This book for the first time brings together Gillian Beer's essays on Virginia Woolf. Widely recognised as a leading authority on Woolf and a sophisticated critic of modernism and fiction, Beer's essays make fascinating reading. Gillian Beer's distinctive approach has been influential insteering Woolf studies towards feminist historical concerns. Beer demonstrates, through close investigative textual readings, how Woolf's conceptualisations of history and narrative are intimately bound up with her ways of thinking about women, writing and social and sexual relations. This is demonstrated through precise, detailed configurations, settingWoolf alonside texts both contemporary and distant, scientific and literary, with the effect that Woolf's writing is illuminated in entirely new and unexpected contexts. A compelling collection for students, scholars and Woolf devotees alike.