Virginia Woolf

All you need to know about the modernist, feminist icon … If only all literary lives were as succinct * TIME OUT *From his unique position, Nigel Nicolson is able to combine intimacy with scholarship … an excellent introduction to her life and work * MAIL ON SUNDAY *This lucid portrait is a gem * SUNDAY TIMES *As a short introduction to Virginia Woolf this deceptively brief book could hardly be bettered and achieves high status instantly as a significant work of reference in its own right * THE TIMES *This little book is not only a delight to read but also of lasting importance * SPECTATOR *Nothing beats the excitement of feeling that you’re in the presence of someone who once walked with giants … Nigel Nicolson’s recollections of the woman whom he regarded “like a favourite aunt” are to be recommended * DAILY TELEGRAPH *This is an unusual (and unusually charming) biography … It is a quality of wide-eyed observation that gives this book its charm. Woolf comes alive in it … vivid vignettes are the essence of Nicolson’s book … Nicolson’s personal recollections run like a silver thread through this biography. But he tells the whole story of Woolf’s life with authority - affectionately but not uncritically. He is especially good at describing the trance-like states which went to the writing of Woolf’s best novels * SCOTSMAN *Nicolson writes with authority on the Bloomsbury Group … [he] gives a thorough and illuminating account of the Woolfs’ publishing business, the Hogarth Press, and makes a persuasive case for Woolf’s “excellence as a traveller” … Broadly appreciative and admirably concise * FINANCIAL TIMES *

Nigel Nicolson, the younger son of Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West, was a publisher, a Member of Parliament, an editor (including six volumes of Virginia Woolf’s letters and three of his father’s diaries) and the author of many books on history, politics, architecture and literature. He lived at the family home, Sissinghurst Castle in Kent, now a property of the National Trust, until his death in 2004.