says Woolf’s biographer (amongst other things!), Hermione Lee, in her fine review in The Guardian to coincide with a new publication by Granta of The Diary of Virginia Woolf. In their original five volumes as edited by Anne Olivier Bell they each have a new introduction, the first by her daughter, Virginia Nicholson (others include Olivia Laing and Siri Hustvedt). They look very lovely indeed but are pricey at £30 a pop. I am content enough with my now a couple of decades old, not-so-well bound, much read, US trade copies – I think!
To quote Hermione Lee:
[…]The diary is an unmatchable record of her times, a gallery of vividly observed individuals, an intimate and courageous self-examination, a revelation of a writer’s creative processes, a tender, watchful nature journal, and a meditation on life, love, marriage, friendship, solitude, society, time and mortality. It’s one of the greatest diaries ever written […]
The Diary of Virginia Woolf review – The Guardian – Thu 22 Jun 2023
What Lee says are extraordinarily (a superlative suggestive of my very much not false modesty) ideas that I, too, have had, and said, and even written about. A “memory book” she calls Woolf’s diary – I love that.