Mitz: The Marmoset of Bloomsbury

By Sigrid Nunez

Book Overview

In 1934 a sickly marmoset named Mitz came into the care of Leonard Woolf. He nursed her back to health and was rarely seen without her. Using letters, diaries and memoirs, this is the story of Mitz's life, against the background of Bloomsbury.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 193336856X
• ISBN13: 9781933368566
• Release Date: February 2007
• Publisher: Soft Skull Press
• Length: 138 Pages
• Weight: 0.32 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.3" x 7.4"

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.