Review by Choice Review
Hill-Miller (C.W. Post Univ.) seeks to connect Woolf's biography and art with the significant places of her life. The introduction provides something of an intellectual grounding for the project, examining Woolf's attitudes toward place and geographies mental, emotional, and literary. Hill-Miller then looks at several well-known Woolf texts (To the Lighthouse, Mrs Dalloway, Orlando, A Room of One's Own, and Between the Acts) and their connections to specific places that had profound emotional resonance for Woolf. The author begins each chapter with biographical background (which owes a great deal to Hermione Lee's eponymous biography, 1996), then provides some analysis of the importance of the place to the work, elucidates some keys themes, and concludes with a travel guide to the place itself. The book includes information on just about any site remotely associated with Woolf and the Bloomsbury group. More rigorous studies of Woolf's relationship to place and its significance in her work have been published, particularly Susan Squier's Virginia Woolf and London (CH, Nov'85), so this book is more suitable for literary travelers than for scholars. ^BSumming Up: Optional. Comprehensive academic collections; general collections. J. M. Utell Widener University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
