Though I still think that it's not the best idea begin with Woolf's short stories, when it comes to literary giants I do believe you need to read everything they've produced if you want to get even a peek into their minds. I highly recommend this particular edition (Penguin Modern Classics) with Sandra Kemp's introduction and notes--they are so insightful and I quite frankly don't think I could have appreciated the stories as much as I did without them.

I have not read all of Virginia Woolf's works, but it may be that she explored language through her short stories in a way that was distinct from the way she did in her novels. Here, her focus on the blurred divide between art and reality and the "dangerous autonomy" that she "attribute[d] to objects" is captured in their entirety within the pages of this book (xxiv). My favorites out of the fifteen include "The Mark on the Wall', "Solid Objects" "The Lady in the Looking-Glass: A Reflection" and "Lappin and Lapinova", that last one being one of my new favorite short stories, as it captures the beauty in the construction of an intimate, philosophical world between two lovers, and its heart-wrenching collapse.

You can most definitely feel the electric, almost dizzying drive that Woolf felt when writing these narratives, as she strove to capture the fleeting intensity of a single moment. Her modernist attempts at reinventing the narrative and perspective are exquisite...this is Virginia Woolf, after all. The stories themselves comprise a total of 105 pages which makes for a quick read, although I highly recommend reading the introduction as well.

If you want to read more of my reviews, check out my book blog! ( )

A rare 5 stars from me

https://kaggsysbookishramblings.wordpress.com/2015/07/24/pinning-down-those-mome... ( )

More so than the novels, Virginia Woolf's short stories are difficult to read. One reason for that, is that in the stories, particularly in this early collection titled Monday or Tuesday she was looking for a new form. Her writings take the form of an experiment. Another reason is that Woolf's view of the world is idiosyncratic. This makes that her writing has a very particular feel to it; Woolf's style is not easy to follow. A moment of inattention, and the reader may be lost, having to retrace steps and reread to catch the thread. Finally, in her work Woolf makes many references to people and events of the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Century; without knowing what she refers too, even in fiction, the stories are difficult to understand, or it is hard to see the significance. For example, in the story "A society" there is a reference to a publication in 1920 by the Edwardian author Arnold Bennett, who posed that women were intellectually inferior to men. However, the reference in the story is very vague, and it requires an annotated edition (such as the Selected short stories) or quite some research in the library to pick up such allusions.
A short story collection such as Monday or Tuesday might be difficult to start reading Virginia Woolf, but for people who have already read some of the later novels, the collection is very rewarding. The collection is very typically Woolf, including all features of her style and themes. It contains the stories “A Haunted House”, “A Society, the title story “Monday or Tuesday”, “An Unwritten Novel”, “The String Quartet”, “Blue and Green”, “Kew Gardens” and the well-known “The Mark on the Wall”.
In addition to the eight stories, as originally included in Monday or Tuesday, the Penguin Modern Classics edition includes other early and signal stories such as “Solid Objects”, “In the Orchard”, “A Woman’s College from Outside”, “The Lady in the Looking-Glass: A Reflection”, The Shooting Party”, “The Duchess and the Jeweller” and “Lappin and Lappinova”. Many of these stories are rather short, do however expound Woolf’s unique style, and form a nice complement to the eight stories of Monday or Tuesday.

Highly recommended, but difficult to read, and therefore I would suggest to read an annotated edition such as in the Penguin Modern Classics series, rather than a free download. An additional advantage is that the Penguin edition reprints the woodcut illustrations by Woolf's sister Vanessa Bell. The Penguin edition however is not just an annotated edition, but seems to be overdoing things a little bit, taking the shape almost of a scholarly edition. While academic readers might find the long introduction and extensive notes by Sandra Kemp very useful, the overall effect on the leisurely reader might be quite contra-productive. The 15 stories in the book take up barely a hundred pages, including illustrations. The introduction is 26 pages long, with no less than six pages of notes following the introduction. These are notes to the introduction. At the back of the book, there are another 18 pages of clarifying notes annotating the stories themselves. So on a total of less than 100 pages of prose, there are 50 pages critical apparatus. ( )