Born on December 7, 1893, in Meadville, Pennsylvania, Virginia Kirkus grew up in Wilmington, Delaware. She attended private schools and in 1916 graduated from Vassar College. After taking courses at Columbia University Teachers College she taught in a private school in Delaware in 1917╨1919. She then held a series of writing and editorial jobs in New York City, and in 1922 she published Everywoman╒s Guide to Health and Personal Beauty. From 1925 to 1932 she headed the children╒s book department of the publishing firm of Harper Brothers.
In 1933, after a trip to Europe, she launched the Virginia Kirkus Bookshop Service, an entirely original idea in the field of publishing and selling books. Arranging with publishers╤only 20 or so at first, but eventually nearly every firm of any size in the industry╤to receive advance galley proofs of books, she read them and wrote out brief critical evaluations of their literary merit and probable popular appeal that were then sent out to subscribing bookshops in the form of a bimonthly bulletin. Bookshop managers were thus given an informed and unbiased opinion on which to base their orders and promotions. The scheme was a success from the beginning as Kirkus proved to be right in her evaluations some 85 percent of the time, particularly in identifying ╥sleepers╙╤books not likely otherwise to receive their due attention. In addition to her work in preparing her bulletins, including the reading of upwards of 700 books a year, she also wrote A House for the Week Ends, on her experiences in remodeling her Redding, Connecticut, home, 1940, and First Book of Gardening, 1956. She was also a trustee and in 1952╨1953 president of the Mark Twain Library in Redding.
She retired from the Kirkus Service in 1962. In 1980 the Service, then owned by the New York Review of Books, had 4,600 subscribers and reviewed 4,500 books a year. She died on September 10, 1980, in Danbury, Connecticut.
