Re-read January 2016.

April 2015:
Thoughts on "Reminiscences," the opening piece, are on my blog here: http://proustitute.wordpress.com/2015/04/10/virginia-woolfs-reminiscences-figuri...

I'll likely write about the other pieces collected in this wonderful collection individually, in the depth they deserve. And I'll try to remember to update this when those are up on the blog, but the link is there now in case you want to check back. ( )

I really enjoyed this memoir. I'll admit I didn't read the editor notes or the introductions, but I feel like those were a waste of time to get to the good stuff, reading about Virginia Woolf's life in her own words. It's a very hunting look into her past and you can see where she got some ideas for her novels. I highly recommend this to people who enjoy Virginia Woolf's novels or to people who what to know more about her and her life.

UPDATE: I should note this book goes into some heavy topics, so there should be a trigger warning with this book. ( )

"We are the words; we are the music; we are the thing itself." Published years after her death, Moments of Being is "the single most moving and beautiful thing that Virginia Woolf ever wrote about her own life" (The New York Times) and her only autobiographical writing.

This collection of five pieces written for different audiences spanning almost four decades reveals the remarkable unity of Virginia Woolf's art, thought, and sensibility. "Reminiscences," written during her apprenticeship period, exposes the childhood shared by Woolf and her sister, Vanessa, while "A sketch of the Past" illuminates the relationship with her father, Leslie Stephens, who played a crucial role in her development as an individual a writer. Of the final three pieces, composed for the Memoir Club, which required absolute candor of its members, two show Woolf at the threshold of artistic maturity and one shows a confident writer poking fun at her own foibles.

This is a fascinating collection of private notes, typed reminiscences, and other writings not intended to be published. There are scenes from Virginia Woolf's childhood in London and at her family's summer house in St. Ives on the Cornwall coast, as well as from her Bloomsbury days.
I learned much about the background for To the Lighthouse, The Waves, and her other books by reading this collection. ( )

Virginia Woolf is a writer who is still very much with us. This is quite surprising, as Woolf had her roots in the Victorian Age, and died in the early 1940s. Many other writers of that era are now obscure. That this was not her fate, can be understood from the quality of her fiction. Apart from some pothumous publications into the 1950s, most of Virginia Woolf's works were published during the 1920s and 30s, and as the main representative of stream-of-consciousness her works have become canonized and included in highschool and university curricula guaranteeing many new generations of readers. Besides, Virginia Woolf appeals to readers imaginations through her participation in the Bloomsbury Group, as a publisher, running the Hogarth Press and her role in female emancipation and gender issues. Because although she grew up in a Victorian milieu most of her literary work was created and helped shape the landscape of modernity.

Sustained academic interest throughout the 1960s through 80s led to the publication of Virginia Woolfs autobiographical writings, foremostly the Letters and Diaries, most of which were published during the 1970 through 1990s. This is really still very recent, and therefore many of these materials appear very fresh to modern readers, who are unlikely to be familiar with much of that material. Who has read, for instance, her Greek travel diary, edited by Jan Morris and published as Travels With Virginia Woolf (1993). A selection of the Diaries has recently appeared in the Red Series of Vintage Books.

Moments of Being brings together a collection of previously unpublished autobiographical essays of Virginia Woolf. In these essays, readers will find the source for many pieces of common knowledge about Virginia Woolf such as the famous scene of horror in which, as a young woman, she imagined seeing something move behind her in the mirror. There are many autobiographical details about herself, her family members, Lytton Strachy and other members of the Bloomsbury Circle, as well as essential descriptions of the author's environs, particularly the houses she lived. Moments of being was first published in 1976, but interested readers are advised to read the updated and expanded second edition, first published in 1985, which includes many new manuscript materials and versions which were discovered later.

Including 27 pages of introduction, Moments of Being is a modest volume of 230 pages, including two larger and four smaller contributions. The earliest youth work "Reminiscences" is somewhat stilted, and could be skipped, or simply included for completeness, as it only consists of 30 pages. Far more interesting is "A Sketch of the Past" which displays all the characteristics of the mature style of Virginia Woolf. In the final pages of this work, Woolf describes how she experienced the transition from the Victorian Age to the Edwardian Period, showing how changes in architecture, and symbolized by the move from 22 Hyde Park Gate to 46 Gordon Square in Bloomsbury, and manners created a very different world, particularly favourable to the earliest beginnings of women's emancipation. The shorter essays, such as "22 Hyde Park Gate", "Old Bloomsbury" and "Am I a Snob?" were written for the Memoir Club and were read aloud to its members. These pieces are very humourous, and one can almost hear the peals of laughter that they must have earned Woolf as she midly satirized her companions and herself. In some of these essays, Woolf writes very openly about homosexuality, as she would later playfully show her ambivalence in her novel Orlando.

The essays and autobiographical writings in Moments of Being are arranged in the order of the historical events they describe, not the order of conception. It is an absolutely delightful book, which I regret not to have read during my students days, and am very happy to have discovered now, and read with relish. ( )