Book Description

This biography is to concentrate exclusively on Woolf's close and inspirational female friendships with the key women in her life. Curtis looks both at the effect of these relationships on her emotional life and the inspiration that each woman provided for the female protagonists in her fiction. The author begins by exposing the lesser-known details of Woolf's Victorian childhood, and continues with a study of the other unique women in Woolf's life: her sister Vanessa Bell; artist Dora Carrington; writer Katherine Mansfield; novelist Vita Sackville-West; and militant composer Ethel Smyth.