Volume 32, Number 1 · January 31, 1985
The Case for Mr. Ramsay
By John Clive
Leslie Stephen: The Godless Victorian
by Noel Annan
Random House, 432 pp., $25.00
To an even greater degree today than in 1951 when Noel Annan's classic study of Leslie Stephen (1832-1904) first appeared, its subject is remembered by most people who have heard of him at all less as the author of The History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, The Science of Ethics, and An Agnostic's Apology, or even as the editor of the Dictionary of National Biography, than as the father of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell. What is more, Virginia Woolf's portrait of him as Mr. Ramsay in To the Lighthouse, the epitome of selfishness and insensitivity, has put him well on the road to literary immortality as a specimen of the genus 'monster.' At this very moment, somewhere in the English-speaking world, grim-faced examiners are no doubt devising a question asking candidates for honors to compare and contrast the character of Mr. Ramsay with those of Mr. Lovelace, Mr. Collins, and Mr. Casaubon.
Review, 3720 words
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