Selected Essays

This is the only one-volume edition of Virginia Woolf's essays to bring together the best of her essays across the span of her career. Woolf's essays range from critical considerations of modern fiction and the craft of writing, to women writers and the London scene, as well as more personal essays on her father and the art of biography. One of the best essayists of the twentieth-century, Woolf's non-fiction is as important for an understanding of this great writer as are her novels, and equally important as an introduction to Modernism.

Includes her important statement on modern fiction 'Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown', attacking the realism of Arnold Bennett and advocating the more fluid style that she pioneered. Introduction and notes by David Bradshaw, editor of the OWC editions of Mrs Dalloway and To the Lighthouse

According to Virginia Woolf, the goal of the essay 'is simply that it should give pleasure...It should lay us under a spell with its first word, and we should only wake, refreshed, with its last.' One of the best practitioners of the art she analysed so rewardingly, Woolf displayed her essay-writing skills across a wide range of subjects, with all the craftsmanship, substance, and rich allure of her novels. This selection brings together thirty of her best essays, including the famous 'Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown', a clarion call for modern fiction. She discusses the arts of writing and of reading, and the particular role and reputation of women writers. She writes movingly about her father and the art of biography, and of the London scene in the early decades of the twentieth century. Overall, these pieces are as indispensable to an understanding of this great writer as they are enchanting in their own right.