Virginia Woolf: A Modern Mind, A Reading List

Rachel Vinrace, a motherless young woman, leaves London to embark on a sea adventure to South America, and falls in love with an aspiring writer despite the signs of a doomed relationship.

A portrait of the life of Jacob Flanders based solely on the observations of others, from those who knew him well, to those who merely passed him on the street.

In this vivid portrait of a single day in a woman's life, Mrs. Clarissa Dalloway is preoccupied with the last-minute details of preparation for a party while in her mind she is something much more than a perfect society hostess.

You may also enjoy The Annotated Mrs. Dalloway, edited and with an introduction and notes by Merve Emre

An English family's complex lives are followed and picked up again after a 10-year hiatus in order to explore the effects of time. 

A fantastical biography of a poet who first appears as a sixteen-year-old boy at the court of Elizabeth I, and is left at the novel's end a married woman in the year 1928. 

Often regarded as Virginia Woolf’s masterpiece, the book begins with six children—three boys and three girls—playing in a garden by the sea, and follows their lives as they grow up, experience friendship and love, and grapple with the death of their beloved friend Percival.

Describes the domestic obligations, social limitations, and economic factors that impede literary creativity in women, in the story of William Shakespeare's sister, who never expresses her genius until she dies by her own hand.

Woolf's first and most popular volume of essays. This collection has more than twenty-five selections, including such important statements as 'modern Fiction' and 'the Modern Essay.'

 edited by Leonard Woolf

Extracts drawn by Virginia Woolf's husband from the personal record she kept over a period of twenty-seven years offer insight into the art and mind of the twentieth-century author.

edited by Joanne Trautmann Banks

Selected letters trace the development of the author's friendships and views on writing, and are accompanied by background information.

by Francesca Wade 

A group portrait of five women writers, including Virginia Woolf, looks at those who moved to London’s Mecklenburgh Square in search of new freedom in their lives and work. 

by Bill Goldstein

A portrait of the intersecting lives and works of literary masters Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, E. M. Forster, and D. H. Lawrence in the year 1922 portrays their personal struggles and artistic breakthroughs.

by Hermione Lee

Subscribing to Virginia Woolf's own belief in the fluidity and elusiveness of identity, Lee comes at her subject from a multitude of perspectives, producing a richly layered portrait of the writer and the woman that leaves all of her complexities and contradictions intact.  

by Brandon Taylor

Keeping his head down at a lakeside Midwestern university where the culture is in sharp contrast to his Alabama upbringing, an introverted African-American biochem student endures unexpected encounters that bring his orientation and defenses into question.

by Michael Cunningham

A novel of three women whose lives become intertwined during the 1950s spans the nation, from New York to Los Angeles, and follows them to a haunting and surprising conclusion.

by Nino Strachey

Explores the homes of these three writers linked to the Bloomsbury Group. Bringing together stories of love, desire, and intimacy, of evolving relationships and erotic encounters, with vivid accounts of the settings in which they took place, it offers fresh insights into their complicated, interlocking lives. 

by Leon Edel

While tracing the psychological roots of each of the nine core members of Bloomsbury, Edel chronicles how the group came together and how it developed a work ethic and an aristocratic ideal.

by Richard Shone and Hana Leaper 

This fully illustrated publication explores the life and works of two of the most innovative and influential British artists of the twentieth century. 

by Virginia Woolf; illustrated by Julian Bell; afterword by Quentin Bell

Age: 7-10 years 

When the house she has inherited from her miserly brother burns down, his parrot leads a widow from Yorkshire to a hidden treasure.

by Sugar Snap Studio; illustrated by Jessie Ford

Age: 1-3 years

Explore a world of possibilities for little girls with big dreams. 

by Jessica Love

Age: 2-6 years

When Julián notices three women dressed like mermaids on the subway, he dreams of becoming a mermaid himself, but worries what his abuela might think.

by Theresa Thorn; illustrated by Noah Grigni 

Age: 3-7 years

Providing sensitive vocabulary for initiating discussions, a warmhearted, straightforward exploration of gender identity offers children a fuller understanding of themselves and others.

by Beth Kephart; illustrated by Julia Breckenreid

Age: 4-8 years

illustrates the many ways to claim a space for oneself as not all rooms require four walls and a roof to think, to dream, or to be.

by Jodie Patterson; illustrated by Charnelle Pinkney Barlow

Age: 4-8 years

Just before his fifth birthday, Penelope lets his mother know he is a boy and, with her support and his ninja powers, faces the rest of his family and his classmates.