If you had said that 2025 would’ve brought the publication of a new book by Virginia Freakin’ Woolf, I wouldn’t have believed you. 

This is not a review. It’s merely an excited “Hey, have you heard about this?”

The Life of Violet: Three Early Stories was released two days ago. 

It’s a beautifully designed book, featuring three newly discovered (sort of) stories by Woolf that show she had written and revised these in 1907, years before her first novel came out. 

Look at this dust jacket! The image is of a fabric for furniture designed by Rauol Duffy called Les Cornets, c. 1924. Although gorgeous, I was hoping that they would, as customary, use artwork by her sister, Vanessa Bell. 

Full disclosure, I glance lovingly at dust jackets, and then I strip them right off. I want to be as close to a book as possible. (Maybe it’s Word Raccoon who does that. She adores this jacket, as well as the book’s lavender endpapers. Stunning. She says she wants a jacket that color purple. Me, too, WR. Me, too.) 

The frontmatter: the illustrations, preface, Dramatis Personae, combined with the afterword, acknowledgments, explanatory notes, textual notes, notes to the afterword, bibliography, AND index (stopping to catch my breath there; that’s a lot of NOT STORY) altogether equal much more than the scant three stories that are just under 40 pages all told.

Is this slight volume worth the hardcover price? (I opted for the hardcover, Princeton University Press, $19.95.) For a diehard Woolf fan, of course!

I read Woolf’s stories this morning, but it was before my daily dose of caffeine, so I’m not a reliable judge of them yet. I will definitely read them again, probably a couple of times this week. My initial impression was that they are partly funny, delightfully class busting, and whimsically feminist (yay). 

I’ll have to dig deeper (I have not read anything besides the stories themselves), but I suspect there are some problematic sections because I remember thinking to myself even as I was trying to keep my eyes open, Hey wait, are you talking about what I think you’re talking about? To be fair, I’m not sure. I need to re-read it. 

(Honestly, when I say I was sans caffeine, I was nodding off over the book. Not her fault, an ill-timed ibuprofen on mine. Also, the last story of the trio is called “A Story to Make You Sleep,” so maybe I was just falling under its spell.) 

I don’t want to say much about the stories, since they are so brief. I will say that, according to the publisher, they are meant to be a tribute to her good friend Mary Violet Dickinson, imagining her as a giantess. (The discussion of what to name the fictional Mary at birth and why is hilarious.) 

Word Raccoon and I look forward to reading the entire book, not just the stories, once we feel completely better. We’re on the mend.