Those moments — in the nursery, on the road to the beach — can still be more real than the present moment. – Virginia Woolf, “A Sketch of the Past,” p. 67.

The second edition of Moments of Being (1985) consists of five pieces that make up Virginia Woolf’s only autobiographical writing, with the exception of her diaries and letters. This edition is now available online as a PDF that is searchable using the “Find” option under your browser’s “Edit” tab.

This edition incorporates 27 pages of a 77-page typescript version of “A Sketch of the Past” acquired by the British Library in the early 1980s. This addition of entirely new material includes Woolf’s description of her father, Leslie Stephen, and the ambivalence of her relationship to him as a result of her reading of Freud.

In addition, a number of passages, such as Woolf’s reflections on her methods of writing and on the nature of consciousness, are expanded and clarified, the Preface to the second edition notes (193).

The second addition includes an introduction by Hermione Lee, along with these five essays:

• “Reminiscences,” begun in 1907
• “A Sketch of the Past,” begun in 1939 and completed in 1940
• Three Memoir Club contributions, papers delivered between 1920 and 1936:
  • “22 Hyde Park Gate”
  • “Old Bloomsbury”
  • “Am I a Snob?”