As well as being one of the greatest novelists in the English language, Virginia Woolf was also a prolific essayist. In Walter Sickert: A Conversation (first published in 1934), Woolf argues for a close connection between the visual arts and literature and for Sickert's pre-eminence among living painters. The essay takes us behind the scenes at a dinner party among liiterary friends who have recently attended a Sickert exhibition. The language employed is vivid and quite unlike conventional art criticism. One, on entering the show, became all eye. I flew from colour to colour, from red to blue, from yellow to green. Colours went spirally through my body lighting a flare as if a rocket fell through the night... Another argues that Sickert's skills as a portraitist make him a great biographer...When he paints a portrait I read a life Another argues that He is more of a novelist than a biographer...He likes to set his characters in motion, to see them in action. On one thing they all agree: Sickert is probably the best painter now living in England. Making this unique and little known book available again for the first time since its original publication, this new edition features the original cover artwork, a charming pen-and-ink drawing by Virginia Woolf's sister, the artist Vanessa Bell.