural, and artistic milieux of their circle in Bloomsbury and beyond. We visit the domestic lives of major nineteenth- and twentieth-century writers and artists, such as E. M. Forster, who is pictured happily pruning trees with Leonard Woolf, T. S. Eliot, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. There are intimate portraits of Vanessa Bell's children and erotic photos of Duncan Grant's lovers.

To the River: A Journey Beneath the Surface, by Olivia Laing, published 2011 (283 pp., Edinburgh: Canongate, ISBN-10: 1847677924 & ISBN-13: 9781847677921) accessible at: British Library & West Sussex Libraries & East Sussex Libraries

To the River is the story of the Ouse, the Sussex river in which Virginia Woolf drowned in 1941. One midsummer week over sixty years later, Olivia Laing walked Woolf's river from source to sea. The result is a passionate investigation into how history resides in a landscape - and how ghosts never quite leave the places they love. Along the way, Laing explores the roles rivers play in human lives, tracing their intricate flow through literature and mythology alike. To the River excavates all sorts of stories from the Ouse's marshy banks, from the brutal Barons' War of the thirteenth century to the 'Dinosaur Hunters', the nineteenth-century amateur naturalists who first cracked the fossil code. Central among these ghosts is, of course, Virginia Woolf herself: her life, her writing and her watery death. Woolf is the most constant companion on Laing's journey, and To the River can be read in part as a biography of this extraordinary English writer, refracted back through the river she loved. But other writers float through these pages too - among them Iris Murdoch, Shakespeare, Homer and Kenneth Grahame, author of the riverside classic The Wind in the Willows. The result is a wonderfully discursive read - which interweaves biography, history, nature writing and memoir, driven by Laing's deep understanding of science and cultural history. It's a beautiful, lyrical work that marks the arrival of a major new writer.

Virginia Woolf's garden: the story of the garden at Monk's house, by Caroline Zoob, published 17 October 2013 (192 pp., London: Jacqui Small, ISBN-10: 1909342130 & ISBN-13: 9781909342132) accessible at: British Library & West Sussex Libraries & East Sussex Libraries

Monk's House in Sussex is the former home of Leonard and Virginia Woolf. It was bought by them in 1919 as a country retreat, somewhere they came to read, write and work in the garden. From the overgrown land behind the house they created a brilliant patchwork of garden rooms, linked by brick paths, secluded behind flint walls and yew hedges. The story of this magical garden is the subject of this book and the author has selected quotations from the writings of the Woolfs which reveal how important a role the garden played in their lives, as a source of both pleasure and inspiration. Virginia wrote most of her major novels at Monk's House, at first in a converted tool shed, and later in her purpose-built wooden writing lodge tucked into a corner of the orchard.
Caroline Zoob lived with her husband, Jonathan, at Monk's House for over a decade as tenants of the National Trust, and has an intimate knowledge of the garden they tended and planted. The photographer, Caroline Arber, was a frequent visitor to the house during their tenancy and her spectacular photographs, published here for the first time, often reveal the garden as it is never seen by the public: at dawn, in the depths of winter, at dusk. The photographs and text, enriched with rare archive images and embroidered garden plans, take the reader on a journey through the various garden 'rooms', (including the Italian Garden, the Fishpond Garden, the Millstone Terrace and the Walled Garden). Each garden room is presented in the context of the lives of the Woolfs, with fascinating glimpses into their daily routines at Rodmell.
This beautiful book is an absorbing account of the creation of a garden which will appeal equally to gardeners and those with an interest in Virginia and Leonard Woolf.

Living in squares, loving in triangles : the lives and loves of Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group, by Amy Licence, published 2015 (320 pp., Stroud: Amberley, ISBN-13: 9781445645759) accessible at: West Sussex Libraries & East Sussex Libraries

This title tells the story of the lives of the sisters Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf have long been celebrated for their central roles in the development of modernism in art and literature. Inspired by European post-impressionism, Vanessa's experimental work places her at the vanguard of early twentieth-century art, as does her role in helping introduce many key names - Cezanne, Matisse, Picasso - to an unsuspecting public in 1910.