Books in Brief: Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf, by Quentin Bell (Harcourt, 314 pp., $12.50). A superb biography. Quentin Bell writes with that grace, wit and economy Englishmen seem to master so effortlessly, and, as befits his literary heritage, he handles the biographic material brilliantly. Virginia Woolf herself and the entire Bloomsbury circle (or circles) cease to be bloodless abstractions and emerge as the vibrant and talented individuals they were. Even Leonard Woolf, despite his tiresome Fabian socialism, is infinitely sympathetic, hardly the case in his own autobiography (only the Webbs remain adamantly boring). But the focus is securely on Virginia—her gaiety, her beauty, and her tragic genius. Nothing is withheld but the biographer has brought to his objectivity a novelist’s sense of pace and significant detail. He has wisely eschewed cluttering up his portrait with critical appraisals of her work, thus neatly sidestepping both the “intentional fallacy” and psychoanalytic claptrap. The genesis of much in her works is clear from this satisfying recreation of her life. Excellent photographs of all the principals, too.