Roger Fry

The last book Virginia Woolf saw into print before her death, "Roger Fry", is her one serious full-length biography. "I can't help thinking," she concluded, in spite of her difficulty in putting her theories of biography into practice, "I've caught a good deal of that iridescent man in my oh so laborious butterfly net."This edition is based on the text first published by the Hogarth Press in 1940, amended to include corrections Woolf requested but which were never made in the impressions printed by the Press before her death. A relatively complete typescript version of the biography survives, as part of the Berg collection at the New York Public Library, and the results of a computer collation of this typescript with the first English edition are included in a list of substantive variants. These document Woolf's revising and editing process in response to stylistic concerns and to the actual or anticipated reactions of her readers, including Fry's family and friends.In her introduction, Diane F. Gillespie traces Woolf's work on the biography, including the problems she faced and the solutions she found, and provides a history of its critical reception.
Annotations identify sources as well as the historical and personal contexts of Fry's remarks and experiences. Other appendices contain previously unpublished materials: memoirs by Roger Fry and a further, brief, attempt by Woolf to sketch his portrait in words.