Music in life and literature

These essays explore music and its relationship to language, aesthetics, and culture in the life and work of the preeminent Modernist writer Virginia Woolf (Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, Orlando, A Room of One's Own, and other works). Approaching Woolf from musicology, literary criticism, and gender studies, the collection examines her musical background; music in her fiction and critical writings; and the importance of music in the Bloomsbury milieu and its role within the larger framework of Modernism. Making use of Woolf's diaries, letters, fiction, and the testimony of her contemporaries, these essays illuminate the rich and deeply musical nature of Woolf's works.

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Involving numerous disciplines from history and biography to cultural and inter-media studies . . . Virginia Woolf and Music requires readers to cope with the span of Western culture from ancient history to the latest neologisms.

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Virginia Woolf and Music is a fascinating and important contribution to scholarship about Virginia Woolf, music, and interdisciplinary art.

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This well-researched collection has value for those interested in music as well as in literature. . . . Recommended.

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In a letter to Elizabeth Trevelyan . . . Virginia Woolf revealed: 'I always think of my books as music before I write them.' [This book is] providing a valuable counterpoint to studies that develop Woolf's interest in the visual arts at the expense of her engagements with music and performance.

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Overall, Virginia Woolf and Music is a truly comprehensive, multi-perspective, and up-to-date survey of the undeniable role of music inWoolf 's life and writings.