Description

Virginia Woolf's reading notes offer a fascinating insight into her mind at work, reading "with a pen and notebook, seriously", engaged in a lively dialogue with the literary tradition, receptive to the books she is reading and preparing at the same time the critical work that she intends to produce. The two notebooks published and presented in this volume, notebooks XIV and XLVI (according to Brenda Silver's classification) were used for the preparation of "Phases of Fiction", one of her most original works, and for several essays and reviews. They include quotations, comments on the spur of the moment, and tentative planning for the writing in progress. This edition situates the notes in the immediate context of Woolf's writing project and in the general context of her relationship to the authors being read. It provides a full transcription of each note and whenever possible quotes the passage in the source from which it derives, and identifies the place where it has been used. It offers a stimulating demonstration of practical intertextuality in progress.