Status
Available
Call number
Publication
Mariner Books (1976), Edition: Trade, Paperback, 320 pages
Description
The last book Virginia Woolf saw into print before her death, Roger Fry , is her one serious full-length biography. In her introduction Diane F. Gillespie traces Woolf's work on the biography and provides a history of its critical reception. Appendices contain previously unpublished memoirs by Fry, a draft portrait of him by Woolf, and the list in variants include those to be found in the extensive typescript version of the biography.
User reviews
LibraryThing member Chris_V
Virginia Woolf's only 'official' biography is not as successful as might be hoped. She was herself unconvinced of her suitability to write it but did it as a favour to his partner Helen Anrep. Her love of her friend however is very clear.
LibraryThing member kristykay22
A pleasant and caring biography of one friend written by another, where one of those friends was an artist and art critic who had an immense impact on the British art world in the early 20th century and the other is a famous writer of modernist novels. Virginia Woolf wrote this biography of her
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friend, Roger Fry, at the request of his family, from whom she received what seems like a truckload of letters, notes, and artwork. From this archival treasure trove, along with her own memories and those of other members of the Bloomsbury group (including her sister Vanessa Bell, an artist whose work is intricately tied up with Roger Fry), Woolf paints a warm and detailed portrait of her friend. While the book skips over Fry's brief love affair with her sister and only gives the briefest mention of his faults, the work as a whole feels like an honest portrait of this influential but (to me, at least), little known art world figure. While the trademark style of Woolf's novels is only occasionally glimpsed in the book, her strength as a reader and critic (as seen in The Common Reader books and her other literary essays) is at full force. This is the second-to-last book Woolf published in her lifetime and her only straightforward biography. Probably best for folks interested in the British art world or Virginia Woolf completists, but I found it to be quite charming. Show Less
Subjects
Language
ISBN
015678520X / 9780156785204
Local notes
OCLC = 795