Edward Bishop - Böcker

This study attempts to chart the progress of Virginia Woolf's major novels, listing the several hundred reviews and essays she published during her lifetime, and records her work with the Hogarth Press. It also traces her friendships with notable figures including T.S.Eliot, E.M.Forster, Katherine Mansfield and Vita Sackville-West and records her meetings with personalities as diverse as Henry James, Lady Diana Cooper, Sigmund Freud and the Princess de Polignac. While it notes Woolf's extensive reading, as well as her travels and her illnesses, it also sketches the major artistic and political events of the day. Edward Bishop has published articles on Virginia Woolf's novels and essays and has edited the manuscript draft of Woolf's first experimental novel, "Jacob's Room".

First published in 1922, Jacob’s Room was Virginia Woolf’s third novel and the first in her more experimental mode. Set in the years leading up to the First World War, the work is an elegy, not just for an individual character, but for a generation lost in and affected by the war. This Shakespeare Head Press edition restores the text to its original form, notably recreating the space breaks on the page with which Woolf deliberately fragmented her narrative. The editor provides an extensive introduction, discussing the genesis of the novel, its biographical elements, the process of composition and revision, and the history of its early critical reception. A series of notes helps the reader to identify references and allusions, from sponge-bag trousers and gold beater’s skin to Tonks and Steer, and the Hampstead Garden Suburbs; while an appendix lists variants between the first UK and first US editions of the work.

This book, first published in 1960, is a close examination of the twelve most decisive weeks in British history. It looks at the responsibility of pre-war politicians for the preparedness of the air defence system, the conflicting views on the conduct of the battle on both sides, the attitude of the US, and the part played by such leading figures as Dowding, Park, Beaverbrook, Kesselring and Sperle.