A Boy at the Hogarth Press (Modern Voices)

A charming coming of age memoir, shedding light on the workings of Leonard and Virginia Woolf’s illustrious Hogarth Press "I know I was expected to say something brilliant for the benefit of the group that had collected round us. The truth was that I had only really read Orlando, Mrs Dalloway and The Common Reader . . . I said I didn't think she created character as well as a writer like Turgenev. I could see this didn't go down at all well and felt rather like Peter denying Christ." After a rather unsuccessful education at Marlborough College, in 1926 16-year old Richard Kennedy was put firmly under the wing of Leonard Woolf as his new protégé at the Woolfs' printing press. Some 40 years later, and by then a professional illustrator, he wrote his recollections of his time with Virginia and Leonard Woolf in candid and often hilarious detail. He tells of the success that Virginia enjoyed, of their chaotic office with its collapsing shelves and of his own often hapless attempts to keep pace with the literary giants around him. Illustrated throughout with Kennedy's own sketches, this is a delightful work that offers a unique peep into the Bloomsbury set.