Bloomsbury: The Hogarth Press, 1972.

8vo., grey boards lettered and lined in gilt to spine; in the unclipped orange, black and white pictorial dustwrapper featuring an image of Woolf to the upper cover; decorative map endpapers; pp. [vi], vii-xiii, [iii], 230, [ii]; with black and white frontis portrait of Woolf and a further 16 pages of plates, as well as a family tree; boards a little sunned at edges; the wrapper with some light marking and creasing, perhaps just touched by sun at the backstrip. 

Fifth impression. 

The first volume of the biography of Virginia Woolf, commissioned by her husband Leonard shortly before his death in 1969. Bell was Woolf’s nephew, and in order for him to complete the biography, Leonard gave him access to all of her papers, including personal documentation, letters, and the diaries which she kept for the majority of her life. This first volume gives an account of the author’s family history, her childhood, adolescence and first pieces of writing, and this particular copy formerly in the possession of the artist Paula Rego, with her pencilled name to the half title.