Special Collections > Mortimer Rare Book Collection > Online Exhibits > A Story of Their Own > Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf
Hermione Lee
New York: Knopf, 1997.
Hermione Lee’s biography
of Virginia Woolf is based upon Woolf’s publications and close readings
of all the drafts of her writings, in addition to letters, diaries, and
interviews with family and friends. The narrative is arranged in thematic
chapters and is peppered with quotations from Woolf’s manuscripts,
including many of the drafts in the Frances Hooper Collection at Smith
College. The realities of the body, mind, and psyche are all given equal
weight in this comprehensive assessment of Woolf’s life. Lee holds
the Goldsmiths’ Chair of English Literature at Oxford. She was given
full access to Virginia Woolf’s manuscripts by Quentin
Bell who inherited his aunt’s copyrights when Leonard Woolf died.
Hermione Lee recently wrote an introduction to On Being Ill, a new edition of Virginia Woolf's essay published in 2002 by Jan Freeman at Paris Press in Ashfield, Massachusetts.
Elizabeth Power Richardson Bloomsbury
Iconography Collection
Mortimer Rare Book Room, Smith College
