Woolf A-Z

ELT 39:3 1996 Woolf A-Z Mark Hussey. Virginia Woolf A to Z: A Comprehensive Reference for Students, Teachers, and Common Readers to Her Life, Works, and Critical Reception. New York: Facts on File, 1995. 452 pp. $50.00 VIRGINIA WOOLF'S life and work have never been the subject of more critical attention than in recent decades. Editions of her work easily number in the double digits, scholarship has never been more prolific (with the publication of an annual journal specifically devoted to Woolf studies), an international conference annually provides a forum for new perspectives on Woolf, and courses and seminars are regular offerings at colleges and universities worldwide. With such broad interest in Woolf—from scholars to undergraduates and the non-academic reader—interest seems genuine for the type of encyclopedic guide Mark Hussey offers with his recent edited work. Hussey's avowed goal is "to provide both a quick reference to and also a more leisurely and comprehensive overview of Woolf's writings and life, her contemporaries and times," and he has fulfilled this purpose. Directed toward the novice reader primarily, the Facts on File text nonetheless is firmly rooted in Woolf studies and would offer even the most schooled literary scholar valuable information in a concise and complete fashion. It would be impossible in a short review to list all the types of information which fall within the scope of Hussey's work, for the text is clearly encyclopedic in its nature. The topical index to subjects Hussey includes near the end of the work provides a lucid breakdown of subject categories, but categories of entries covered include character identifications in Woolf's works (both primary, secondary, and mere allusions to others); plot summaries; geographical locations in her work and in existence in Woolf's time; themes, writers and philosophers affecting Woolf's time and/or alluded to in her writing; and information about the Bloomsbury group. Attention for Woolfenalia is prevalent throughout the reference guide, but the heart of Hussey's text lies in entries on Woolf's major works. Listed alphabetically, each entry on Woolf's novels and longer essays contains four parts: an "outline," or description or identification of the initial events or term as first mentioned in the entry; a "genesis" section, chronicling the circumstances and events leading up to the conceptualization and composition of the work; "background" on the biographical and historical influences brought to bear on the work; and contemporary reviews, or "Critical Responses," which reveal critical 384 BOOK REVIEWS perspectives applied to Woolf and their resulting conclusions. Names, titles, and terms are liberally cross-referenced, and Hussey provides references to significant adaptations of Woolf's major and lesser works. Entries, while concisely written, are still comprehensive. (For example, the entry on Orlando is some 10 pages long, but not repetitious). Significant overviews of main currents in Woolf criticism of each work are indicated, and complete bibliographic references follow each entry so that easy critical follow-up is encouraged. Besides main text entries, Hussey has also included an appendix with a topical list of entries (as noted above), an index of subjects without entries of their own but mentioned elsewhere in the text, genealogies of individuals in and around the Bloomsbury group, and chronologies so that the reader unfamiliar with Woolf's life and times need not track down and piece together for him or herself the context necessary for interpreting information in the main texts. The topical list of entries provides yet another tool for the inexperienced reader or hurried teacher to find desired information in a timely and consistent fashion. Moreover, the index of subjects not mentioned in their own entries offers an even deeper level of accessibility not only to Woolf's canon, but also to cross referencing in this valuable reference volume. Numerous photographs, book jackets, letters, and paintings supplement written entries and provide interest, but their inclusion merely enhances the information in the volume, rather than replacing it. The author of this work comes clearly prepared for the task he sets out for himself as articulated in the preface to the edition. Obviously, Hussey has done his homework conscientiously in this volume, since the...