Julia Briggs, in her biography of Virginia Woolf `An Inner Life', takes a different approach to those biographers who have gone before. Although the author does, of course, give us Woolf's background, and relates the events that happened around her, she focuses not on Woolf's outer life, but on her inner life, looking at the formative influences on her and what stimulated her to write the way she did; therefore this book is not just a biography of Virginia Woolf, but also an in-depth biography of Woolf's writing.
As Briggs states in her introduction: "Woolf's fiction is centrally concerned with the inner life, and finding ways of re-creating that life in narrative". Briggs goes on to comment that Woolf was a highly sociable person, who was fortunate in having a fascinating and talented circle of family and friends, yet it was what she did when she was on her own, out walking or sitting at her desk, for which we remember her.
The author says her aim in writing this book "is to bring readers back to her [Woolf's] work with a fresh sense of what they might find there". To accomplish this, Briggs' method is to take the reader chronologically through Woolf's novels and published works, devoting a chapter to each, starting with `The Voyage Out' and ending with `Between the Acts'. In each chapter Briggs looks at how the novel in discussion was composed, what events surrounded her at the time, the writing and re-writing that went into the drafts, how the book was published, the size of the print runs, the critical reception and the number of sales. We find out what Virginia's husband, Leonard, and her close friends and family thought of the book and, at the end of each chapter, the reader is shown a facsimile of the dust cover of the book, which is a very nice touch and interesting to see, especially the delightful covers designed by her sister, the artist, Vanessa Bell, who played such a key role in Virginia's life.
Briggs writes with deftness and fluency offering the reader perceptive insights into both Virginia Woolf and her work; she has done her research well, but does not bog the reader down with too much detail. (For those readers who do want more information there are over a hundred pages of notes at the end of the book). At the close of her biography in an epilogue, Briggs tells us that Woolf's life, like that of Sylvia Plath, is too often read in terms of her death, as if that is the most interesting or significant thing that happened to her. Often people think of her in the terms of her depressive illness and her breakdowns, but when Virginia was not ill (and she was well more often than is generally thought) she was lively, animated, interesting, amusing and warmly sociable. However, to finish her biography, Briggs does write about Virginia's last few weeks and days, explaining why she felt she could not go on. The reader is shown a copy of Virginia's last letter to Leonard before the author relates how she then walked down to the swiftly running river Ouse, put stones in her pocket, and bravely waded into the water.
I have been interested in Virginia Woolf and to an equal extent, her sister, Vanessa Bell, since my teenage years and have, therefore, read rather a lot about her. `An Inner Life' is a good addition to the large amount of published work on Virginia Woolf, but for those who may not yet have read very much about Woolf, I would recommend:
Virginia Woolf by Hermoine Lee and :
Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell: A Very Close Conspiracy by Jane Dunn.
5 Stars.
Note: This book may be unavailable as a new book from Amazon, but you can find 'as new' copies on Amazon Marketplace.
