Jeanne Dubino

Beth Carole Rosenberg

Virginia Woolf and the Essay is one of the first critical studies to focus exclusively on Woolf's essays and thereby anticipates what is fast becoming the next major area of interest in Woolf studies. The collection begins with an introduction that surveys the historical reception of Virginia Woolf's essays, and then sketches out a methodological study of Woolf's essays by placing them within historical, literary-historical, reader-orientated, generic, and feminist contexts. As Virginia Woolf and the Essay proves, Woolf's essays are as fresh and delightful, as complex and inviting, to us now as they were to her original readers.

Virginia Woolf and the Essay

Virginia Woolf and Samuel Johnson: Common Readers argues for an intertextual reading of Woolf's criticism by placing it within the larger network of literary history. Woolf's critical assumptions can be viewed as a product of her reading of the eighteenth century, specifically the critical values articulated by Samuel Johnson and mediated by Leslie Stephen. Through an analysis of Woolf's essays, Rosenberg illustrates that Woolf is directly influenced by Johnson's theories of writing and speech; that these theories are most explicitly stated in her early critical work; and that Woolf's early essays are essential to the development of the dialogical style of her most masterful novels.

Beth Carole Rosenberg

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