Virginia Woolf to Ethel Smyth, c.28 December 1932: 'D'you know I get such a passion for reading sometimes its like the other passion -- writing -- only the wrong side of the carpet [...] this passion, which has been so well advised, lands me tonight in a book like the reek of stale cabbage and cheap face powder -- a book called The Story of San Michele by [Axel] Munthe [1929] [...] A book more porous with humbug, reeking more suddenly with insincerity, I've never read. I'm at page 50 [...] And I'm reading Stella Benson [Tobit Transplanted (1931)]: with pleasure'.