- Paperback: 544 pages
- Publisher: Pocket Books; New edition edition (3 Sep 2007)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1416526072
- ISBN-13: 978-1416526070
- Product Dimensions: 19.6 x 13 x 3.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 409,973 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Review
"Leonard Woolf has found the ideal biographer in Victoria Glendinning. Scintillating, subtle and wise, she lifts him out of the fog of Bloomsbury gossip and lets us see how various and remarkable he was in his own right." -- Claire Tomalin, author of Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self 'It needed a biography as compelling as this to bring out Woolf's full stature. Many will rate this as Glendinning's finest biography, for there is not a page that does not contain something of interest or surprise' Frances Spalding, Independent 8/9 'Leonard Woolf contains the qualities that Woolf himself admired and possessed: truthfulness, integrity and rationality. With her compelling account, Glendinning has done a great service to Woolf by refusing to simplify a complex life' Christopher Ondaatje, the Times Higher 1/9 'An absorbing read ... It is as if Glendinning has removed a low-wattage bulb and replaced it with a brighter one, shining her lamp on to Leonard. She succeeds in throwing his lean profile more sharply into view' Independent on Sunday 10/9 'Glendinning - shrewd, admiring, affectionately teasing, occasionally reproachful - achieves that almost impossible feat: a fascinating portrait of a man without sin' Christopher Hudson, Daily Mail 8/9 'Victoria Glendinning always writes concisely and her densely peopled narrative is pointed and easy to follow. She has an eye for detail' Peter Washington, Literary Review Sept issue 'Her deft writing and striking sympathy for her subject make this a landmark biography' Observer 27/8 'Being Virginia Woolf's husband is what made him famous, but Leonard Woolf was more than that. When I read his memoirs in the 1960s I decided that he was an exemplary figure; balanced yet passionate, practical, generous and wise. Victoria Glendinning's biography fills out the picture with a brilliant lightness of touch that takes into account the darknesses and depths of this remarkable man' Claire Tomalin, Book of the Week, Guardian 16/9 'As this marvellous biography makes plain, Woolf's achievements were admirable and considerable' Jeremy Lewis, 4 stars Mail on Sunday 17/9 'It was high time for a biography of Leonard Woolf, the forgotten man at the heart of Bloomsbury, who died in 1969. His contribution to politics, publishing and journalism, his distinction as a writer and thinker, his influence not just on his circle but on the public life of Britain in the first half of the 20th Century, all faded into the shadows as more and more attention was drawn towards Virginia, his brilliant, troubled wife. Now, he at last gets what he has long deserved: a full account of his life by an accomplished and sympathetic biographer ... excellent, authoritative and balanced' Sunday Telegraph 17/9 'Victoria Glendinning, a most experienced British biographer, has, yes, proved the case for yet one more Bloomsbury biography ... she has constructed a meticulous but vivid portrait' The Economist 16/9 'Glendinning's generous biography does not ignore that Woolf could be grumpy and was too often cheese-paring, but her account does justice to his range of passions, his literary and political contributions and, above all, his human goodness - he was a man who knew how to live' New Statesman 18/9 'In Virginia Woolf's oft-told saga of suffering, her husband, Leonard, has mostly been allocated a minor role, and has not escaped criticism. Was he, her acolytes have asked, a fitting partner for her genius? Was he at all to blame when Virginia drowned herself in March 1941? Victoria Glendinning's searching, sympathetic biography returns a firm yes to the first question and no to the second' John Carey, Sunday Times 24/9 'I suppose an unfriendly critic might suggest that a full-fig biography of Leonard Woolf is a scraping of the Bloomsbury barrel. How wrong that critic would be' Daily Telegraph 23/9 'The test of a skilfully written book is whether its story grips from beginning to end. I never noticed the passage of time while I was reading this absorbing biography, right up to the final poignant paragraph about Leonard's dog Coco, who, when her master died, aged 88, in 1969 could not settle to life without him and had to be put down' The Spectator 7/10 'A landmark biography' Paul Levy, Guardian 22/9 This [biography] deserves the highest praise for telling his story with so much vim and flair... Victoria Glendinning is that rarity among biographers: an admirable stylist' Irish Times 30/9 'YOU REALLY MUST READ... Virginia's husband steps out of her shadow' Sunday Times 1/10 'A solid, sober, well-considered piece of writing, the meticulous portrait of a man who lived a busy life - in the thick of literary and political events for some 50 years - but who somehow managed to retain a certain quiet integrity' The Tablet 23/9 'Absorbing... It is hard to imagine a better book that examines, with the same clear eye that Woolf himself employed for pen-portraits of his Cambridge friends, the relationship between intellectual, assimilated Jews and their non-Jewish British counterparts in the first half of the 20th century' The Jewish Chronicle 22/9 'Glendinning perceives a whole, exemplary man behind the public persona, and his strength of character that enables his wife, Virginia Woolf, to write and publish her great novels. Her husband's moral integrity is the strong backbone of this fine, subtle biography' The Times 28/10 LEONARD WOOLF by Victoria Glendinning Claire Tomalin's choice 'Leonard Woolf would have approved of it, and he has found his ideal biographer in Victoria Glendinning, who charts his long, hard-working and hard-thinking life with wit and sympathy' Guardian 25/11 'This exemplary biography reveals Woolf to be not only surprisingly lovable but also passionate' Sunday Times Top 5 Biographies of the Year 27/11 Roy Foster's choice 'Notably perceptive, empathetic and surprising, bringing a brisk intelligence to familiar subjects and illuminating them from a new angle' Times Literary Supplement 30/11 Jane Gardam's choice 'Saved from being another slice of Bloomsbury pie by Glendinning's scholarship and blessed lack of awe' Spectator 18/11 Anthony Howard's choice 'A masterly account of the somewhat austere figure who deserves to be remembered for more than being Virginia Woolf's long-suffering husband' Sunday Telegraph 26/11 'Many biographies end so sadly that they leave one feeling cast down, but not this one. In the last party of it an exceptionally valuable life moves gently through many unexpectedly good and productive years, then comes to a quiet end. That lie has now been recorded in a manner truly worthy of it' The Oldie magazine, December issue 'A first biography of Woolf is long overdue, especially given that there have been frequent biographies of his wife Virginia and of many far less significant figures in the Bloomsbury group. Victoria Glendinning's enjoyable, copiously researched book is therefore thoroughly welcome' History Today Feb '07 'As sympathetic, far-sighted and wide-ranging as its subject, this tremendous biography brings a "dark star" out of the shadow cast by his wife Virginia -- whose work, far from impeding, his loving care made possible' Boyd Tonkin, Independent 31/8 'It's sad that his literary work, including a five-volume autobiography, has been so overshadowed by his wife's. In what is perhaps her best book so far, Victoria Glendinning puts all these matters straight' Sunday Telegraph 2/9 'Glendinning has made prodigious inquiries. She masters the daily round of her subject's life, but it does not master her. Her familiarity with the separate parts of Leonard Woolf's life enables her to see the whole. As well as one Woolf's life, she catches the tenor of two Woolf's fascinating times. Her humour is leavening, her touch light but sure. If Virginia was a comet, searing across the sky, her husband was the lodestar' The Times 2/9 'This study captures Woolf's presence by elegantly skipping between the histories of these many worlds -- political, literary, social and, critically, psychological -- and, like Woolf himself, seems to tremble with creative energy' Observer 9/9 'This study captures Woolf's presence by elegantly skipping between the histories of these many worlds -- political, literary, social and, critically, psychological -- and, like Woolf himself, seems to tremble with creative energy' Observer 9/9
Product Description
Many people today know Leonard Woolf mainly through the surname of his wife, Virginia, or his role in supporting her through her mental illness, depicted in films like The Hours. Some critics see him as his wife's oppressor. In Victoria Glendinning's biography, for the first time we see the whole man. As well as being a prominent member of the Bloomsbury group, Leonard was a formidable figure in his own right, first as an innovative civil administrator in Ceylon, then as a writer, leading light of the Fabian society and publisher of TS Eliot, EM Forster, Robert Graves, Katherine Mansfield and of course Virginia Woolf. He was interested in everything and knew everybody. The achievement of Glendinning's book is to make its readers wish that they knew him too.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Some forty years ago I was entranced by the five volumes of Leonard Woolf's autobiography and impressed by his character and views. The details are a bit vague in my mind after all that time, and I was looking forward to refreshing them by reading Victoria Glendinning's biography. Occasionally I dipped again into the autobiography to compare her account with his. I have to say that, for me, her work does not match the charm or the fluency of his. She is one of those biographers who cannot omit even the most trivial and uninteresting information she has, not only about her subject but also about other people in the story.
She has of course much to add to, and occasionally to correct, what Leonard Woolf has written himself, since she can bring in what other people have written to and about him. In particular she can say things about his personality that he would hardly have said himself. So she can portray him as often conscious, quite painfully so, of an outsider status even when he was apparently successfully integrated into the groups of which he was a member. He himself had spoken of having quite early on developed a `carapace' with which to protect himself, though he did not explain what he was protecting himself against. In his autobiography he says that he first developed it as a schoolboy at St. Paul's, and some pages later suggested that it was to protect himself from being considered an intellectual. That was most unlikely at as intellectually high-achieving a school as St Paul's; and he never recorded, as other Old Paulines like Compton Mackenzie and G.K. Chesterton were to do, that boys were often bullied at the St Paul's of those days for being Jewish. He did compare himself, allusively and without further elaboration, to a species of moth oddly called the `Setaceous (i.e. bristly) Hebrew Character' - a reference which Victoria Glendinning did not pick up. Only in the fifth and last volume of his autobiography does he say that he had `always been conscious of being a Jew', but claimed that antisemitism had `not touched me personally or only very peripherally.' When we consider that his wife Virginia frequently expressed her distaste for Jews, even in his hearing, we can see how much suppression there was at work in such a remark. In his second novel, The Wise Virgins, sharing in the readiness to hurt that was a characteristic of the Bloomsbury set, he even mocked his own Jewish family (as Virginia did), and showed the central character, himself, as `displaced ... and fitting in nowhere' (Glendinning's words.) But in that novel he was equally scathing about the `bloodless' Bloomsbury characters.
The Bloomsbury Circle of which he was a part were notoriously uninhibited in expressing themselves. Leonard Woolf was close to the flamboyant Lytton Strachey, and their early correspondence was dripping with their sexual drives and in particular with Strachey's flaunting his homosexual activities. Leonard contributed his share of activities, though these were, until his (sexually unsatisfactory) marriage, with female prostitutes: one feels that he was under a compulsion to prove to his friend that he was not inhibited either.
He did make a devoted husband. (Victoria Glendinning does not agree with the few writers of who have doubted this.) Though Leonard had known before he married her that Virginia had had breakdowns, nothing could have prepared him for the severity and frequency of her attacks during the next 29 years, which were a terrible ordeal for him also. At one time her rages were directed at him, and he would move out of their home for a while for both their sakes. She (and others in the circle) found his involvement with the Women's Cooperative Guild and with the Fabians a dreary waste of time; for him, `drugging himself with work', it helped him a little to cope. But most of the time Virginia knew how much she owed to his love and reciprocated it; and she was desperately anxious for his good opinions of her books. Incidentally, while we are told, for example, that `in 1923 Virginia had three new hats, two pairs of drawers, two pairs of shoes, two cloaks, one coat, one dress, one skirt and one jumper', there is no appraisal whatever in this book of the nature of her genius. Nor, for that matter, is there a detailed enough discussion of the content of Leonard's pre-1933 political and literary writings and various editorships which were (apart from the Hogarth Press) the main source of his income.
The impact of Virginia's suicide on Leonard is movingly described. He was devastated; but within two years, at the age of 63, he fell in love with the artist Trekkie Parsons, with whom he had `a long and lovely autumn' (as Quentin Bell would write to her after his death). Trekkie, as robust as Virginia had been frail, was married to Ian, a director of the publishing house Chatto & Windus with which the Hogarth Press would eventually merge. They had a strong marriage and she had no intention of leaving him, although she loved Leonard, too. When Ian was posted to France, Trekkie came to live with Leonard at Rodmell. Ian accepted this, and when he returned from the war, Trekkie would spend the weekend with him in a house they had found near Leonard's home in Rodmell and the rest of the week with Leonard. Leonard still worked productively, and his brother found him `looking the picture of contented old age' and many young people, especially women, found him a lovable old man. He travelled, with Trekkie, to Ceylon in his 80th year to revisit the places where he had worked as a young colonial civil servant; and to the US and Canada when he was 85. He remained physically spry and mentally alert to almost the very end of his life four years later. Victoria Glendinning has taken us through a remarkable life.
She has of course much to add to, and occasionally to correct, what Leonard Woolf has written himself, since she can bring in what other people have written to and about him. In particular she can say things about his personality that he would hardly have said himself. So she can portray him as often conscious, quite painfully so, of an outsider status even when he was apparently successfully integrated into the groups of which he was a member. He himself had spoken of having quite early on developed a `carapace' with which to protect himself, though he did not explain what he was protecting himself against. In his autobiography he says that he first developed it as a schoolboy at St. Paul's, and some pages later suggested that it was to protect himself from being considered an intellectual. That was most unlikely at as intellectually high-achieving a school as St Paul's; and he never recorded, as other Old Paulines like Compton Mackenzie and G.K. Chesterton were to do, that boys were often bullied at the St Paul's of those days for being Jewish. He did compare himself, allusively and without further elaboration, to a species of moth oddly called the `Setaceous (i.e. bristly) Hebrew Character' - a reference which Victoria Glendinning did not pick up. Only in the fifth and last volume of his autobiography does he say that he had `always been conscious of being a Jew', but claimed that antisemitism had `not touched me personally or only very peripherally.' When we consider that his wife Virginia frequently expressed her distaste for Jews, even in his hearing, we can see how much suppression there was at work in such a remark. In his second novel, The Wise Virgins, sharing in the readiness to hurt that was a characteristic of the Bloomsbury set, he even mocked his own Jewish family (as Virginia did), and showed the central character, himself, as `displaced ... and fitting in nowhere' (Glendinning's words.) But in that novel he was equally scathing about the `bloodless' Bloomsbury characters.
The Bloomsbury Circle of which he was a part were notoriously uninhibited in expressing themselves. Leonard Woolf was close to the flamboyant Lytton Strachey, and their early correspondence was dripping with their sexual drives and in particular with Strachey's flaunting his homosexual activities. Leonard contributed his share of activities, though these were, until his (sexually unsatisfactory) marriage, with female prostitutes: one feels that he was under a compulsion to prove to his friend that he was not inhibited either.
He did make a devoted husband. (Victoria Glendinning does not agree with the few writers of who have doubted this.) Though Leonard had known before he married her that Virginia had had breakdowns, nothing could have prepared him for the severity and frequency of her attacks during the next 29 years, which were a terrible ordeal for him also. At one time her rages were directed at him, and he would move out of their home for a while for both their sakes. She (and others in the circle) found his involvement with the Women's Cooperative Guild and with the Fabians a dreary waste of time; for him, `drugging himself with work', it helped him a little to cope. But most of the time Virginia knew how much she owed to his love and reciprocated it; and she was desperately anxious for his good opinions of her books. Incidentally, while we are told, for example, that `in 1923 Virginia had three new hats, two pairs of drawers, two pairs of shoes, two cloaks, one coat, one dress, one skirt and one jumper', there is no appraisal whatever in this book of the nature of her genius. Nor, for that matter, is there a detailed enough discussion of the content of Leonard's pre-1933 political and literary writings and various editorships which were (apart from the Hogarth Press) the main source of his income.
The impact of Virginia's suicide on Leonard is movingly described. He was devastated; but within two years, at the age of 63, he fell in love with the artist Trekkie Parsons, with whom he had `a long and lovely autumn' (as Quentin Bell would write to her after his death). Trekkie, as robust as Virginia had been frail, was married to Ian, a director of the publishing house Chatto & Windus with which the Hogarth Press would eventually merge. They had a strong marriage and she had no intention of leaving him, although she loved Leonard, too. When Ian was posted to France, Trekkie came to live with Leonard at Rodmell. Ian accepted this, and when he returned from the war, Trekkie would spend the weekend with him in a house they had found near Leonard's home in Rodmell and the rest of the week with Leonard. Leonard still worked productively, and his brother found him `looking the picture of contented old age' and many young people, especially women, found him a lovable old man. He travelled, with Trekkie, to Ceylon in his 80th year to revisit the places where he had worked as a young colonial civil servant; and to the US and Canada when he was 85. He remained physically spry and mentally alert to almost the very end of his life four years later. Victoria Glendinning has taken us through a remarkable life.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful
It was high time for a first full biography of Leonard Woolf (1880-1969). Known to many as husband to the English novelist and essayist Virginia Woolf - he lent the purity of her first name some bite with his surname - Leonard was also at different times of his life a Cambridge student, a Colonial servant in Ceylon, a political commentator, a significant figure for the nascent Labour Party, publisher, novelist, and writer of five volumes of autobiography. What is fascinating about Victoria Glendinning's biography is what we learn "beyond Virginia" - the well-researched details she provides to flesh out Leonard's life before marrying and after losing the woman who was to become one of the most important and influential writers of the 20th century.
Leonard was the fourth of ten children born to Sidney Woolf and Marie de Jong. The Woolfs, who lived in Lexham Gardens, Kensington, were non-orthodox Jews, but Leonard was to remain a staunch atheist for the duration of his life. The family home was, Glendinning writes, "a matriarchal universe" which became all the more so after the early death of Leonard's father when the boy was 11.
He went up to Trinity College, Cambridge, in the last year of the 19th century. Reading Classics - he calculated that in a year he read 121 books outside of his course and ultimately left with a second-class degree - it was here that he met Lytton Strachey, Maynard Keynes, Saxon Sydney-Turner, Clive Bell, and Thoby Stephen (Virginia's brother, who was to die young). Having met Virginia briefly in Cambridge when she came to visit Thoby in 1903, Leonard saw her again a year later at 46 Gordon Square, London, before he left for Ceylon where he was to live and work as a civil servant for the next seven years.
Glendinning does not write particularly sympathetically about Virginia, I felt. Understandably she stresses the strain that her recurrent mental illness placed Leonard under, but Glendinning's commentary on what many consider to be sexual abuse at the hands of her half-brothers is nonchalant at best: "All girls have to have some first experience of male sexuality, and George's late-night petting, however unsavoury and unwanted, was no worse than most." There are also some factual errors: Stella Duckworth is referred to on p.126 as Virginia's step-sister when she was in fact her half-sister (being her mother's daughter from her first marriage). Astonishingly, she also gets the year of Vita Sackville-West's death wrong (giving it as 1963 instead of 1962 on p.429) - astonishing because Glendinning has written an entire biography on Sackville-West! There are also a few typographical errors which have not been cleared up in the new printing and Glendinning has covered some of her tracks by not providing page numbers in the footnotes for references.
Leonard outlived his famous wife by over 28 years. Less than two years after she committed suicide in 1941, he fell in love again, this time with a married women called Trekkie Parsons (née Ritchie). The stories of female 'fans' from near and afar who felt attracted to and protective of the aging literary celebrity are particularly funny - Leonard often wrote them kind and appreciative letters. Funnier still are the anecdotes about his pedantic irascibility in later life. When one bottle proved missing from a wine delivery or one of his garden tools malfunctioned, however slightly, Leonard shot off letter after letter of complaint, harassing store assistants until they caved in! Stubbornly independent to the last, he was still driving himself around in his late 80s. When Virginia Browne-Wilkinson - one of the many younger women he befriended after his wife's death - challenged him in his last year about his lifelong motto that nothing mattered, he had modified his view, telling her: "Nothing matters, and everything matters." (3.5 stars)
Leonard was the fourth of ten children born to Sidney Woolf and Marie de Jong. The Woolfs, who lived in Lexham Gardens, Kensington, were non-orthodox Jews, but Leonard was to remain a staunch atheist for the duration of his life. The family home was, Glendinning writes, "a matriarchal universe" which became all the more so after the early death of Leonard's father when the boy was 11.
He went up to Trinity College, Cambridge, in the last year of the 19th century. Reading Classics - he calculated that in a year he read 121 books outside of his course and ultimately left with a second-class degree - it was here that he met Lytton Strachey, Maynard Keynes, Saxon Sydney-Turner, Clive Bell, and Thoby Stephen (Virginia's brother, who was to die young). Having met Virginia briefly in Cambridge when she came to visit Thoby in 1903, Leonard saw her again a year later at 46 Gordon Square, London, before he left for Ceylon where he was to live and work as a civil servant for the next seven years.
Glendinning does not write particularly sympathetically about Virginia, I felt. Understandably she stresses the strain that her recurrent mental illness placed Leonard under, but Glendinning's commentary on what many consider to be sexual abuse at the hands of her half-brothers is nonchalant at best: "All girls have to have some first experience of male sexuality, and George's late-night petting, however unsavoury and unwanted, was no worse than most." There are also some factual errors: Stella Duckworth is referred to on p.126 as Virginia's step-sister when she was in fact her half-sister (being her mother's daughter from her first marriage). Astonishingly, she also gets the year of Vita Sackville-West's death wrong (giving it as 1963 instead of 1962 on p.429) - astonishing because Glendinning has written an entire biography on Sackville-West! There are also a few typographical errors which have not been cleared up in the new printing and Glendinning has covered some of her tracks by not providing page numbers in the footnotes for references.
Leonard outlived his famous wife by over 28 years. Less than two years after she committed suicide in 1941, he fell in love again, this time with a married women called Trekkie Parsons (née Ritchie). The stories of female 'fans' from near and afar who felt attracted to and protective of the aging literary celebrity are particularly funny - Leonard often wrote them kind and appreciative letters. Funnier still are the anecdotes about his pedantic irascibility in later life. When one bottle proved missing from a wine delivery or one of his garden tools malfunctioned, however slightly, Leonard shot off letter after letter of complaint, harassing store assistants until they caved in! Stubbornly independent to the last, he was still driving himself around in his late 80s. When Virginia Browne-Wilkinson - one of the many younger women he befriended after his wife's death - challenged him in his last year about his lifelong motto that nothing mattered, he had modified his view, telling her: "Nothing matters, and everything matters." (3.5 stars)
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