1st Edition, 12.5 x 19.2 cm grey cloth backed pale blue/grey paper boards with blue stamped titles to the spine. Top edge grey, 205[1] [2]pp with photograph frontispiece of Virginia Woolf. In original dust jacket priced at ‘six shillings’. Holtby’s book was the first critical appraisal of Woolf’s work. In 1931 when she learnt that Holtby was writing about her Woolf wrote, “Please treat me with perfect frankness, like the dead”. She agreed to one interview after which Woolf rather condescendingly reported to her sister that Holtby was “ a Yorkshire farmer’s daughter, rather uncouth , and shapeless” and the two had no more contact on the matter before the book’s publication. Indeed the introduction contains the disclaimer that its subject has “neither read my manuscript nor authorised any statement made in it” However Woolf seemed very pleased with Holtby’s efforts telling her that, “ you have made an extremely interesting story out of [my] books, and I only wish, for all our sakes that they had as much virtue in them as you make out” [Rohan Maitzen TLS]