Virginia Woolf, the War Without, the War Within

“Lounsberry establishes how central to Woolf’s personal and creative being was diary-writing.”—Panthea Reid, author of Art and Affection: A Life of Virginia Woolf



“A tour de force. Insightfully retraces Woolf’s movement from joyful confidence to restless struggles, persuasively illustrates the antiwar nature of all of Woolf’s work during the 1930s, and movingly interprets Woolf’s last diary entry.”—Beth Rigel Daugherty, coeditor of Approaches to Teaching Woolf’s “To the Lighthouse”

“Barbara Lounsberry has done for Woolf’s diaries what the diaries once did for Woolf’s novels, and what all great literary criticism seeks to do: It takes a canonical work of literature and offers an entirely new way of seeing it.”—New Republic



“Lounsberry uses these [diaries] to demonstrate that as fascism flourished and dear friends died, diaries—as a lifeline and a path forward—became integral to both Woolf’s doing and her undoing. . . . Essential.”—Choice



“In her comprehensive, close readings of Woolf’s entire diary, Lounsberry significantly advances scholarship on Woolf’s most sustained literary endeavor. . . . Lounsberry enhances our understanding of the diary as a genre informed by its own traditions, aesthetics, and intertextual networks throughout history. She also showcases how Woolf’s diary is itself a work of art.”—Review of English Studies



“Lounsberry’s patient, perceptive study . . . offer[s] an education in diary reading and diary history, while providing a sure-handed guide to what may be Woolf’s most daunting work.”—Life Writing