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Virginia Woolf's Last Writings
 

VIRGINIA CLIFFORD
 

HESTER LYNCH PIOZZI (.Mrs. Thrale), by the late
James L. Clifford of the Columbia English Depart¬
ment, was one of the first and is still one of the most
complete biographical studies of a literary woman. The sprightly
and effervescent Hester Thrale was friend and hostess to Samuel
Johnson and his circle during the 1760s and 1770s until, on the
death of her first husband, she married an Italian musician—an
attachment which earned her the opprobrium of her children and
former friends. Hester Thrale was a writer, but foremost she was
a woman of spirit and independence. After an intensive, some¬
times exciting, detective search through English country houses,,
archives, and collectors' libraries on both sides of the Atlantic, a
search which yielded hundreds of letters and diaries hitherto un¬
known, Clifford was able to narrate her life in all of its excitement,
daily routine, wit and pathos. His biography, published in 1941,
corrected many distorted views emanating from her rivals (nota¬
bly James Boswell), and shed fresh light on her fascinating per¬
sonality, her reputation as a hostess, and on the famous friendship
with Johnson.

One of those most likely to be interested in such a study was
Virginia Woolf. She had herself written on .Mrs. Thrale and the
Johnson circle; she was concerned with the art of biography, and