When I was cleaning up my room these past couple of days, I came across my copy of Virginia Woolf’s Selected Diaries and started to re-read the book once more. I find her an interesting person, both as a writer and one of the founding members of the Bloomsbury group with her husband Leonard Woolf.

I find that Virginia Woolf has many levels to her character and that because of her mental illness I feel akin too. I have read several of her novels many times over and yet still find more imagery and her prose just heavenly to read. I guess too,Woolf was a woman before her time, and refused to let her voice and views be silenced by no one.

It’s really quite amusing that a lot of the literature I read and love are authors and books that are many years old. Woolf is no exception to that rule. I guess too when I was young there weren’t any young adult novels like there are now, instead I read the old classic literature. So there is where I get my thirst for all things older than myself and full of wonder. It has helped me with my vocabulary over the years and done wonders for my spelling.

Woolf could easily be seen as a tragic character who died of suicide before her time, but some would say she lived life to the fullest while here. And you could say left this earth on her own terms. Mental illness runs through her life as it does through mine, many times I have been on the edge, and something has held me back some falling. I read Woolf ‘s diaries to capture some of her magic and spark while she was living. I feel her fragile state of mind run through her entries and feel comforted that somebody else feels the way I do, that I am never alone, completely.

I also love Virginia Woolf’s wit and sense of humour in all that she does, even if it is mundane things. Woolf has a way to capture it and turn it on it’s side. I also love reading other people’s journals to see what life was really like for other creative types like me. Again though it is her prose that keeps me coming back to her work again and again. Every reading has brought something new to me, also reading it at different stages of my life gives me new insights that I may not of picked up on before. Mainly due to age and life lessons I have been through in my own life, makes me appreciate her words much more.

Virginia Woolf is an author who many people skip over and many don’t give her work enough credit due. I remember reading one of her essays where she traveled by night through a blackout London. The descriptive prose had me there with her, in a very different London, than I ever knew.The total blackness and desperation she must of felt was communicated through only her words. And that is why I admire and love her work.

Ciao

Kitty-Kat xox