Virginia Woolf and the Russian Point of View

In 1919, Virginia Woolf wrote, "The most inconclusive remarks upon modern English fiction can hardly avoid some mention of the Russian influence, and if the Russians are mentioned one runs the risk of feeling that to write of any fiction save theirs is a waste of time." In Virginia Woolf and the Russian Point of View, Roberta Rubenstein examines Woolf's responses to Russian literature over two decades and across the range of her fiction, essays, and book reviews. She argues that the Russian writers significantly influenced Woolf's developing Modernist aesthetic and left lasting marks on her theory and practice of fiction. The book includes transcriptions of forty-eight pages of Woolf's previously unpublished reading notes on Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Turgenev, and an unpublished review in which Chekhov and the Russians figure centrally.

Author: R. Rubenstein
Publisher: Palgrave MacMillan
Published: 10/13/2009
Pages: 282
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.95lbs
Size: 8.30h x 5.50w x 0.80d
ISBN: 9780230618732

Review Citation(s):
Chronicle of Higher Education 11/13/2009 pg. 18

About the Author
ROBERTA RUBENSTEIN is Professor of Literature at American University, USA and author of Home Matters: Longing and Belonging, Nostalgia and Mourning in Women's Fiction.