“Night opens; night traversed by wandering moths; night hiding lovers roaming to adventure.” So runs a rapturous passage in Virginia Woolf’s The Waves, a novel she had originally considered titling The Moths. The insects are a recurring theme in the book – moths dashing themselves against windows, moths darting between candles on a summer’s night. In her essay The Death of the Moth, she describes an insect trapped in her window: “Watching him,...