This selection brings together thirty of Woolf's best essays across a wide range of subjects including writing and reading, the role and reputation of women writers, the art of biography, and the London scene. They are enchanting in their own right, and indispensable to an understanding of this great writer. This is the only one-volume edition of Virginia Woolf's essays to bring together the best of her essays across the span of her career. Woolf's essays range from critical considerations of modern fiction and the craft of writing, to women writers and the London scene, as well as more personal essays on her father and the art of biography. One of the best essayists of the twentieth-century, Woolf's non-fiction is as important for an understanding of this great writer as are her novels, and equally important as an introduction to Modernism. Includes her important statement on modern fiction 'Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown', attacking the realism of Arnold Bennett and advocating the more fluid style that she pioneered. Introduction and notes by David Bradshaw, editor of the OWC editions of Mrs Dalloway and To the Lighthouse