The selection of these ten characteristic essays by Virginia Woolf, from the many she had published in newspapers and magazines to be later collected in volumes, was made based on their themes, in order to cover a wide range of writing issues that concerned writers during the interwar period. The essays in this volume cover an extensive time period, as they were written from 1919 to 1940, and are presented in chronological order.

Referring to the works of numerous prose writers, poets, and critics, such as Shakespeare, Donne, Carlyle, Galzgowrdy, Austen, Dickens, Bennett, Tolstoy, Flaubert, Proust, Forster, Lawrence, Eliot, Joyce, Hemingway, and others, Woolf addresses controversial writing topics (inspiration, theme, technique, style, characters), compares techniques, and analyzes the social and historical context (social classes, politics, significant events) that influences and shapes the consciousness of writers, examining and juxtaposing with exceptional clarity important periods and movements in literature. Particularly noteworthy is her essay "A Letter to a Young Poet," which gives the general title to this collection, as it answers the eternal question about the difficulty of writing poetry in a specific period of turmoil, social change, and technological progress.