Virginia Woolf: And the Women Who Shaped Her World

In this often overly speculative book, Gill (We Too, Nightingales) places Virgina Woolf within the context of the women in her life and, particularly, in her family. Gill traces Woolf’s connection to imperial India—her mother, Julia Jackson Stephen, was born there—and to “Pattledom,” a legendary artistic and literary salon of the 1850s founded by her great-aunts, including pioneering photographer Julia Margaret Cameron. From there Gill moves to the deeply dysfunctional family environment in which Woolf grew up, and to the Bloomsbury set with which she became associated. Gill’s writing is lively, pinpointing the amusing, sometimes salacious, and ultimately damaging aspects of Woolf’s multiple worlds. She does climb out on some speculative limbs. Yes, as Gill speculates, the troubles of Woolf’s mentally challenged half-sister, Laura, might have been exacerbated by incestuous advances from their half-brother, George—with whom Woolf had her own sexual encounter—but, even as Gill notes, there is no evidence for this. Similarly, Gill suggests that the family preserved no images of Woolf’s great-great-grandmother, Thérèse Josephe Blin de Grincourt, because of her reportedly Bengali ancestry. Woolf fans will be entertained, but left feeling, uneasily, that this rollicking story perhaps contains an overflow of conjecture and opinion, and too few hard facts. (Dec.)