A collection of condolence letters written to the husband and sister of Virginia Woolf after her suicide in 1941 has been released this week in England. As Sarah Crown notes in a report for The Guardian, Afterwords, Letters on the Death of Virginia Woolf includes 250 letters and was edited by Sybil Oldfield, who “spent five years tracing the authors of the letters and their surviving relatives to obtain permission to publish the letters.” Says Oldfield, “During her life she was accused of being aloof and sarcastic, but it is obvious from many of these letters that people felt supported by her and sensitively understood.” Among those who wrote: “Her childhood housekeeper, Sophie Farrell, wrote ‘She was always so sweet and good to me, I could never forget her’; her former lover, Vita Sackville-West, talked of ‘a loss that can never diminish.’ Her doctor, Octavia Wilberforce, saw the force of her intellect as joyous rather than off-putting, as it was popularly perceived. ‘It was such an unforgettable joy to be with her,’ she wrote, ‘and feel the brilliance of her mind.'”