Elizabeth Wright’s new biography sheds light on the life and writing of one of the foundational authors of twentieth-century British and European fiction and explodes some of the commonly held myths.

Virginia Woolf is considered to be one of the key Modernist writers of the early twentieth century, through her experimental fiction such as Mrs Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927) and The Waves (1931), but she is also known as a prolific essayist, publishing hundreds of articles and reflective reviews including two notable volumes entitled The Common Reader (1925 and 1932). Her longer essays, ‘A Room of One’s Own’ (1929) and ‘Three Guineas’ (1938), stand as some of the most convincing and influential feminist tracts ever written.

Her colourful circle of family and friends, known as The Bloomsbury Group, consisted of leading writers, thinkers, artists and performers and Elizabeth Wright scours these letters, along with Woolf’s diaries and memoir papers to illuminate the mind of a literary genius.