Woolf's role in the making of literary modernism has overshadowed the fact that she was essentially a late Victorian and a product of that world. "The Victorian family past filled her fiction, shaped her political analyses of society and underlay the behaviour of her social group. And it was a powerful ingredient, of course, in her definition of herself," writes Lee in this superlative study of a childless, self-protective life. Central to any understanding of Woolf as a person as well as an artist is the overwhelming importance of To The Lighthouse (1927), her masterpiece and one of the finest novels of the 20th century. It is the story of her family, particularly her mother. Mrs Ramsay is Julia Stephens, the mother who died when Virginia was 13. Lee uses that novel as the ruling metaphor of Woolf's life and work, and also of her biography. While sympathetic to her subject, she also remains detached and fair, making no effort to conceal or justify Woolf's snobbery, ego, and self-absorption, nor the complex, often sexual relationships with other women she embarked upon while remaining with Leonard Woolf, whom she married at 30 and stayed with until her suicide, twenty- nine years later. Lee also challenges the idea that Woolf was a neurotic bluestocking given to bouts of madness, suggesting instead of her periodic bouts of depression that "she was a sane woman with an illness". Above all Woolf emerges as a sharp observer, the daughter of a domineering father, and as a diligent, committed professional writer. Even readers confident that they know more than enough about Woolf and the Bloomsbury Set should be impressed by Lee's vigorous, critical, multi-dimensional portrait of the writer set against the social history, politics and intellectual trends of her time.
