Mastering the Memoir: Woolf and the Family Legacy

Virginia Woolf was determined to record her own and her family's private experience, an ambition that began in childhood and continued through every stage of her writing life. Her persistent though discontinuous attempts to produce an autobiographically-inflected family memoir are not limited to the posthumously published collection "Moments of Being." In this essay, they are traced through all her life stages, from printed as well as manuscript sources. Cumulatively, these writings allow us to see the development of Woolf's self-awareness, of her interpretive confidence, of her sense of the family and of audience, and of her autobiographical theory and practice.