Virginia Woolf, the War Without, the War Within

In her third and final volume on Virginia Woolfs diaries, Barbara Lounsberry reveals new insights about the courageous last years of the modernist writers life, from 1929 until Woolfs suicide in 1941. Woolf turned more to her diaryand to the diaries of othersfor support in these years as she engaged in inner artistic wars, including the struggle with her most difficult work, The Waves, and as the threat of fascism in the world outside culminated in World War II. During this period, the war began to bleed into Woolfs diary entries. Woolf writes about Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin; copies down the headlines of the day; and captures how war changed her daily life. Alongside Woolfs own entries, Lounsberry explores the diaries of 18 other writers as Woolf read them, including the diaries of Leo Tolstoy, Dorothy Wordsworth, Guy de Maupassant, Alice James, and Andr Gide. Lounsberry shows how reading diaries was both respite from Woolfs public writing and also an inspiration for it. Tellingly, shortly before her suicide Woolf had stopped reading them completely. The outer war and Woolfs inner life collide in this dramatic conclusion to the trilogy that resoundingly demonstrates why Virginia Woolf has been called the Shakespeare of the diary. Lounsberrys masterful study is essential reading for a complete understanding of this extraordinary writer and thinker and the development of modernist literature.