Jacob's Room
"No plainer manifestation of the modernist trend in contemporary English fiction may be found than in Virginia Woolf’s Jacob’s Room. ... So much does style play a part in her work that it is of more importance to dilate on this aspect of her work than to enumerate the incidents that make up Jacob’s Room. ... It is the manner in which these things are revealed that makes the book of importance, at least as an example of what the younger rebels are doing in England. ...This book again impresses upon the reader of English fiction the great quality of the women now writing in that country…Indeed, the list is endless. Miss Woolf is certainly one of the foremost figures in this group, and one is glad to note that she is, for her work is more cynical, more compact with beauty than several of the others. Her influence is one that modern England needs." March 4, 1923
To the Lighthouse
"To the Lighthouse is a book of interrelationships among people, and though there are major and minor characters, the major ones are not, as Clarissa Dalloway was, the alpha and omega of the story, but more truly the means for giving to the story its harmony and unity, its focal points. Those who reject To the Lighthouse as inferior to Mrs. Dalloway because it offers no one with half the memorable lucidity of Clarissa Dalloway must fail to perceive its larger and, artistically, more difficult aims. They must fail to notice the richer qualities of mind and imagination and emotion which Mrs. Woolf, perhaps not wanting them, omitted from Mrs. Dalloway. They must fail to appreciate that as an author develops he will always break down the perfection he has achieved in an earlier stage of his writing in order to reach new objectives." May 8, 1927
Orlando
"Mrs. Woolf has faced squarely one of the most puzzling technical and esthetic problems that confront contemporary novelists. The mere fact that she has stated the problem as succinctly as she does in the course of this book is immensely stimulating, whether or not one feels that she has achieved a final solution of it. It is something of a question whether the tendency of contemporary novelists to become more and more introspective can profitably be carried much further. If it is to continue, however, Mrs. Woolf has pointed out the direction in which it must develop." October 21, 1928