Tabb House

Contemporary Review, March, 2004

From TABB HOUSE, one of the country's smaller, distinguished publishers, we have Virginia Woolf & Vanessa Bell: Remembering St Ives by Marion Dell and Marion Whybrow ([pounds sterling]24.00). St Ives was described by Virginia Woolf as a town on the 'very toenail of England'. In this beautifully illustrated book, the authors explore Virginia Woolf's statement that 'nothing that we had as children was quite so important to us as our summer in Cornwall'.

The novelist's father, Leslie Stephen, had taken a house in the fishing village of St Ives in 1881 and here the family came each summer. This fascinating book, packed with photographs, investigates the relationship between place and people, in particular, between St Ives and the novelist, Virginia Woolf and her painter sister, Vanessa Bell. Few authors were as affected by place as Virginia Woolf and this book will prove essential reading for anyone interested in the novelist or in the history of St Ives.