Selected Essays (Oxford World'S Classics)

Description:
'A good essay must draw its curtain round us, but it must be a curtain that shuts us in, not out.' 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.

Review:
Brilliant and subtle essays. Independent on Sunday.

Table of Contents:
The Decay of Essay-Writing; Modern Fiction; The Modern Essay; How it Strikes a Contemporary; Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown; Character in Fiction; Impassioned Prose; How Should One Read a Book?; Poetry, Fiction and the Future; Craftsmanship; The Feminine Note in Fiction; Women Novelists; Women and Fiction; Professions for Women; Memories of a Working Women's Guild; Why?; The New Biography; On Being Ill; The Art of Biography; Thunder at Wembley; The Cinema; Street Haunting: A London Adventure; The Sun and the Fish; The Docks of London; Oxford Street Tide; Evening over Sussex: Reflections in a Motor Car; Flying over London; Why Art Today Follows Politics; Thoughts on Peace in an Air Raid