In this collection, put together by Leonard Woolf, are pieces that would have featured in a third volume of essays, if death ad not put a stop to her plans. The reader can meet in these pages Mme de Sevigne, Horace Walpole, Gibbon (who might seem to have no Christian name), Coleridge (and his daughter Sara), and Shelley. Among more modern writers there are Henry James, George Moore, E M Forster, and even Virginia Woolf herself, vehemently protesting that she is highbrow. There are other exquisitely written essays of a less critical nature too.