Although Virginia Woolf published only eighteen works of short fiction, she was engaged in writing short stories, sketches, and even experimental prose poems throughout her writing career. Recent research has shown that the eighteen published pieces are but a fraction of the total number of stories and sketches Woolf wrote. The Complete Shorter Fiction (1985) contains forty-six complete works as well as a dozen incomplete ones by Woolf. These range from four stories written in 1906 (when Woolf, who was twenty-four years old and already an accomplished reviewer, turned her attention to the writing of fiction) to two sketches written early in 1941, only a few weeks before her death. Short-fiction writing was always important to her, for her shorter works were often testing grounds for themes, characters, prose styles, and narrative techniques she developed at greater length in her novels.

Born in London, Virginia Woolf was the third child of...