Leonard Woolf [Hardcover]

'I never noticed the passage of time while I was reading this
absorbing biography'

'A landmark biography'

'Victoria Glendinning is that rarity among biographers: an
admirable stylist'

'YOU REALLY MUST READ... Virginia's husband steps out of her
shadow'

'Leonard Woolf has found the ideal biographer in Victoria
Glendinning... Scintillating, subtle and wise.'

'Glendinning perceives an exemplary man behind Virginia...Her
husband's moral integrity is the strong backbone of this fine, subtle
biography'

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.

Victoria Glendinning is the award-winning biographer of Trollope, Elizabeth Bowen, Edith Sitwell, Vita Sackville-West, Rebecca West and Jonathan Swift. Her previous novels, The Grown-Ups and Electricity, were critical and commercial successes. She divides her time between London, Provence and Ireland.