Hermione Lee

Her first Christian name, never used, was given in memory of her mother's sister, who died shortly before Virginia's birth.Ginia was her earliest family nickname. She later gave herself many more, using different...

Virginia was thirteen: this death ended her childhood and provoked her first nervous breakdown. She said later that her mother's death was the greatest disaster that could happen, and she remained preoccupied by her...

VW did not discuss this incident specifically until the last years of her life. Hermione Lee , who considers the matter as fully as possible, argues that it would be rash to ignore or belittle...

Both Virginia and Vanessa felt that they were uneducated, and VWfelt intellectually deprived, regretting all her life that she had never competed with other children. She also, however, commented caustically on the advantage...

(Vanessa launched a parallel meeting for artists on Fridays: the Friday Club .) VW wrote that the Thursday evenings were the germ of all that has since come to be called—in newspapers, in novels, in...

With Adrian Stephen, Duncan Grant , Guy Ridley , and Anthony Buxton , she toured the premier battleship HMS Dreadnought impersonating the Emperor of Abyssinia and his entourage. Virginia was disguised as Prince Mendax (Latin...

Hermione Lee notes that during this period [p]assionate celebrations of London filled the diaries and letters and spilled over into Mrs. Dalloway.

The Hogarth Press began publishing Freud in 1922, and continued through the following years, mainly through their highly successful production of the International Psycho-Analytical Library. Freud's theories circulated around VW for...

Hermione Lee likens the extraordinary impact of this juvenile work to that of an archaeological dig which reveals the rooms and furnishings and small ordinary objects of a legendary monarch, all as fresh as on...