Flush: A Biography

First published in 1933, “Flush: A Biography” by Virginia Woolf, is the biography of a red cocker spaniel that was owned by English poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Woolf’s inspiration was her own cocker spaniel, Pinka. Woolf had read the letters and poems that Browning had written about her dog, Flush. Woolf decided that he would be an interesting subject for a biography and although it is narrated in the third person, the book is written mainly from the perspective of the dog. As Virginia Woolf implied to a friend, “Flush” was really her dog, “Pinka,” who she used as a model for the red cocker.

Recognized for her use of stream of conscious, nonlinear prose, and unique narrative perspectives, Virginia Woolf is arguably one of the most prominent writers of the twentieth century.