The moving story of the life and work of novelist Virginia Woolf, revealed through her own letters to those closest to her.

Virginia Woolf is considered by many to be one of the greatest British writers and one of the foremost modernists of the twentieth century. As well as writing her novels, Woolf was a tireless correspondent, penning as many as six letters a day.

This collection of Virginia Woolf's letters offers a fascinating insight into her life, illuminating the complex personality of the novelist herself. The letters range from witty and irreverent to melancholy and introspective, with intimations of the bouts of mental illness that were to lead her to take her own life. She was a writer of genius; and through her correspondence we come close to one of the most brilliant and high-spirited minds of the twentieth century. ‘A true letter’, she insisted, ‘should be like a film of wax pressed close to the graving of the mind’.

The book contains background information on Virginia Woolf’s life along with real samples of her handwriting. There are also biographical notes on the main recipients of the letters, together with a family tree for keeping track of names.

The letters are beautifully illustrated throughout with photographs, paintings and sketches of the people and places with which Virginia Woolf was most closely connected – many by members of the Bloomsbury Group, such as Woolf's sister Vanessa Bell, Roger Fry and Duncan Grant.

This compilation is easy to dip into but compulsive in Its readability, as Woolf is ever engaging and intriguing.’

Frances Spalding is an art historian, critic and biographer. Between 2000 and 2015, she taught at Newcastle University, becoming Professor of Art History. She acted as Editor of The Burlington Magazine, 2015–16, and is now is a Fellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge. She is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Art and in 2005 was made a Companion of the British Empire for Services to Literature. Her books include British Art Since 1900 and biographies of the painters Roger Fry and Vanessa Bell. She lives in London.