Virginia Woolf and the Real World - Softcover

Zwerdling, Alex

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0520061845 ISBN 13: 9780520061842

Publisher: University of California Press, 1987

Synopsis

"The finest critical book on Virgina Woolf to date. Alex Zwerdling's large and subtle study places Virginia Woolf's world of class, politics, feminism, pacifism, and the family into firm historical perspective. The book leaves us with renewed appreciation for Woolf's work and for her mind."
-Elaine Showalter, Princeton University

"Buried beneath piles of criticism Virginia Woolf has at last been dug out by Alex Zwerdling. Virginia Woolf and the Real World is the most enlightened account of the real woman to appear for years."
-Noel Annan, The Observer

"A relief from the Bloomsbury fan dub: penetrating, learned, wide-ranging appreciation of Virginia Woolf in her social and political context, documenting what muscle and thought there was in her allegedly gossamer work."
-Richard Mayne, Encounter

"A well written book that deals with a field of Woolf studies that badly needs dear thinking and dear expression .... I think it a most useful work and in every way first rate."
-Quentin Bell

About this title

About the Author:

Alex Zwerdling is University Professor of English at George Washington University.

From Publishers Weekly:

The majority of Woolf studies produced in the wake of the 1970s discovery of her unpublished diaries, memoirs and letters cast Woolf through her esthetics, use of literary tradition, exploration of the psyche and "dark side"as an "ivory tower" introvert. In this lively and closely argued study, University of California professor Zwerdling (Yeats and the Heroic Ideal, etc.) aims at a more balanced view, stressing Woolf's social vision. Through a detailed examination of such themes as feminism, class, money, politics and war, he demonstrates forcefully that her major workfrom Jacob's Room to Between the Acts (with the exception of The Waves, whose intense subjectivity Woolf herself considered a dead end)exhibits a "dialogue between public and private voices." Since Zwerdling is more intent on characterizing than evaluating that often ironic dialogue, however, he does relatively little to substantiate his estimate of Woolf as a major writer.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication date: 1987
• ISBN 10: 0520061845
• ISBN 13: 9780520061842
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 388