Virginia Woolf, the War Without, the War Within: Her Final Diaries & the Diaries She Read

Virginia Woolf, the War Without, the War Within: Her Final Diaries & the Diaries She Read

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In her third and final volume on Virginia Woolf’s diaries, Barbara Lounsberry reveals new insights about the courageous last years of the modernist writer’s life, from 1929 until Woolf’s suicide in 1941. Woolf turned more to her diary--and to the diaries of others--for support in these years as she engaged in inner artistic wars, including the struggle with her most difficult work, The Waves, and as the threat of fascism in the world outside culminated in World War II. During this period, the war began to bleed into Woolf’s diary entries. Woolf writes about Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin; copies down the headlines of the day; and captures how war changed her daily life. Alongside Woolf’s own entries, Lounsberry explores the diaries of 18 other writers as Woolf read them, including the diaries of Leo Tolstoy, Dorothy Wordsworth, Guy de Maupassant, Alice James, and Andre Gide. Lounsberry shows how reading diaries was both respite from Woolf’s public writing and also an inspiration for it. Tellingly, shortly before her suicide Woolf had stopped reading them completely. The outer war and Woolf's inner life collide in this dramatic conclusion to the trilogy that resoundingly demonstrates why Virginia Woolf has been called "the Shakespeare of the diary." Lounsberry's masterful study is essential reading for a complete understanding of this extraordinary writer and thinker and the development of modernist literature. -- Provided by the publisher

Keywords

Woolf, Virginia, -- 1882-1941 -- Diaries, Woolf, Virginia, -- 1882-1941, Novelists, English -- 20th century -- Diaries

Document Type

Book

ISBN

9780813056937

Publication Date

2018

Publisher

University Press of Florida

City

Gainesville

Department

Department of Languages and Literatures

Object Description

viii, 397 pages ; 26 cm

Language

en

Virginia Woolf, the War Without, the War Within: Her Final Diaries & the Diaries She Read

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