Selected Reference Works about Virginia Woolf

There are literally hundreds of books and thousands of articles about Virginia Woolf. The following is a brief list.

Biographies

Virginia Woolf: A Biography, by Quentin Bell (London: Pimlico, 1996, 1997 [1972])
Bell (1910-96) was Woolf’s nephew and was asked by Leonard Woolf to write her biography. His personal knowledge of Woolf and his elegant style mean that his biography is unlikely to be superseded.

Virginia Woolf, by Hermione Lee (London: Chatto & Windus, 1997 [1996])
This is likely to be the standard biography for the foreseeable future.

Reference

Virginia Woolf A to Z: A Comprehensive Reference for Students, Teachers, and Common Readers to her Life, Works and Critical Reception, by Mark Hussey (New York & Oxford: OUP, 1996 [1995])
Mark Hussey seems to have read and assimilated everything, and provides summaries of plots of Woolf’s books, biographies of the Bloomsbury Group, and critical works.

Major Authors on CD-ROM: Virginia Woolf
, ed. by Mark Hussey (Reading, UK: Primary Source Media, 1997)
Unbelievably expensive CD-ROM that includes almost all of Woolf’s published works and many of her manuscripts and typescripts, as well as Virginia Woolf A to Z. Indispensible for tracking down quotations.

Critical

Criticism in Focus: Virginia Woolf, by John Mepham (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1992)
This is a guide to criticism and critical approaches.

Collection of Essays

Virginia Woolf: The Critical Heritage, ed. by Robin Majumdar and Allen McLaurin (London: Routledge, 1997 [1975])
A rather expensive collection of contemporary reviews.

Virginia Woolf: Critical Assessments, ed. by Eleanor McNees (East Sussex: Helm Information, 1994)
A fearfully expensive four-volume collection of criticism.

Bibliographies

A Bibliography of Virginia Woolf, 4th ed., by B. J. Kirkpatrick and Stuart N. Clarke (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997).

A Checklist of the Hogarth Press, 1917-1946, by J. Howard Woolmer, with a short history of the Press by Mary E. Gaither ([Winchester:] St Paul’s Bibliographies, 1986)

International Virginia Woolf Society Bibliographies

Washington State University Libraries: Library of Leonard and Virginia Woolf