52nd out of 857 books
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1,227 voters
A Writer's Diary
An invaluable guide to the art and mind of Virginia Woolf, drawn by her husband from the personal record she kept over a period of twenty-seven years. Included are entries that refer to her own writing, others that are clearly writing exercises; accounts of people and scenes relevant to the raw material of her work; and comments on books she was reading. Edited and with a...more
Paperback, 355 pages
Published
March 31st 2003
by Mariner Books
(first published 1953)
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La parola scritta permette agli uomini, ai loro gesti, di non morire. Che sia letta o meno, congela atti, pensieri, e li rivitalizza al tempo stesso a ogni richiesta.
E' una lettura piacevole e molto stimolante, questa, durante la quale partecipare alle emozioni, così come a una confidenza. Rende un'idea esatta - non potrebbe essere altrimenti - del calibro della scrittrice e della donna; della sua sensibilità paradossale; del travaglio di ogni creazione; del sollievo di ogni vittoria; dell'uman...more
E' una lettura piacevole e molto stimolante, questa, durante la quale partecipare alle emozioni, così come a una confidenza. Rende un'idea esatta - non potrebbe essere altrimenti - del calibro della scrittrice e della donna; della sua sensibilità paradossale; del travaglio di ogni creazione; del sollievo di ogni vittoria; dell'uman...more
Loved, loved, loved this! I highly recommend this book for writers...especially those who think that they might be struggling in vain. After all, Woolf is now listed as one of the greats and this book is packed with information on her process, her concerns, her self-doubts, and her triumphs. It's inspiring.
The reader does have to keep in mind that this is a diary, and therefore doesn't have a particular 'design'. The emotional ups and downs can be tiring (especially regarding her concern about c...more
The reader does have to keep in mind that this is a diary, and therefore doesn't have a particular 'design'. The emotional ups and downs can be tiring (especially regarding her concern about c...more
Ah, Virginia. I feel that I know you, although I know that I do not.
I like reading about your struggles and realizing just how much you leave out (this book is excerpts from a much longer diary). I like that you are human, worried, fallible. I want to jump though the pages of time to reassure you that your writing, your reputation and your beautiful works of art will survive. I love you Virginia. How very presumptuous of me.
I like reading about your struggles and realizing just how much you leave out (this book is excerpts from a much longer diary). I like that you are human, worried, fallible. I want to jump though the pages of time to reassure you that your writing, your reputation and your beautiful works of art will survive. I love you Virginia. How very presumptuous of me.
Argh, the inadequacy of the stars! One star is missing only for all the people and events that went over my head (rather that I let pass by). But even at her most informal (or especially?), Woolf is striking. The last year (1940-1941; the war) is affecting enough to balance out that last stretch of the diaries that is not as concerned with writing as the preceding. The brevity and casualness of her "notes" and the repetition of her anguish and fear and anxiety with every book are somehow warming...more
I'm only about halfway through right now, and there are a number of tedious parts and some repeats but it's interesting to see how hard on herself she was and how modern in her thinking. She is very unsentimental which I like, and some of her insights and depressions related to being an artist (with words) resonated with me and my own struggles.
“Strano come la forza creativa rimette subito in sesto l’universo intero.”
Bisogna armarsi di passione e di pazienza per entrare nell’Io inespresso della Woolf, e salire sulle impalcature di quelle sue lente – e pur sempre operose – costruzioni letterarie. Leggere il suo diario è dare uno sguardo attento dapprima alla planimetria e poi al vero e proprio progetto, portato avanti con impegno e minuziosità, nell’esercizio della scrittura, nell’esercizio del vivere. È partecipare direttamente alla fo...more
Bisogna armarsi di passione e di pazienza per entrare nell’Io inespresso della Woolf, e salire sulle impalcature di quelle sue lente – e pur sempre operose – costruzioni letterarie. Leggere il suo diario è dare uno sguardo attento dapprima alla planimetria e poi al vero e proprio progetto, portato avanti con impegno e minuziosità, nell’esercizio della scrittura, nell’esercizio del vivere. È partecipare direttamente alla fo...more
So fascinating to read about Woolf's novel writing and of her relationships with reviewers and other people. She told about her woes, her thrills, and her fears while writing her last novels and after they were completed. This went to the last month of her life. We'd been told that she went crazy. But Leonard Woolf had made an agreement with other Jews in London that they would commit suicide if the Nazis invaded England. Virginia was in despair yet it looks as if she didn't believe England coul...more
I had to finally finish this book because I couldn't look at the horrible cover anymore. Bought it used--a 70s printing. I loved parts of this, and others skimmed through feeling sad for VW, or wishing I had the literary knowledge to keep up with all her reading (but did anyone?) As WWII approaches, the diaries become very ominous. I remember Susan Hill writing that she always keeps this book on her bedside table, which I suppose is good for stimulating ambition, but which also seems profoundly...more
A fascinating look into the inner workings of one of the last century's greatest writers. I enjoyed looking over her shoulder as she sorted through observations, and worked at developing ideas and concepts that she explored in her published writings. It also offered touching (because honest and simple) insights into her relationships, and gave a sometimes devastating look insider her struggles with mental illness. I kept at it every night before going to bed and, when I reluctantly finished it,...more
There are few writers who fascinate me as completely as Virginia Woolf. Aside from her clearly brilliant mind and the breadth and depth of her cannon of work, we, as readers, have been afforded the opportunity to experience the world and hear about Virginia's creative processes -- and how at times her madness about life fueled those processes -- through her own very articulate voice.
Through the madness there is absolute clarity. Not IN SPITE of it, but rather BECAUSE of it, I'd argue.
This work i...more
Through the madness there is absolute clarity. Not IN SPITE of it, but rather BECAUSE of it, I'd argue.
This work i...more
I don't really know much about the relationship between Leonard and Virginia Woolf, but this book was lovingly edited. Excerpted from her unabridged diaries, Leonard Woolf culled the bits that he thought to be most about writing--the process, exercises, etc. These entries detail her exhaustive writing and revision process, as well as the relationship between her own reading and writing. She often sets herself schedules and tasks here, which were interesting to read. Reading this book has re-invi...more
Nov 04, 2012
Mimonni
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
sullo-scaffale,
regalo
Quando un libro mi richiede tempo, rallenta la mia voracità nel leggere e detta i suoi ritmi già so che quasi sicuramente è un libro che mi rimarrà impresso. A volte mi capita, con i Diari di una scrittrice è successo. Forse è stato un errore vedere "Hours" nel mentre, anche se così alcuni particolari supportati dall'immagine ( tipo la tavoletta di scrittura con calamaio incorporato, bellissima) hanno avuto una sorta di sottolineatura.
Quello che provo quando leggo Virginia Woolf è sempre qualcos...more
Quello che provo quando leggo Virginia Woolf è sempre qualcos...more
These extracts from Virginia Woolf's diary from 1918 to 1941 were selected by her husband some years after her death to throw light on her life as a writer. He said that "The diary is too personal to be published as a whole during the lifetime of many people referred to in it," so he decided to publish extracts, focusing on her working life.
The whole diary was published in several volumes in the 1970s and 80s but this edition still has a huge appeal. The extracts are so well selected you get a f...more
The whole diary was published in several volumes in the 1970s and 80s but this edition still has a huge appeal. The extracts are so well selected you get a f...more
It’s both wonderful and frustrating that her husband edited her diary for us. There is so much missing, and you can’t help but wonder at certain points if she would agree with what was cut, or even, what was left in (I am aware that her diaries have been published in uncut form as well, but I am specifically referring to this work as I read it). Read continuously, it is often tedious and repetitive, because, as anyone who’s ever kept a journal knows, each life has its themes that it keeps return...more
Jun 13, 2012
Heather Mize
is currently reading it
I suppose your diary is the one place it's ok to be self obsessed, but I find Woolf's ego and narcissism off putting. Most writers have ego's of course, but I get the feeling Woolf writes more to stroke her ego than she does for story. I find her and Joyce to be overrated. I don't think inaccessible, scholarly writing is what makes good literature. Story does. It's fiction for crying out loud! I am impressed most when writers are not trying to impress! Of course Woolf is deeply insecure and cri...more
I lingered through this gorgeous book, all the while connecting with Virginia Woolf as a writer, especially understanding her exhaustion after finishing the final corrections of a novel, and the unsettled feeling after it's published...thinking: It's no good, no one's going to like it, it's nonsense...and then being surprised when people do like it (she pretty much knew out of her critics who wouldn't.)
I loved this entry from Wednesday, September 6th 1922:
"My proofs [Jacobs Room:] come every ot...more
I loved this entry from Wednesday, September 6th 1922:
"My proofs [Jacobs Room:] come every ot...more
I'm not much for reading biographies or anything like that, so I was of two minds about this book...but...BUT... I really liked it. It consists of a series of diary entries selected to show Virginia Woolf's life as a writer - how she thought, what she wrote about, what happened in her life as she did so.
Definately worth reading if you want to see what a writer's life is like, or was like when Virgina Woolf was around.
Definately worth reading if you want to see what a writer's life is like, or was like when Virgina Woolf was around.
...an enlightening excursion into the mind and methods of Virginia Woolf...she was truly a Writer (the capitalization is intended) and in this book we have her own words telling us why and how she wrote...the book is edited by her husband, Leonard, and he did a superb job in making the most appropriate selections from Virginia's multi-volume diaries, his editing a work of both scholarship and love.
Partendo dal fatto che io amo alla follia la Woolf, non potevo che comprare questo libro e riconoscerci dentro l'evoluzione dei suoi romanzi, che io ho amato e apprezzato come ho potuto fare con poche altre mie letture. Il diario rappresenta la vera vita di una scrittrice, e mostra come i sentimenti degli uomini non cambino mai, anche se vivono in uno sfondo storico-culturale diverso. Bellissimo.
Reading this book will get you writing, preferably with a fountain pen and a vase of wildflowers at hand. Woolf was able to lead such a literary life, of days filled with reading novels and going to lunch and writing, wtc. And not have to starve. That aside, she had the sharpest ear for the right word and the best eye for the pith of things of any writer I've known.
Virginia Woolf has always fascinated me. I have read a great deal about the Bloombury Group and envied the literary circle they lived in.
Her husband put this book together after she died and it is a testament not only to her writing and creative process, but also of the mental battle that ultimately led to her suicide.
Her husband put this book together after she died and it is a testament not only to her writing and creative process, but also of the mental battle that ultimately led to her suicide.
Just so inspiring. It's fascinating to see her muse about her craft, especially if you know her books. First she doesn't have a handle on it, then she feels she's mastered it, then she's afraid she's lost again... And she's as sensitive to praise and criticism as any of us. Reassuring reading for the artist.
This is another case of buying the book for a college class, not being assigned anything from it, and feeling like I should actually read it since I paid for it. I thought I might like it better than I liked any of her actual writing (I'm normally a sucker for journal entries or letters), but alas. I found myself being annoyed at her constant "I'm thrilled with everything/I'm so depressed; I'm ecstatic at the positive reviews/crushed by the negative reviews/I don't care about reviews a whit; I c...more
Purely on a pleasure level, I found this really slow going and tedious. It was hard to keep up with the style of writing the way one thought bled into another unrelated thought. Hard to really know who all the people Virginia writes about are as they were so personal to her daily life that they meant nothing to me as a reader.
Also I never got a sense of change in Virginia's personality as the diaries moved through the years.
From a writer's interest, I found it inspiring to keep going with my own...more
Also I never got a sense of change in Virginia's personality as the diaries moved through the years.
From a writer's interest, I found it inspiring to keep going with my own...more
Extremely helpful to anyone pursuing a writing career. Woolf describes the highs and lows of both her personal and professional life. She focuses on the drawn out hardships and fleeting moments of elation upon finishing a work. There are many observations throughout that demonstrate Woolf's peculiar manner of thinking. I appreciated all of her idiosyncratic remarks. Most of the book reads rather dense, but that can be forgiven considering that Woolf kept it as a diary and never intended to publi...more
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| Read by Theme: A Writer's Diary by Virginia Woolf | 3 | 30 | Aug 18, 2012 03:56am |
(Adeline) Virginia Woolf was an English novelist and essayist regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century.
During the interwar period, Woolf was a significant figure in London literary society and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Her most famous works include the novels Mrs Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), and Orlando (1928), and the book-length es...more
More about Virginia Woolf...
During the interwar period, Woolf was a significant figure in London literary society and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Her most famous works include the novels Mrs Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), and Orlando (1928), and the book-length es...more
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“I will not be "famous," "great." I will go on adventuring, changing, opening my mind and my eyes, refusing to be stamped and stereotyped. The thing is to free one's self: to let it find its dimensions, not be impeded.”
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“I enjoy almost everything. Yet I have some restless searcher in me. Why is there not a discovery in life? Something one can lay hands on and say “This is it”? My depression is a harassed feeling. I’m looking: but that’s not it — that’s not it. What is it? And shall I die before I find it?”
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