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Leonard Woolf (1880–1969)

Author of The Wise Virgins

73+ Works 1,318 Members 26 Reviews 2 Favorited

About the Author

Image credit: Leonard Woolf

Series

Works by Leonard Woolf

The Wise Virgins (1914) 167 copies
The Village in the Jungle (1931) 119 copies
Letters of Leonard Woolf (1989) 76 copies
Barbarians At The Gate (1939) 24 copies
La muerte de Virginia (1974) 11 copies
The Hotel (1939) 8 copies
Quack, quack! (1935) 5 copies
Stories of the East (2007) 4 copies
The Modern State (1933) 3 copies
The War For Peace (1940) 2 copies
After the Deluge (Vol 2) (1940) 2 copies
Virginia. Erindringer (1991) 2 copies
The Hogarth Essays (1970) 2 copies
Two Stories 1 copy
Essays 1 copy

Associated Works

A Writer's Diary (1953) — Editor — 1,261 copies
A Haunted House and Other Short Stories (1944) — Foreword, some editions — 643 copies
Russian Short Stories from Pushkin to Buida (2005) — Translator — 223 copies
Notebook of Anton Chekhov (1921) — Translator, some editions — 66 copies
Letters: Virginia Woolf & Lytton Strachey (1956) — Editor — 44 copies
The transatlantic Smiths (1960) — Annotator. — 24 copies
The London mercury — Contributor — 1 copy

Tagged

Common Knowledge

Legal name
Woolf, Leonard Sidney
Birthdate
1880-11-25
Date of death
1969-08-14
Burial location
Monk's House, Rodmell, Sussex, England, UK
Gender
male
Nationality
UK
Birthplace
Kensington, London, England, UK
Place of death
Rodmell, Sussex, England, UK
Places of residence
Kandy, Ceylon
Rodmell, Sussex, England, UK
Education
University of Cambridge (Trinity College)
St Paul's School
Occupations
civil servant
publisher (The Hogarth Press)
writer
autobiographer
political theorist
journalist (show all 7)
diarist
Relationships
Woolf, Virginia (wife)
Bell, Vanessa (sister-in-law)
Bell, Clive (brother-in-law)
Stephen, Leslie (father-in-law)
Garnett, Angelica (niece)
Bell, Julian (nephew) (show all 9)
Bell, Quentin (nephew)
Nicholson, Virginia (great-niece)
Woolf, Cecil (nephew)
Organizations
Bloomsbury Group
Cambridge Apostles
Hogarth Press
Short biography
Leonard Woolf was born in London to an Anglo-Jewish family. His father was a barrister and Queen's Counsel. Woolf attended Arlington House School near Brighton, and St. Paul's School, London. In 1899, he won a scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge University. There he was elected to membership in the undergraduate society known as the "Cambridge Apostles," whose other members included Lytton Strachey, John Maynard Keynes, E.M. Forster, and Bertrand Russell. Woolf received his bachelor's degree in 1902 but stayed for another year to study for the civil service exams. In 1904, he went to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) as a cadet, and by 1908 was named an assistant government agent in the Southern Province. He returned to England in 1911 for a year's leave. The next year he married Virginia Stephen, who became famous as Virginia Woolf, and left the civil service. The couple helped found the Bloomsbury Group of artists and writers. Leonard became an influential political theorist, writer, and (with Virginia) publisher of the Hogarth Press. Woolf wrote for several left-wing and internationalist journals and his efforts helped to lay the foundations of the policy of the League of Nations and the United Nations, and of the welfare state. His best-known published work is probably his autobiography in numerous volumes.

Members

Reviews

Playing tennis with starched whites with the other English administrators and then chatting over G and Ts in the tropical warm of the evening in an old Dutch fort on the north-east coast of Sri Lanka in the first decade of the twentieth century... Getting to know the Sinhalese of the Kandy region through hearing their complaints, intrigues, and travails in their own language as a defacto judge... As I read through this memoir I felt like I was sitting around the fire with Woolf in his last years (back in the sixties I think) and hearing stories from an educated, unconventional and honest English chap about a life lived in the twilight of the British Empire in Ceylon. And getting to know the Sri Lanka I've visited myself a few times better through hearing about the life and culture of people prior to much modernisation that took place over the twentieth century. Worth the price of admission for me.… (more)
 
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Tom.Wilson | 4 other reviews | Mar 14, 2022 |
A 1930s analysis of the European political situation. I came to this with the smug assumption that a white, male, privately educated, intellectual would naturally have a blinkered view of "civilization " and "barbarism", and his initial discussion of Pericles and Athenian democracy seemed to validate that. However, when he opened out the analysis to Stalin, Hitler and Chuchill, I was quite drawn in by the slow crafting of his arguments around power and economics. A worthwhile read. His knowledge of African peoples and cultures is however abysmal.… (more)
 
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SChant | Oct 4, 2020 |
"All that I was taking with me from the old life and for a contribution to the new, and to prepare me for the task of helping to rule the British Empire. was 90 large, beautifully printed volumes of Voltaire and a wire-haired terrier." I am becoming a fan. Just started this volume and it's a small emotional roller-coaster to be honest.
 
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Deborama | 4 other reviews | Jun 24, 2020 |
Enjoyable book with the battle of going with society or doing your own thing. It is pretty progressive for the time it was written and paints and picture of suburbia in much the same way as it exists now. Looking back a hundred years life, and life's problems and choices remain prety much the same.
 
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evil_cyclist | 4 other reviews | Mar 16, 2020 |

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Statistics

Works
73
Also by
9
Members
1,318
Popularity
#19,502
Rating
3.9
Reviews
26
ISBNs
84
Languages
5
Favorited
2

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