Essays of Virginia Woolf, Vol. 4, 1925-1928

This fourth volume of the first complete edition of Virginia Woolf's essays and reviews celebrates her maturing vitality and wonderfully reveals her prodigious reading, wit and original intelligence. Written while she worked on TO THE LIGHTHOUSE and ORLANDO, these pieces explore subjects ranging from the world's greatest books to obscure English lives. THE COMMON READER, First Series, in which she influentially revives women's place in history, comprises a quarter of the volume. Contributions to American journals for the first time in her career outnumber those to the Times Literary Supplement, and so her pieces in the Nation & Athenaeum, under Leonard Woolf's literary editorship. The volume also includes her moving introduction to the Modern Library Edition of MRS. DALLOWAY, not previously published.

In his superb notes, McNeillie this time adds variations in her essays as they appeared in different versions: for example, the lines later omitted from her essay on Joseph Addison: "our range of delights. persuade us that the whole business of life is better worth while." Virginia Woolf's creativity and industry in these three years bespeak astonishing gifts, remarkable robustness, and a passion for "the whole business of life" that inspires.