VIRGINIA WOOLF AND LYTTON STRACHEY: LETTERS

A collector's item, these letters compass a span of some twenty-five years, from the 1906 address to Dear Mr. Strachey to the 1931 letter to Lytton as he lay dying...For the cognoscenti, the brilliant byplay on the brilliants of the intellectual aristocracy will delight -- V.W. polishes off Hardy or Desmond MacCarthy with fine perceptive humor. There are, too, the comments and encouragements on works in progress, among them Virginia's Jacob's Ladder, Lytton's Old dedicated to her. There is the richness of a personal relationship which gives room for banter, for imaginative settings, for the sharing of a scene or mood or character or work of art. The editing is on the gaunt side, only clarifying identities and references mentioned in the letters, which leaves the reader to draw from the letters their wealth for which foreknowledge is preparation.