Although as genres they are often neglected, the sketch and the essay represented for Virginia Woolf the two forms of writing through which she articulated her understanding of the workings of literary history. In this innovative study, Elena Gualtieri analyzes in detail the intersection between essays and sketches in Woolf's non-fiction as part of a far-reaching argument about the scopes and models of feminist criticism, its understanding of the historical process and its position in the panorama of 20th century intellectual history.