Virginia Woolf

Anne Olivier Bell

'A work of the highest imaginative genius, with powers of perception and description unexplaned in our time' Isaiah Berlin. Virginia Woolf turned to her diary as to an intimate friend, to whom she could freely and spontaneously confide the thoughts and images uppermost in her mind. Whether describing public events or the joys and trials of domestic life, gossiping about her friends or wrestling with the difficulties of her art, gossiping about her friends or wrestling with the difficulties of her art, Virginia Woolf writes with unfailing grace, courage and honesty, and a lively wit which make her one of the most moving and entertaining diarists of this, or any, century. 'The moment I begin to read that light, clear, elegant prose I am seduced. (Virginia Woolf's)nephew Quentin Bell claims that the 30 volumes of Woolf's diary are a masterpiece. Anne Olivier Bell has reduced them to a single volume. I think it is still a masterpiece. ' A S Byatt, EVENING STANDARD

The Shorter Diary

A Moment's Liberty

sariya

"I know that with the first chink of light in the hall & chatter of voices i should become intoxicated, & determine that life held nothing comparable to a party. I should see beautiful people, & get a sensation of being on the highest crest of the biggest wave—right in the center and swim of things. On the third & final hand, the evenings reading by the fire here—reading Michelet and The Idiot, & smoking & talking to L. in what stands for slippers and dressing gown—are heavenly too."

"At this moment, I feel as if the human race had no character at all—sought for nothing, believed in nothing, & fought only from a dreary sense of duty."

"The future is dark, which is on the whole, the best thing the future can be, I think."

"All I can do is to unsay all I have said; & to say what I really mean. It's a bad habit writing novels—it falsifies life, I think."

"...so divine it is, coming in from a walk to have tea by the fire & then read & read—say Othello—say anything. It doesn't seem to matter what. But one's faculties are so oddly clarified that the page detaches itself in it's true meaning & lies as if illumined, before one's eyes; seen whole & truly not in jerks & spasms..."

"Anyhow, nothing is more fascinating than a live person; always changing, resisting, and yielding against one's forecast..."

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