Buy new:
£10.40
RRP: £12.99

The RRP is the suggested or recommended retail price of a product set by the manufacturer and provided by a manufacturer, supplier or seller.
Learn more
Save: £2.59 (20%)
FREE Returns
Return this item for free
  • Free returns are available for the shipping address you chose. For a full refund with no deduction for return shipping, you can return the item for any reason in new and unused condition.
  • Learn more about free returns.
FREE delivery Sunday, 14 January. Details
Or fastest delivery Tomorrow, 12 January. Order within 15 hrs 20 mins. Details
In stock
££10.40 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details
Price
Subtotal
££10.40
Subtotal
Initial payment breakdown
Delivery cost, delivery date and order total (including tax) shown at checkout.
New & Used (15) from
£10.40  FREE Delivery .
Kindle app logo image

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet or computer – no Kindle device required.

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

QR code to download the Kindle App

Follow the author

Virginia Woolf
Follow
Something went wrong. Please try your request again later.

Moments Of Being Paperback – 3 Oct. 2002

by Virginia Woolf (Author)
See all formats and editions
{"desktop_buybox_group_1":[{"displayPrice":"£10.40","priceAmount":10.40,"currencySymbol":"£","integerValue":"10","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"40","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"THaRHGoT8HpFIXtG%2FOdwcbjf6PjoTx1xaJSziN3lh9612MQIbS01WfCDCGYresEDE%2BTcwhgYGpLpLKCXMV%2FsSV8BmvkfL0OgHNWbDO1JH11PeuOvR4LTuxq23tO%2Bghaa","locale":"en-GB","buyingOptionType":"NEW","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":0}]}

Purchase options and add-ons

Virginia Woolf's only autobiographical writing is to be found in this collection of five unpublished pieces. Despite Quentin Bell's comprehensive biography and numerous recent studies of her, the author's own account of her early life holds new fascination - for its unexpected detail, the strength of its emotion, and its clear-sighted judgement of Victorian values.

In 'Reminiscences' Virginia Woolf focuses on the death of her mother, 'the greatest disaster that could happen', and its effect on her father, the demanding patriarch who took a high toll of the women in his household. She surveys some of the same ground in 'A Sketch of the Past', the most important memoir in this collection, which she wrote with greater detachment and supreme command of her art shortly before her death.

Readers will be struck by the extent to which she drew on these early experiences for her novels, as she tells how she exorcised the obsessive presence of her mother by writing To the Lighthouse. The last three papers were composed to be read to the Memoir Club, a postwar regrouping of Bloomsbury, which exacted absolute candour of its members. Virginia Woolf's contributions were not only bold but also original and amusing. She describes George Duckworth's passionate efforts to launch the Stephen girls; gives her own version of 'Old Bloomsbury'; and, with wit and some malice, reflects on her connections with titled society.

Review

One might think, from the heaps of books, that the bones of Bloomsbury had been by now well and truly disinterred...But one would be wrong, for Moments of Being is a real delight -- Jan Marsh ― Daily Telegraph

Of fascinating importance, because they are Virginia's only known autobiographical writings -- John Lehmann ― Sunday Telegraph

The book must appeal to anyone interested in Virginia Woolf and her circle -- Derek Parker ― The Times

Her manner of recall contains all those surprises and felicities of language we have come to expect when she writes, as it were, with her elbows on the table -- Richard Shone ― Spectator

About the Author

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) was born in London. She became a central figure in The Bloomsbury Group, an informal collective of British writers, artists and thinkers. In 1912 Virginia married Leonard Woolf, a writer and social reformer. She wrote many works of literature which are now considered masterpieces, including Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, Orlando, and The Waves.
Previous page
  1. Print length
    208 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Pimlico
  4. Publication date
    3 Oct. 2002
  5. Dimensions
    15.3 x 1.5 x 23.4 cm
  6. ISBN-10
    0712646183
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0712646185
  8. See all details
Next page

Frequently bought together

Moments Of Being
£10.40
Get it as soon as Sunday, Jan 14
In stock
Sent from and sold by Amazon.
+
Selected Diaries: Virginia Woolf (Vintage classics)
£9.09
In stock
Sent from and sold by Amazon.
+
Selected Letters
£12.99
Get it as soon as Sunday, Jan 14
Only 8 left in stock (more on the way).
Sent from and sold by Amazon.
Total price:
To see our price, add these items to your basket.
Details
Added to Basket
Some of these items are dispatched sooner than the others.
Show details Hide details
Choose items to buy together.

From the Publisher

Vintage Brand: Read Boldly, Think Differently.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Pimlico (3 Oct. 2002)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 208 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0712646183
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0712646185
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 15.3 x 1.5 x 23.4 cm
  • Customer reviews:

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

Virginia Woolf

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Virginia Woolf is now recognized as a major twentieth-century author, a great novelist and essayist and a key figure in literary history as a feminist and a modernist. Born in 1882, she was the daughter of the editor and critic Leslie Stephen, and suffered a traumatic adolescence after the deaths of her mother, in 1895, and her step-sister Stella, in 1897, leaving her subject to breakdowns for the rest of her life. Her father died in 1904 and two years later her favourite brother Thoby died suddenly of typhoid.

With her sister, the painter Vanessa Bell, she was drawn into the company of writers and artists such as Lytton Strachey and Roger Fry, later known as the Bloomsbury Group. Among them she met Leonard Woolf, whom she married in 1912, and together they founded the Hogarth Press in 1917, which was to publish the work of T. S. Eliot, E. M. Forster and Katherine Mansfield as well as the earliest translations of Freud. Woolf lived an energetic life among friends and family, reviewing and writing, and dividing her time between London and the Sussex Downs. In 1941, fearing another attack of mental illness, she drowned herself.

Her first novel, The Voyage Out, appeared in 1915, and she then worked through the transitional Night and Day (1919) to the highly experimental and impressionistic Jacob's Room (1922). From then on her fiction became a series of brilliant and extraordinarily varied experiments, each one searching for a fresh way of presenting the relationship between individual lives and the forces of society and history. She was particularly concerned with women's experience, not only in her novels but also in her essays and her two books of feminist polemic, A Room of One's Own (1929) and Three Guineas (1938).

Her major novels include Mrs Dalloway (1925), the historical fantasy Orlando (1928), written for Vita Sackville-West, the extraordinarily poetic vision of The Waves (1931), the family saga of The Years (1937), and Between the Acts (1941). All these are published by Penguin, as are her Diaries, Volumes I-V, and selections from her essays and short stories.

Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
4.4 out of 5
234 global ratings

Top reviews from United Kingdom

E. Woolley
5.0 out of 5 stars Not to be missed
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 16 January 2011
Verified Purchase
37 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
Mr. Patrick D. Creamer
5.0 out of 5 stars A truly fantastic short story
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 2 August 2019
Verified Purchase
Helpful
 Report
chris ashworth
5.0 out of 5 stars Perfect
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 12 May 2020
Verified Purchase
One person found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
Bobbie
4.0 out of 5 stars Time-travel into a dysfunctional late-Victorian family
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 26 August 2017
Verified Purchase
2 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
judy yates
5.0 out of 5 stars Enjoyed reading Virginia Woolfs novels and wanted to know about ...
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 6 August 2015
Verified Purchase
3 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
franca
5.0 out of 5 stars the smell of the sea and the sensations evoked by both pleasant and sad memories.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 24 February 2015
Verified Purchase
2 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
GH
1.0 out of 5 stars This is not Virginia Woolf’s collection of essays!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 7 June 2020
Verified Purchase
2 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
CM
2.0 out of 5 stars Cheap but not very cheerful
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 27 June 2018
Verified Purchase
Helpful
 Report