This study takes up Woolf's challenge to probe the relationship between education and work, specifically her education and her work as an essayist. It expands her education beyond her father's library to include not only a broader examination of her homeschooling but also her teaching at Morley College and her early book reviewing. It places Virginia Stephen's learning in the historical and cultural contexts of education for women, the working classes and writers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

Weaving together Virginia Stephen's homeschooling, her teaching and her writing for the newspapers, Beth Rigel Daugherty demonstrates how these three strands shape Virginia Woolf's essay persona, her essays and her relationship with her readers. She also shows why Virginia Stephen's apprenticeship compels Virginia Woolf to become a pedagogical essayist. The volume publishes two holograph draft lectures by Virginia Stephen for the first time and mines rarely used archival materials. It also includes five appendices, one detailing Virginia Stephen's library and another her apprenticeship essays.

This is the first in a two-volume study of Virginia Woolf's essays that analyses Virginia Stephen's development and Virginia Woolf's achievements as an essay writer.