Woolf has survived into the 21st century as a literary great, holding her place among the men of her time and still, among the writers of today.

Briggs focuses more on the writing itself: the process of it, the woman who wrote it, etc., a biography of her words, if you will, rather than churning out well-known biographical content and the social aspect of her life, familiar to Woolf readers.

What’s interesting about this book is how the individual chapters chronologically correlate with each book published by Woolf, following events and ‘inner thoughts’ concerning the book of that particular time. Throughout the book, copies of drafts, letters and dist jackets are dispersed, offering revealing glimpses into Woolf’s writing processes.

Scrupulously researched and well laid out with a fresh perspective, Virginia Woolf: An Inner Life should be on every woman’s bookshelf, in a room of her own.

This book is very much a writer's look at a writer's life. Rather than being a conventional biography, going from childhood to adulthood, Briggs takes each of Woolf's major works and writes about her life at the time of writing, drawing extensively on Woolf's own letters and diaries as well as others' writing about her. In this way, we don't find out much about Woolf's childhood until near the end of the book, when Woolf herself started writing her autobiographical notes.

I read this book in order from cover to cover, but I am not convinced this was the best way to approach it. I think it would make more sense to read the relevant chapter alongside reading the Woolf book the chapter is about. As I come to read more of Woolf's work, I think it will be useful to go back to this book and read about the context of the work. Each chapter ends with the "aftermath" of the relevant book with extracts from contemporaneous reviews and essays. I found these interesting.

Briggs is clearly very knowledgeable about Virginia Woolf's work and I liked the approach of getting to know a writer's life via that writer's own writings. However, at times the writing was very dry, and I did find it a little bit of a slog as a result.

The life of Virginia Woolf, with all its lumps and imperfections, framed within the context of her writing. Each chapter represents one of her books, and talks about what she was doing at the time, and how the events of her real life inspired her work. My favourite chapters were about the works I was most familiar with, namely "Orlando" and "A Room of One's Own," as well as the chapter about "Three Guineas" that unpacks Woolf's antisemitism, which the author concludes was in line with the attitudes of the day. I'm going to look up some other takes on this now. I was also interested, as I always have been, in the parts about her and Vita Sackville-West. "You make me up and I'll make you up."

Also, this: "Shall I ever write again? And what is writing?"

Poorly written and factually suspect. The author reaches for an erudite form but fails on the basics of biography. A terrible slog.

A very interesting and well written book. It is a great gift Virginia but she paid greatly for it, like most artist.

While Briggs isn't radically insightful, she does a beautiful job tying Woolf's biography to her work. It feels very much like a writer's biography - written about a writer, for writers - in how it illuminates her process and creative struggle.

Also, the cover is flipping gorgeous.

Although the book was interesting--I mean, I do love Virginia Woolf, and I really enjoyed learning more about her, and this book did make me want to read her journals and letters more--largely it was a disappointment. The writing was shabby and lacked variety, engaged in gratuitous, not to mention elementary, word play, and the author's pounces on easy answers to question of Virginia Woolf's work (like what the significance is to the Manx cat in A Room of One's Own--really, what could lack possibly mean in a feminist text about women being locked out of the literary world and having men write their lives for them for years and years until reaching a point where a new language for women must be created so that a feminine voice can actually exist--what could lack possibly mean here? the mind reels).

Not the best choice I could've made for my first Virginia Woolf biography, but an interesting read nonetheless. The book is structured around her major works, moving through them in chronological order and exploring how each responded to its personal, political and social context. Good if you want to track the development of her style and ideas or if you're seeking insight into her creative process; not so good if you're looking for a traditional linear biography, since these back stories tend to overlap and flow into one other. Quite heavy on the literary analysis at times (the author assumes at least a familiarity with both Woolf's personal life and her oeuvre), which made for slow and demanding reading, but I imagine it would be a good field guide to reading her works in order.

While the book definitely sparked my interest in reading more of her work, the best part by far was the extensive use of Woolf's own diaries and letters. In Briggs' words, they have the capacity to both "descend to trivial annoyance and rise to pure poetry," revealing their author's wit, character and sharp intelligence more eloquently than any biographer could.

I love the idea of a biography; to glimpse into someone's life and learn who they were and what made them tick. But that can all be ruined by a boring and unengaging biographer. There were enough fascinating things in Woolf's life that I shouldn't have been fighting sleep through the whole book. *sigh* But I was. I couldn't get past Brigg's voice in my head, endlessly discussing the most inane aspects of her subject's life. Yeah, I skipped stuff when I thought I wouldn't finish the book if I kept fighting over this awful chapter.

If I were reading Woolf's works in chronological order, I think I'd enjoy this a lot more. The author chose to explain Virginia's life in the context of which novel she was writing at the time. It's tough to understand the life context of each novel she wrote without reading them beforehand. Lesson learned--I might just read them now.

However, after all that I'm a huge sucker for tactile experiences. It may sound silly, but the book had some of the smoothest/softest paper I have handled in a long time. It was a pleasure to turn the pages without lifting my fingers off the paper--I just slid them to one side and then the other...it kept me going through some of the boring parts, and reminded me why the Kindle will never completely replace codex books.

823.912 Bri

Fantastic book, made me want to read, really read, some of Woolf's books again, with maybe more understanding now than before.

This book marks the reemergence of my unhealthy obsession with Virginia Woolf. I've read many Woolf bios, and so far this is the most thorough and intriguing. It organizes her life by her works---a refreshing switch from the too-common inclination to view every moment as either “lesbian," "feminist," or “crazy”---and it uses each work as a lens through which to view her social connections, her love life, the critical response to her work, her writing processes, and, yes, her mental illness. A cautionary note: this is very dense sometimes impossible material if you haven't read the books (or if you're like me and still don't "get" JACOB'S ROOM).