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While a biography may be free in some ways to break certain narrative rules-one can always begin with the subject's death, for instance-in general it must follow a chronology, introduce its subject to readers unfamiliar with the material, and situate its subject in a historical context. Such rules may not apply to literary portraiture, a form that can show its subject at skewed angles, in odd colors, and with clearly visible brushstrokes. The late Viviane Forrester has produced something much in the latter vein in Virginia Woolf: A Portrait. First published in France, it won the 2009 Goncourt Prize for biography and appears now in an English translation by Jody Gladding. Based almost entirely on primary sources, the book assumes a certain degree of knowledge of Virginia Woolf on the reader's part and proposes to delve deeply into Woolf's psyche to rescue her from what Forrester sees as the unsavory influences of the people who surrounded her. But, as with any portrait, the book reveals perhaps more about its author than its subject.
Arranged in five parts, Forrester's book argues for the concept of Virginia "alone" and aims to present her as a gallant, misunderstood figure in need of a much more focused depiction (3). But then Forrester somewhat oddly examines Woolf in light of the major figures and events in her life: her husband Leonard; her family and her childhood in Hyde Park Gate, Kensington; her sister Vanessa Bell; the other members of the Bloomsbury Group and the writers Katherine Mansfield and Vita Sackville-West; and, finally, death...