- Hardcover: 498 pages
- Publisher: Free Press (1 Nov 2006)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0743246535
- ISBN-13: 978-0743246538
- Product Dimensions: 23.4 x 16.1 x 3.5 cm
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 584,479 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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7 reviews
24 of 24 people found the following review helpful
The Other Woolf
5 Dec 2006
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
I have just finished reading this biography and have nothing for it but praise. Like many other admirers of Virginia Woolf, I have read many critical analyses of her work, including three biographies, as well as Michael Holroyd's canonical biography of Lytton Strachey and numerous historical works on Bloomsbury (full disclosure; I teach English literature). Yet I had never read any work about Leonard Woolf, for the very good reason that comparatively little has been written about him; he has for the most part remained a shadowy figure, the man behind the legend.
Glendinning remedies this gap in the record. Her biography is detailed, thoughtful, sympathetic and objective, and brings Leonard Woolf to life, particularly the Leonard Woolf who lived and continued to work and write in the years after Virginia Woolf's death. Of course, a good part of this history is devoted to Leonard's life with Virginia, since their marriage was the central relationship in his life and the source of much of his creative energy. Yet in describing his experiences in Ceylon in the early 1900s, where he served in the British foreign service, his political work, including his influence on the League of Nations; his role in the creation of the British Labour Party; and his contributions as editor, not merely of the legendary Hogarth Press, which he founded with Virginia, but also of the political journal, The New Stateman, Glendenning has provided us not only with a history of the development of the British left, but also with a portrait of a unique individual, a person notable in his own right for his vision, wisdom and humanity. Glendenning quotes an associate as describing Woolf as "the only man I ever met who seemed to me to be right about everything that matters." I read this book because of my interest in Virginia Woolf; I came away with an appreciation for Leonard Woolf as a separate, remarkable person.
Glendinning remedies this gap in the record. Her biography is detailed, thoughtful, sympathetic and objective, and brings Leonard Woolf to life, particularly the Leonard Woolf who lived and continued to work and write in the years after Virginia Woolf's death. Of course, a good part of this history is devoted to Leonard's life with Virginia, since their marriage was the central relationship in his life and the source of much of his creative energy. Yet in describing his experiences in Ceylon in the early 1900s, where he served in the British foreign service, his political work, including his influence on the League of Nations; his role in the creation of the British Labour Party; and his contributions as editor, not merely of the legendary Hogarth Press, which he founded with Virginia, but also of the political journal, The New Stateman, Glendenning has provided us not only with a history of the development of the British left, but also with a portrait of a unique individual, a person notable in his own right for his vision, wisdom and humanity. Glendenning quotes an associate as describing Woolf as "the only man I ever met who seemed to me to be right about everything that matters." I read this book because of my interest in Virginia Woolf; I came away with an appreciation for Leonard Woolf as a separate, remarkable person.
18 of 18 people found the following review helpful
He was not only Mr. Virginia Woolf
24 Nov 2006
Format:Hardcover
This book was highly praised in an outstanding review written by Adam Kirsch in ' The New York Sun'. Glendenning's biography according to him reveals a personality far more gifted, talented, and active than ordinarily supposed.Woolf was an important political journalist and a major contributor to the work of the socialist Fabian society. Most of us have the idea of Woolf as the faithful, and caring husband of the deeply troubled, frequently depressed Virginia Woolf. And there is no doubt that that chapter of his life in which he cared for his novelist wife is the part of his story the reading public will always take greatest interest in. But his talents were also appreciated by many other well- known writers who worked with Hogarth Press. Woolf was not as many supposed an asexual aesthete but a man whose involvements prior to Woolf , and after involved a successful physical component.
All his efforts and care helped Woolf write her most important work. It could not prevent her however from taking her own life. In probably one of the most moving suicide - notes ever written she thanks him for the great happiness he has given him, exonerates of any blame he might possibly have placed upon himself for her death- and expresses her abiding love and appreciation to him.
One problematic area as Kirsch explains was Woolf's relation to his own Jewishness, which he was apologetic and defensive about in a way Einstein, Freud, and Kafka never were. Woolf suffered his wife's slights and insults on his Jewishness, and in the beginning of their married life even distanced himself somewhat from his own family. After her death and with the companion of his later years he in 1957 visited Israel, and was moved by this. After this he became somewhat of a defender of the Jewish state, and one of his last public actions was writing a letter in its defense.
Woolf was a much respected and valued friend of many of the leading literary luminaries of his day, from Lytton Strachey to T.S. Eliot. His autobiography in five volumes and his novel set in Ceylon are considered first- class works.
This biography should go some way towards correcting the impression that he was more than just, what he nonetheless will be mostly remembered as Mr. Virgina Woolf.
All his efforts and care helped Woolf write her most important work. It could not prevent her however from taking her own life. In probably one of the most moving suicide - notes ever written she thanks him for the great happiness he has given him, exonerates of any blame he might possibly have placed upon himself for her death- and expresses her abiding love and appreciation to him.
One problematic area as Kirsch explains was Woolf's relation to his own Jewishness, which he was apologetic and defensive about in a way Einstein, Freud, and Kafka never were. Woolf suffered his wife's slights and insults on his Jewishness, and in the beginning of their married life even distanced himself somewhat from his own family. After her death and with the companion of his later years he in 1957 visited Israel, and was moved by this. After this he became somewhat of a defender of the Jewish state, and one of his last public actions was writing a letter in its defense.
Woolf was a much respected and valued friend of many of the leading literary luminaries of his day, from Lytton Strachey to T.S. Eliot. His autobiography in five volumes and his novel set in Ceylon are considered first- class works.
This biography should go some way towards correcting the impression that he was more than just, what he nonetheless will be mostly remembered as Mr. Virgina Woolf.
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
A wonderful book about an extraordinary man
26 Dec 2006
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
When I was a young graduate student in English, Leonard Woolf was a feminist punching bag-the oppressive middle-class husband of the brilliant, ethereal Virginia Woolf. No one seemed to consider that living with someone mentally ill before the age of antipsychotic and mood stabilizing medication could have been somewhat of a struggle or that a little stolidness might provide Mrs. Woolf with the stable environement she needed in order to write.
Over the years Leonard has begun to get his due It was when reading William Zinsner's On Writing Well and Jon Hassler's "Simon's Night" that I discovered Woolf's evocative memoirs.
Now Victoria Glendinning who has written incredibly readable biographies of Vita Sackville-West and Anthony Trollope has turned her attention to Leonard Woolf and written a fabulous book about how he managed to deal with a wife who was often ill and remain a force in both literature and politics. The chapter on how he fielded requests for interviews, doctoral candidates, and Edward Albee's request that "I be able to use your wife's name in a play I'm writing" as his wife's reputation grew is fascinating as well
Over the years Leonard has begun to get his due It was when reading William Zinsner's On Writing Well and Jon Hassler's "Simon's Night" that I discovered Woolf's evocative memoirs.
Now Victoria Glendinning who has written incredibly readable biographies of Vita Sackville-West and Anthony Trollope has turned her attention to Leonard Woolf and written a fabulous book about how he managed to deal with a wife who was often ill and remain a force in both literature and politics. The chapter on how he fielded requests for interviews, doctoral candidates, and Edward Albee's request that "I be able to use your wife's name in a play I'm writing" as his wife's reputation grew is fascinating as well
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