Mitz: The Marmoset of Bloomsbury

by Sigrid Nunez

Book Overview

This "tender biography of a sickly marmoset that was adopted by Leonard Woolf and became a fixture of Bloomsbury society" (The New York Times) is an intimate portrait of the life and marriage of Leonard and Virginia Woolf from a National Book Award-winning author.

In 1934, a "sickly pathetic marmoset" named Mitz came into the care of Leonard Woolf. After he nursed her back to health, she became a ubiquitous presence in Bloomsbury...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1593765827
• ISBN13: 9781593765828
• Release Date: August 2019
• Publisher: Soft Skull
• Length: 172 Pages
• Weight: 0.44 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.4" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

A Biography of a Marmoset

No, I am not talking about Ross' monkey Marcel from Friends. This Marmoset is Mizt, adopted by the literary giants Virginia and Leonard Woolfe. Through there richness, elegence and love for one another (and Mitz) we read a book detailing the biography (life) of Mitz. Via trips, memoirs and entries of diaries detailed by the authors in the written work. This is a delightful little book where we find that Mitz has a personality and is not just a monkey. It is a charming, witty fun read, well worth a second or third read. Definetly a must for all.

What a delight!

I'd read writings of Virginia Woolf and writing about Virginia Woolf but after reading MITZ I feel like I know Virginia Woolf better than ever before. To say nothing of MITZ who became so real to me....Unique and a delightful read.

Lovely

Her prose is elegant and pleasurable, her scholarship particular, and her imagination delicate. After I read this book I wanted to rush out and read more Woolf and Nunez (and did). Please read to the end, it's so simple and resonant.

Brief and charming

Sigrid Nunwz takes as her starting point this fact : between 1934 and 1938, Leonard and Virginia Woolf owned a marmoset. With this, she writes a brief, charming novel, imagining the life of the tiny, sickly monkey (constantly cold in drizzly England) within the Woolf household. During there years, the Bloomsbury group wanes (Mitz scampers up and down the, now stout, legs of Vita Sackville-West). World War II looms large (Mitz captivates a stormtrooper when the Woolf's visit Germany - "Oh, the dear litle thing", he cries and lets them pass the roadblock). Mitz hears the comforting sounds of pen on paper as Virginia writes, but also hears her mutter, struggling to complete "The Years". Similar to Virginia's own novel "Flush", a biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's spaniel, "Mitz" is a delightful evocation of a time and place, and of two extraordinary people and their favored pet.