An Unwritten Novel: With the Essay 'How Should One Read a Book?'

By Virginia Woolf

Using Woolf’s famous modernist method, the reader follows the narrative of an unknown female travelling on a train from London to the South Coast of England. Creating fictional lives and assumptions from the passengers aboard, the narrator focuses her thoughts towards a woman that sits across from her, inventing a new identity for the woman based on the look that the narrator can read in her eyes. Will she be correct through her assumptions or turn out to be the worst Sherlock Holmes imaginable? "An Unwritten Novel" creates a fascinating fictional world for a mundane journey that we often find ourselves in every day. Adeline Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) was an English writer. She is widely hailed as being among the most influential modernist authors of the 20th century and a pioneer of stream of consciousness narration. Woolf was a central figure in the feminist criticism movement of the 1970s, her works having inspired countless women to take up the cause. She suffered numerous nervous breakdowns during her life primarily as a result of the deaths of family members, and it is now believed that she may have suffered from bipolar disorder. In 1941, Woolf drowned herself in the River Ouse at Lewes, aged 59.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Read Books Ltd.
• Release date: Feb 16, 2017
• ISBN: 9781473363090

Virginia Woolf

A pioneer of stream of consciousness narrative, Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) is considered one of the most important modernist writers of the twentieth century. After primary tutoring at home, she attended the Ladies’ Department of Kings College London, where she was introduced to a handful of feminists and became involved in the women’s movement. Later, she joined the Bloomsbury Group, where she met her husband, Leonard Woolf. Together, they founded Hogarth Press, under which they published most of her work. Also a brilliant essayist, intellectual, and critic, she remains one of the most influential authors of all time.

Book preview

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AN

UNWRITTEN NOVEL

By

VIRGINIA WOOLF

WITH THE ESSAY

How Should One Read a Book?

First published in 1921

Copyright © 2021 Read & Co. Classics

This edition is published by Read & Co. Classics,

an imprint of Read & Co. 

This book is copyright and may not be reproduced or copied in any

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Contents

Virginia Woolf

HOW SHOULD ONE READ A BOOK?

An Essay Read at a School

AN UNWRITTEN NOVEL

Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf was born Adeline Virginia Stephen in Kensington, London, England in 1882. Her father, Leslie Stephen, was a respected man of letters, and as a young girl Woolf was introduced to many literary figures, including Henry James. Woolf also made great use of the family home's vast library, working her way through much of the English literary canon as a teenager. Her summers were spent in St. Ives, Cornwall, which would later form the setting for her famous novel, To the Lighthouse.

In 1895, when Woolf was just thirteen, her mother died, triggering the first of her many mental breakdowns. Despite this, between 1897 and 1901 she was able to take courses in Greek, Latin, German and history at the Ladies’ Department of King’s College London. She even began publishing work with the Times Literary Supplement. However, in 1904, following the death of her father, Woolf suffered another breakdown which saw her briefly institutionalised.

Following her discharge, Woolf and her sisters moved from their family home to a new abode in Bloomsbury. It was here that Woolf met Lytton Strachey, John Maynard Keynes, E. M. Forster and various other writers and intellectuals, who together would form the famous Bloomsbury Set. In 1912, Woolf married author Leonard Woolf, who nursed her through another breakdown and suicide attempt. Woolf published her first novel, The Voyage Out, in 1915. This, as well as various essays, quickly established her as a major public intellectual.

During the twenties, Woolf published the novels that established her as a leading figure of modernism and one of the greatest British novelists of the 20th century: Jacob's Room (1922), Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927) and Orlando (1928). Stylistically, Woolf experimented with a lyrical stream-of-consciousness narrative mode, and is now considered – along with fellow modernist James Joyce – one of the finest innovators in the English language. Her work has been translated into fifty