{"schema_version":"bf_book_companion_v1","release_id":"20260414T102527Z","book":{"amazon_purchase_url":"https://www.amazon.com/dp/0008361886?tag=bookfrontier-20","asin":"0008361886","authors":["Virginia Woolf","Francesca Wade","Ali Smith"],"book_id":"9780008361884","canonical_url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780008361884","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780008361884.jpg?v=20260414T102527Z%3A2026-04-14T10%3A25%3A27Z","description":"FOREWORD BY ALI SMITH WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY FRANCESCA WADE Who better to serve as a guide to great books and their authors than Virginia Woolf? In the early years of its existence, the Times Literary Supplement published some of the finest writers in English: T. S. Eliot, Henry James and E. M. Forster among them. But one of the paper’s defining voices was Virginia Woolf, who produced a string of superb essays between the two World Wars. The weirdness of Elizabethan plays, the pleasure of revisiting favourite novels, the supreme examples of Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot and Henry James, Thomas Hardy and Joseph Conrad: all are here, in anonymously published pieces, in which may be glimpsed the thinking behind Woolf’s works of fiction and the enquiring, feminist spirit of A Room of One’s Own . Here is Woolf the critical essayist, offering, at one moment, a playful hypothesis and, at another, a judgement laid down with the authority of a twentieth-century Dr Johnson. Here is Woolf working out precisely what’s great about Hardy, and how Elizabeth Barrett Browning made books a “substitute for living” because she was “forbidden to scamper on the grass”. Above all, here is Virginia Woolf the reader, whose enthusiasm for great literature remains palpable and inspirational today.","forthcoming":false,"isbn13":"9780008361884","publication_date":"20201112","publisher":"HarperCollins Publishers","slug":"genius-and-ink-virginia-woolf-on-how-to-read","subtitle":"","title":"Genius and Ink: Virginia Woolf on How to Read"},"discovery":{"categories":{"all":[{"bisac_code":"LIT004120","confidence_band":"medium","label":"British & Irish Literary Criticism","score":0.7817,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"LIT004290","confidence_band":"medium","label":"Women Authors Criticism","score":0.7798,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"LIT024040","confidence_band":"medium","label":"19th-Century Literary Criticism","score":0.7592,"source":"bisac_hint_model"}],"hint":[{"bisac_code":"LIT004120","confidence_band":"medium","label":"British & Irish Literary Criticism","score":0.7817,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"LIT004290","confidence_band":"medium","label":"Women Authors Criticism","score":0.7798,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"LIT024040","confidence_band":"medium","label":"19th-Century Literary Criticism","score":0.7592,"source":"bisac_hint_model"}],"publisher":[{"bisac_code":"BIO025000","confidence_band":"high","label":"Lives in Journalism","score":1,"source":"onix_publisher_code"},{"bisac_code":"LCO010000","confidence_band":"high","label":"Essay Collections","score":1,"source":"onix_publisher_code"},{"bisac_code":"LIT003000","confidence_band":"high","label":"Feminist Lit Crit","score":1,"source":"onix_publisher_code"},{"bisac_code":"LIT004120","confidence_band":"high","label":"British & Irish Literary Criticism","score":1,"source":"onix_publisher_code"}]},"genres":[{"label":"British & Irish Literary Criticism","score":0.7817,"slug":"british-irish-literary-criticism"},{"label":"Women Authors Criticism","score":0.7798,"slug":"women-authors-criticism"},{"label":"19th-Century Literary Criticism","score":0.7592,"slug":"19th-century-literary-criticism"}],"reader_fit":["Good for readers who enjoy British & Irish Literary Criticism","Good for readers who enjoy British & Irish Literary Criticism and Women Authors Criticism."],"related_lists":[],"series":null,"similar_books":[{"authors":["Margaret Drabble"],"book_id":"9780500029497","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780500029497.jpg?v=20260414T102527Z%3A2026-04-14T10%3A25%3A27Z","score":11.2166,"title":"Margaret Drabble on the Romantics","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780500029497"},{"authors":["Marcia McClintock Folsom","John Wiltshire"],"book_id":"9781603294775","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9781603294775.jpg?v=20260414T102527Z%3A2026-04-14T10%3A25%3A27Z","score":11.1902,"title":"Approaches to Teaching Austen's Persuasion","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9781603294775"},{"authors":["George Bernard Shaw","Gustavo A. Rodriguez Martin","Dr Gustavo a Rodriguez Martin"],"book_id":"9780795348938","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780795348938.jpg?v=20260414T102527Z%3A2026-04-14T10%3A25%3A27Z","score":11.1417,"title":"Bernard Shaw on Literature","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780795348938"},{"authors":["Melvyn New","Anthony W. Lee"],"book_id":"9780271093987","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780271093987.jpg?v=20260414T102527Z%3A2026-04-14T10%3A25%3A27Z","score":11.1237,"title":"Notes on Footnotes","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780271093987"},{"authors":["Laura S. Brown","Laura Brown"],"book_id":"9780801448287","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780801448287.jpg?v=20260414T102527Z%3A2026-04-14T10%3A25%3A27Z","score":11.032,"title":"Homeless Dogs and Melancholy Apes","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780801448287"},{"authors":["Oscar Wilde","Nicholas Frankel"],"book_id":"9780674066311","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780674066311.jpg?v=20260414T102527Z%3A2026-04-14T10%3A25%3A27Z","score":10.3278,"title":"Uncensored Picture of Dorian Gray","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780674066311"},{"authors":["Virginia Woolf"],"book_id":"9781649741257","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9781649741257.jpg?v=20260414T102527Z%3A2026-04-14T10%3A25%3A27Z","score":10.2163,"title":"Mrs. Dalloway","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9781649741257"},{"authors":["Pamela Erens"],"book_id":"9781632461315","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9781632461315.jpg?v=20260414T102527Z%3A2026-04-14T10%3A25%3A27Z","score":8.8374,"title":"Middlemarch and the Imperfect Life: Bookmarked","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9781632461315"}],"topics":[{"evidence_refs":["keyword:novels"],"label":"Novels","score":0.3853,"slug":"novels"},{"evidence_refs":["keyword:world"],"label":"World","score":0.2022,"slug":"world"},{"evidence_refs":["keyword:classic"],"label":"Classic","score":0.0994,"slug":"classic"},{"evidence_refs":["keyword:century"],"label":"Century","score":0.083,"slug":"century"},{"evidence_refs":["keyword:times"],"label":"Times","score":0.0545,"slug":"times"}],"what_you_get":["Themes: Century.","Reading lane: British & Irish Literary Criticism and Women Authors Criticism.","Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers."]},"llm_signals":null,"source_presence":{"amazon":true,"book_detail":true,"goodreads":true,"llm_signals":false,"similarity_seed":true},"stats":{"amazon_ratings_count":0,"goodreads_ratings_count":608,"goodreads_reviews_count":94,"quality_score":0.9011}}