very strong literary takes by Virginia Woolf, Rebecca West, Hillaire Belloc, and 36 other 20
th-century writers.
Really and Truly: A Book of Literary Confessions featured handwritten answers to a set of quiz questions like, “Who is the worst living poet?” and “Who is a deceased man of letters whose character you most dislike?” (So, the Literary Twitter version of 36 Questions that Lead to Love.) The volume was originally estimated to sell for £4000-6000, but at auction this week it went for a whopping £21k.
Two unsurprising takeaways: people love Woolf, and people love gossip. It makes me wonder how much a contemporary volume would be worth of course, if the contents were kept secret until a century later. Maybe that can be Ocean Vuong’s Future Library manuscript.
BBC News
Published
image copyrightNational Portrait Gallery London
image captionVirginia Woolf said she believed TS Eliot was the best living English critic of literature
A book in which novelist Virginia Woolf shares her thoughts on the best and worst writers in the literary world has sold for £21,000 at auction.
Really and Truly: A Book of Literary Confessions, had been estimated to sell for between £4,000 - £6,000 at Dominic Winter Auctioneers in Gloucestershire.
It includes answers from several writers on who is the greatest genius and worst English novelist .
Auctioneer Chris Albury said he didn t dream the price would rise so high.
A book detailing the literary confessions of novelists Virginia Woolf and Margaret Kennedy is to be sold at auction.
Really and Truly: A Book of Literary Confessions contains pages of printed questions with 10 sets of handwritten answers, dated between 1923 and 1927.
Among the authors replying to the questions were Rose Macaulay, Rebecca West, Hilaire Belloc, Stella Benson, Woolf and Kennedy.
There are 39 questions, ranging from “who is the greatest genius who ever lived?” to who respondents thought were the best and worst novelists/poets/playwrights/essayists, both dead and living.
Virginia Woolf answered all 39 questions in her distinctive purple ink (Dominic Winter Auctioneers/PA)
A book detailing the literary confessions of novelists Virginia Woolf and Margaret Kennedy is to be sold at auction.
Really and Truly: A Book of Literary Confessions contains pages of printed questions with 10 sets of handwritten answers, dated between 1923 and 1927.
Among the authors replying to the questions were Rose Macaulay, Rebecca West, Hilaire Belloc, Stella Benson, Woolf and Kennedy.
There are 39 questions, ranging from “who is the greatest genius who ever lived?” to who respondents thought were the best and worst novelists/poets/playwrights/essayists, both dead and living.
Virginia Woolf answered all 39 questions in her distinctive purple ink (Dominic Winter Auctioneers/PA)