"But of all this daily drama of the body, there is no record"
WOOLF, Virginia. The Moment and Other Essays. London:The Hogarth Press. 1947.
8vo. Original burgundy cloth with gilt title lettering to spine; illustrated pink dust jacket; pp. 191, [1]; dust jacket toned to spine and upper margins; otherwise a very good copy.
First edition of this collection of twenty-nine essays, selected and posthumously published by the author’s husband Leonard Woolf.
"If you do not tell the truth about yourself, you cannot tell it about other people".
Released six years after Virginia Woolf’s death, The Moment and Other Essays comprises a selection of the "considerable" material which she had "left behind… some unpublished and some previously published in newspapers". In his editorial note to the volume, Leonard Woolf somewhat poignantly acknowledged: "I have printed these [essays] exactly as they were left, except for punctuation and the correction of obvious mistakes, but I have done so with some hesitation, if only because the hand-writing is occasionally extremely difficult to decipher". The essays encompass sketches, literary criticism, biographical content, and political commentary.
As Woolf would write of her ever expansive mind in A Writer's Diary: "I will not be ‘famous’, ‘great’. I will go on adventuring, changing, opening my mind and my eyes, refusing to be stamped and stereotyped. The thing is to free one’s self: to let it find its dimensions, not be impeded".
The charming dust jacket was designed by Vanessa Bell, sister of Virginia Woolf, who often collaborated with the Hogarth Press, Virginia and Leonard Woolf’s publishing company.
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