VIRGINIA WOOLF: A BIOGRAPHY
by QUENTIN BELL
534 pages. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
$12.50.
Recently an editor carrying an early copy of this book was nudged in an elevator by a perplexed woman who asked, "Was there a real person called Virginia Woolf? I saw the play but not the movie."
So much for modernism, Bloomsbury, the avantgarde. The once experimental stream of consciousness that James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield pioneered has now been diverted. Still, Edward Albee had good reason to be afraid of Virginia Woolf. She...