Virginia Woolf on the Ghost Stories of Henry James

By Virginia Woolf

First published in 1940, this volume contains a collection of classic essays by Virginia Woolf on the subject of Henry James and his work. Henry James (1843–1916) was an American-British author generally considered to be one of the greatest novelists in the English language. He produced a large corpus of articles and books of criticism, travel, biography, and autobiography, playing an important role in the transition from literary realism to literary modernism. 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. Contents include: “Henry James”, “The Old Order”, “Within the Rim”, and “The Letters of Henry James”. Read & Co. Great Essays is proudly republishing this collection of classic essays now complete with a specially-commissioned biography of the author.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Read Books Ltd.
• Release date: Feb 16, 2017
• ISBN: 9781473363137

Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) was an English novelist. Born in London, she was raised in a family of eight children by Julia Prinsep Jackson, a model and philanthropist, and Leslie Stephen, a writer and critic. Homeschooled alongside her sisters, including famed painter Vanessa Bell, Woolf was introduced to classic literature at an early age. Following the death of her mother in 1895, Woolf suffered her first mental breakdown. Two years later, she enrolled at King’s College London, where she studied history and classics and encountered leaders of the burgeoning women’s rights movement. Another mental breakdown accompanied her father’s death in 1904, after which she moved with her Cambridge-educated brothers to Bloomsbury, a bohemian district on London’s West End. There, she became a member of the influential Bloomsbury Group, a gathering of leading artists and intellectuals including Lytton Strachey, John Maynard Keynes, Vanessa Bell, E.M. Forster, and Leonard Woolf, whom she would marry in 1912. Together they founded the Hogarth Press, which would publish most of Woolf’s work. Recognized as a central figure of literary modernism, Woolf was a gifted practitioner of experimental fiction, employing the stream of consciousness technique and mastering the use of free indirect discourse, a form of third person narration which allows the reader to enter the minds of her characters. Woolf, who produced such masterpieces as Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), Orlando (1928), and A Room of One’s Own (1929), continued to suffer from depression throughout her life. Following the German Blitz on her native London, Woolf, a lifelong pacifist, died by suicide in 1941. Her career cut cruelly short, she left a legacy and a body of work unmatched by any English novelist of her day.

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VIRGINIA WOOLF

on the

GHOST STORIES

of

HENRY JAMES

By

VIRGINIA WOOLF

First published in 1940

Copyright © 2021 Read & Co. Classics

This edition is published by Read & Co. Classics,

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HENRY JAMES

Who comes to-night? We ope the doors in vain.

Who comes? My bursting walls, can you contain

The presences that now together throng

Your narrow entry, as with flowers and song,

As with the air of life, the breath of talk?

Lo, how these fair immaculate women walk

Behind their jocund maker; and we see

Slighted De Mauves, and that far different she,

Gressie, the trivial sphynx; and to our feast

Daisy and Barb and Chancellor (she not least!)

With all their silken, all their airy kin,

Do like unbidden angels enter in.

But he, attended by these shining names,

Comes (best of all) himself—our welcome James.

—Robert Louis Stevenson

Contents

Virginia Woolf

Henry James

THE OLD ORDER

Written in 1917

WITHIN THE RIM

Written in 1919

THE LETTERS OF HENRY JAMES

Written in 1920

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