A Sketch of the Past, Part 1 Summary and Analysis

"A Sketch of the Past" focuses on the same period in Virginia Woolf's life as that recalled in "Reminiscences"; however, "A Sketch of the Past" was written several years later, when Virginia is nearly sixty. "A Sketch of the Past" was culled from various of Woolf's writings and edited more extensively than "Reminiscences."

In April of 1939, Vanessa suggests that Virginia write her memoirs. Virginia begins with her first memory, a vividly colored pattern of flowers on her mother's dress. However, Woolf's "literary mind" made another memory—that of a drowsy, yet sensation-heightened morning at the Stephen family's vacation home. This, she suggests, is because the St. Ives memory is more in tune with her philosophy both as a writer and as a person in the sense that the sensory experiences...