Overview

A new edition of Leonard Woolf's satirical second novel, which offers an intriguing group portrait of Leonard and Virginia Woolf and other members of the Bloomsbury Group​



The Wise Virgins (1914), Leonard Woolf's second novel, was published two years after the author's marriage to Virginia Stephen--and begun during their honeymoon. The autobiographical elements of the book are well documented. Its publication caused acute distress to Woolf's family. Leonard's sister, Bella, urged him to bury the novel, while his mother was shocked and mortified by unflattering portraits of herself and her neighbors. Two weeks after reading the novel, Virginia Woolf suffered the worst of her many breakdowns.

As aroman à clef the novel holds considerable interest for its picture of Leonard and Virginia's courtship, as well as its sketches of Vanessa Stephen and Clive Bell. (Virginia would later retell the story, from a much different perspective, in Night and Day.) But the novel offers the contemporary reader other rewards. It remains a witty, engaging satire about English society just before World War I and its conventions and prejudices. In Harry Davis, Woolf created a memorable Jewish antihero who rails against society's conventions but tragically finds himself unable to escape them. Award-winning biographer Victoria Glendinning contributes a foreword to this new paperback edition.


ISBN-13

9780300126532

ISBN-10

0300126530

Weight

0.70 Pounds

Dimensions

7.60 x 5.50 x 0.67 In

List Price

$42.00

Edition

1st Edition

Format

-

Language

English

Pages

304 pages

Publisher

Yale University Press

Published On

2007-09-26



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Books From California
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Book shows minor shelf & handling wear, and is lightly bending. Pages are clean, text and pictures a...
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Wonder Book - Member ABAA/ILAB
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Dave Wilhelm Books
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Evanston, IL, USA

Size: 7x5x0; Solid VG softcover. Clean, spine not broken. First Yale edition 2007 stated.
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Ebenezer Books
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Hyde Park, VT, USA

Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 302 p. Audience: General/trade. New, unread copy with tight bi...
$25.49

 Free delivery by: 29 Mar 2026


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