Flush: A Biography, a book about Elizabeth Barret Browning's cocker spaniel, is a cross-genre blend of fiction and nonfiction by Virginia Woolf published in 1933. Commonly read as a modernist consideration of city-life seen through the eyes of a dog, Flush serves a harsh criticism of the supposedly unnatural ways of living in the city. The figure of Elizabeth Barrett Browning in the text is often read as an analogue for other female intellectuals, like Woolf herself, who suffered from illness, feigned or real, as a part of their status as female writers.

Plot

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This unusual biography traces the life of Flush from his carefree existence in the country, to his adoption by Ms. Browning and his travails in London, leading up to his final days in a bucolic Italy. Woolf ostensibly uses the life of a dog as pointed social criticism, ranging across topics from feminism, and environmentalism, to class warfare

The book, due to its subject matter, has often been considered one of her less serious artistic endeavors, however she uses her distinctive stream of consciousness style to experiment with a non-human perspective.

External link

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• E-text of Flush

1933 novels | English novels