On Fiction
Virginia Woolf
- 2011 is the 70th
anniversary of Virginia WoolfÕs death by suicide
- Only available edition
of this collection of essays
- Celebrates the ever-popular
pastime of reading and storytelling
- Coincides with the
Hesperus publication of Brief
Lives: Virginia Woolf
ÔHere, then, very
briefly and with inevitable simplification, an attempt is made to show the
mind at work upon a shelf full of novels and to watch it as it chooses and
rejects, making itself a dwelling-place in accordance with its own
appetites. Of these appetites, perhaps, the simplest is the desire to
believe wholly and entirely in something which is fictitious.Õ
Her readings
sensitive, her prose style elegant, authoritative and at times thoroughly
opinionated, who better equipped than Virginia Woolf to ruminate on the art
of fiction? In this selection of lesser-known essays on reading and storytelling,
Woolf turns her critical gaze on treasured favourites including Ôthe four
great women novelists – Jane Austen, Emily Bront‘, Charlotte Bront‘
and George EliotÕ, and unearths some less familiar talents. Her discussion
of differing approaches to reading is characteristically forward-thinking,
and pinpoints the joys of this favourite pastime, in all its guises.