WOOLF, Virginia. Granite and Rainbow. London: The Hogarth Press, 1958.
8vo, blue cloth boards with lettering in gilt to spine. Original pictorial dust wrapper designed by Vanessa Bell; with the Book Society wrap-around band. Pp. 239, . Some discolouration to spine of wrapper, with the odd damp spot and some very light foxing; light offsetting to endpapers and even yellowing in accordance with age. Nonetheless a very good copy overall.
A posthumous collection of twenty-five essays on the art of fiction and biography. The title comes from an essay entitled The New Biography, in which Woolf discusses the tension between the “granite-like solidity” of historical facts and the “rainbow-like intangibility” of the human personality. In a departure from her popular fiction, this collection of essays illuminates Woolfe's everyday career as an essayist, with chapters on The Gothic, Walt Whitman, and Women in Fiction, among many others.