Return to
England in the Footsteps of Virginia WoolfBell, Quentin. Virginia Woolf: A Biography. New York, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972.
This has been the most authoritative and influential biography of Woolf, though it has been superseded by more scholarly biographies in the 1980s and 90s. Quentin Bell was Woolf’s nephew, her sister Vanessa’s son. He and his sister Angelica inherited the Virginia Woolf Estate, controlling access to her papers.
Dunn, Jane. A Very Close Conspiracy: Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf. Boston: Little, Brown, 1990.
Examines Woolf’s relationship with her sister, who was a successful painter who first moved the four Stephen children from the stuffy Kensington neighborhood where they grew up to Bloomsbury, where they became the center of an artistic and intellectual group.
Gordon, Lyndall. Virginia Woolf: A Writer's Life. New York: Norton, 1984; 1991.
This feminist biography emphasizes links between Woolf’s life and her work, particularly the major novels.
Leaska,
Mitchell. Granite and Rainbow: The Hidden Life of Virginia Woolf.
New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1998.
Emphasizes the links between Woolf's life and works, somewhat controversially.
Lee,
Hermione. Virginia Woolf. New York: Knopf, 1997.
Many Woolf scholars view this as the closest we have to a definitive Woolf
biography.
Reid, Panthea. Art
and Affection: A Life of Virginia Woolf. New York: Oxford UP, 1996.
Emphasizes
Woolf’s relationship with her sister Vanessa Bell.