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Love Letters: Leonard Woolf & Trekkie Ritchie Parsons 1941-1968
“To know you and love you has been the best thing in life.” —Leonard Woolf wrote to Trekkie Parsons in 1942.
Trekkie, a painter and book illustrator, was married to the publisher Ian Parsons who was away at war. Leonard was 61, Trekkie 39. They first got to know each other a few months after Virginia Woolf’s suicide. When Ian came back from the war, they became even closer. Trekkie, a feisty feminist, had never wanted a husband and now, it seemed, she had two, spending her weekends with Ian and weekdays with Leonard, and telling no one of their arrangement. That is how they lived for twenty-five years. Apart from a handful of letters, no one has read their correspondence, which Trekkie had sealed until after her death. These remarkable letters tell the story of their unusual relationship.
Trekkie, a painter and book illustrator, was married to the publisher Ian Parsons who was away at war. Leonard was 61, Trekkie 39. They first got to know each other a few months after Virginia Woolf’s suicide. When Ian came back from the war, they became even closer. Trekkie, a feisty feminist, had never wanted a husband and now, it seemed, she had two, spending her weekends with Ian and weekdays with Leonard, and telling no one of their arrangement. That is how they lived for twenty-five years. Apart from a handful of letters, no one has read their correspondence, which Trekkie had sealed until after her death. These remarkable letters tell the story of their unusual relationship.
320 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 2001
20 people want to read
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March 3, 2011
Leonard Woolf, Bloomsbury publisher and long-suffering widower of Virginia Woolf, falls in love after his wife's suicide with Trekkie Ritchie Parsons, an emancipated and opinionated married woman. The affair lasts decades. Who knew that Woolf was such a good writer, and such an inventive and creative lover? His love letters to Ritchie Parsons are memorably lovely. Worth reading.
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