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Imagining Virginia Woolf: An Experiment in Critical Biography

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ISBN-10:: 0691138125
ISBN-13:: 9780691138121
Pub. Date:: 01/18/2009
Publisher:: Princeton University Press

ISBN-10:: 0691138125
ISBN-13:: 9780691138121
Pub. Date:: 01/18/2009
Publisher:: Princeton University Press

Imagining Virginia Woolf: An Experiment in Critical Biography

Hardcover

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Overview

Where other works of literary criticism are absorbed with the question—How to read a book?—Imagining Virginia Woolf asks a slightly different but more intriguing one: how does one read an author? Maria DiBattista answers this by undertaking an experiment in critical biography. The subject of this work is not Virginia Woolf, the person who wrote the novels, criticism, letters, and famous diary, but a different being altogether, someone or something Maria DiBattista identifies as "the figment of the author." This is the Virginia Woolf who lives intermittently in the pages of her writings and in the imagination of her readers. Drawing on Woolf's own extensive remarks on the pleasures and perils of reading, DiBattista argues that reading Woolf, in fact reading any author, involves an encounter with this imaginative figment, whose distinct, stylistic traits combine to produce that beguiling phantom—the literary personality.

DiBattista reveals a writer who possessed not a single personality, but a cluster of distinct, yet complementary identities: the Sibyl of Bloomsbury, the Author, the Critic, the World Writer, and the Adventurer, the last of which, DiBattista claims, unites them all.

Imagining Virginia Woolf provides an original way of reading, one that captures with variety and subtlety the personality that exists only in Woolf's works and in the minds of her readers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691138121
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	01/18/2009
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	232
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 8.60(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Maria DiBattista is professor of English and comparative literature at Princeton University. Her books include Virginia Woolf's Major Novels and Fast-Talking Dames.

Acknowledgments ix

THE DEMON OF READING
Chapter 1. The Figment of the Author 3

Chapter 2. Personalities 14

WOOLF'S PERSONALITIES
Chapter 3. The Sibyl of the Drawing Room 41

Chapter 4. The Author 64

Chapter 5. The Critic 92

Chapter 6. The World Writer 119

Chapter 7. The Adventurer 140

EPILOGUE
Chapter 8. Anon Once More 169

Notes 173

Index 191

What People are Saying About This

Hermione Lee

This book is a lively, original, and very interesting personal reading of Virginia Woolf, sensitively done and well-written. It is clever and illuminating to approach Woolf through the idea of the writerly personae, rather than biographically or in more conventionally critical ways. I enjoyed this book very much and was impressed and refreshed by it.
— Hermione Lee, author of "Virginia Woolf" and "Edith Wharton"

From the Publisher

"This book is a lively, original, and very interesting personal reading of Virginia Woolf, sensitively done and well-written. It is clever and illuminating to approach Woolf through the idea of the writerly personae, rather than biographically or in more conventionally critical ways. I enjoyed this book very much and was impressed and refreshed by it."—Hermione Lee, author of Virginia Woolf and Edith Wharton

"Few critics have the skill to make us see anew; few have taken Woolf's love of words and her own study of their characteristics as seriously as DiBattista does here. By the time one finishes the book, DiBattista has given us a new perspective on Woolf, her love of language, and her sense of the relationship between words, the self, and the personalities inscribed therein."—Brenda R. Silver, Dartmouth College

Silver

Few critics have the skill to make us see anew; few have taken Woolf's love of words and her own study of their characteristics as seriously as DiBattista does here. By the time one finishes the book, DiBattista has given us a new perspective on Woolf, her love of language, and her sense of the relationship between words, the self, and the personalities inscribed therein.
— Brenda R. Silver, Dartmouth College

From the B&N Reads Blog

Page 1 of

Editorial Reviews

"What interests Maria DiBattista is not who Woolf actually was—the flesh and blood woman—but the multiple personalities that emanate from her books. Reading a writer familiar to us is, in many ways, no different from seeing people we know, she says. In both cases, the person we think we know is a composite of the various facets of them we have glimpsed."—-Fiona Capp, The Age

"[W]hen people ask me about biographies about Woolf, I will recommend this one. Certainly, it cannot replace the more traditional biographies DiBattista acknowledges in her introduction, but it is an important supplement to them. My own understanding of the traditional biographies is more nuanced, a result of reading DiBattista's book."—-Molly Youngkin, English Literature in Transition

"[T]his short book is full of insights. . . . I recommend it to you; it is a pleasure to read."—-Stuart N. Clarke, Virginia Woolf Bulletin

"[T]he more vivid impressions generated by DiBattista's study: namely, the reader's sensation of having been shown 'Virginia's Room' in a new light, as well as the realization that Woolf's 'room of one's own' is now a multitude of rooms, imaginative spaces where her readers have the freedom to hang looking-glasses in whatever odd corners they may choose."—-Rosemary Joyce, Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature

From the Publisher

"Like Anne Fernald's Virginia Woolf: Feminism and the Reader, DiBattista's study extends understanding not only of Woolf's craft and intellectual life but also of reading practices in general."

Choice

[T]he more vivid impressions generated by DiBattista's study: namely, the reader's sensation of having been shown 'Virginia's Room' in a new light, as well as the realization that Woolf's 'room of one's own' is now a multitude of rooms, imaginative spaces where her readers have the freedom to hang looking-glasses in whatever odd corners they may choose.

Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature - Rosemary Joyce

[T]his short book is full of insights. . . . I recommend it to you; it is a pleasure to read.

Virginia Woolf Bulletin - Stuart N. Clarke

[W]hen people ask me about biographies about Woolf, I will recommend this one. Certainly, it cannot replace the more traditional biographies DiBattista acknowledges in her introduction, but it is an important supplement to them. My own understanding of the traditional biographies is more nuanced, a result of reading DiBattista's book.

English Literature in Transition - Molly Youngkin

What interests Maria DiBattista is not who Woolf actually was—the flesh and blood woman—but the multiple personalities that emanate from her books. Reading a writer familiar to us is, in many ways, no different from seeing people we know, she says. In both cases, the person we think we know is a composite of the various facets of them we have glimpsed.

The Age - Fiona Capp

[T]he more vivid impressions generated by DiBattista's study: namely, the reader's sensation of having been shown 'Virginia's Room' in a new light, as well as the realization that Woolf's 'room of one's own' is now a multitude of rooms, imaginative spaces where her readers have the freedom to hang looking-glasses in whatever odd corners they may choose.
— Rosemary Joyce

Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature

[T]his short book is full of insights. . . . I recommend it to you; it is a pleasure to read.
— Stuart N. Clarke

Virginia Woolf Bulletin

[W]hen people ask me about biographies about Woolf, I will recommend this one. Certainly, it cannot replace the more traditional biographies DiBattista acknowledges in her introduction, but it is an important supplement to them. My own understanding of the traditional biographies is more nuanced, a result of reading DiBattista's book.
— Molly Youngkin

English Literature in Transition

What interests Maria DiBattista is not who Woolf actually was—the flesh and blood woman—but the multiple personalities that emanate from her books. Reading a writer familiar to us is, in many ways, no different from seeing people we know, she says. In both cases, the person we think we know is a composite of the various facets of them we have glimpsed.
— Fiona Capp

The Age

Taking an approach that combines biography and literary criticism to draw out an abstract of the author's life and personae, independent of historical fact, Princeton English professor DiBatistta (Fast-Talking Dames) pieces together a portrait of Virginia Woolf as experienced by readers. Taking one of modern writing's most famous authors, DiBatistta examines the "figment of the author" that coalesces through the author's presence in her own writings, and how readers get to know this representative Woolf. The personae DiBatttista identifies and examines are the Author, the Critic, the World Writer, the Adventurer and the youthful Sibyl of the Drawing Room. For general fans of literary criticism or of Woolf's writing in particular, DiBattista's experiment will offer an intriguing perspective on Woolf's relationship to her art and her audience, but casual readers will find it frustratingly cryptic; it doesn't help that Woolf herself is an author who elicits extreme reactions, further limiting the work's appeal.
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Publishers Weekly

Imagining Virginia Woolf: An Experiment in Critical Biography

Imagining Virginia Woolf: An Experiment in Critical Biography

Hardcover

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Overview

Product Details

About the Author

Table of Contents

What People are Saying About This

Customer Reviews

Temporarily Out of Stock Online

Overview

Product Details

About the Author

Table of Contents

What People are Saying About This

Related Subjects

Customer Reviews