Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
James Joyce
-
Standard Name: Joyce, James
Irish exile JJ
, hailed by Yeats
as a new kind of novelist even before his first novel was published, became one of the leading practitioners of modernism. As well as poems, a play, and a volume of short stories, he produced three important novels, from the last of which he put out several separate sections long before the whole appeared. Joyce encountered obstacles to publishing almost all his books, raised by censors both official and self-appointed. Without the tireless patronage of Harriet Shaw Weaver
and Sylvia Beach
, his last two books might never have been published at all.
Having already begun on James Joyce'sUlysses in The Little Review in March 1918, VW
finished reading the book. Genius it has I think, but of the inferior water.
Woolf, Virginia. The Diary of Virginia Woolf. Editors Bell, Anne Olivier and Andrew McNeillie, Hogarth Press.
2: 199
Publishing
Virginia Woolf
Half a century after her death, a change in the law brought VW
's works out of copyright (with those of her contemporary James Joyce
); but this change was reversed on 1 January 1996...
Friends, Associates
Virginia Woolf
Leonard Woolf wrote to Eliot, whose Prufrock and Other Observations he had read, to invite him to send some work to the Hogarth Press
. The letter led to a meeting, and ultimately to the...
Textual Production
Virginia Woolf
VW
continued to write personal essays on a range of subjects, some weighty, some witty, but her literary and critical essays are the centre of her work in this genre. In these she wrote about...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Virginia Woolf
Character in Fiction, the further essay which emerged from Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown, is reflective, philosophical, fictional, its tone assertive, witty, ironical, and serious. It ranges
Woolf, Virginia. The Essays of Virginia Woolf. Editors McNeillie, Andrew and Stuart Nelson Clarke, Hogarth Press.
3: 421
living writers into two...
Literary responses
Virginia Woolf
VW
wrote to Ethel Smyth
that the stories were diversions or treats I allowed myself when I had done my exercise in the conventional style.
Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Editors Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne Trautmann, Hogarth Press.
4: 231
An Unwritten Novel, she said, showed her...
Intertextuality and Influence
Virginia Woolf
Yet, though her voice (and her social and political views) were and would remain quite different from theirs, she was keenly attentive to the works of male contemporaries who were, like her, working to create...
Kester-Shelton, Pamela, editor. Feminist Writers. St James Press.
Reviewers in Cosmopolitan, the London Review of Books, The Times, the Financial Times...
Intertextuality and Influence
Edith Wharton
These books follow the progress of a budding male author, Vance Weston, who seems unable to achieve his career aspirations either amid the cutthroat New York literary scene or the more relaxed, bohemian one of...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Rebecca West
The title essay, which stands first and is by far the longest, is an exploration of aesthetics, in which James Joyce
and Ivan Pavlov
figure prominently.
Family and Intimate relationships
Dorothy Wellesley
DW
seems to have first met Hilda Matheson
just before the latter took over the role of central player in Vita Sackville-West
's love-life. But Matheson (director of talks for the BBC
, soon to...
Wealth and Poverty
Harriet Shaw Weaver
In January 1916, after the serialization of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man had ended, HSW
privately back-paid Joyce
£50, insisting that the money was from the journal, which it was not...
Residence
Harriet Shaw Weaver
In May 1934, faulty wiring in the flat below hers caused an electrical fire in the building. HSW
's first editions were protected by her glass-fronted bookcase, but other precious books and mementoes such as...
Occupation
Harriet Shaw Weaver
In November 1915, after Joyce
's novel had been rejected by various publishers, HSW
offered to publish it. But it was difficult for her to find a printer who was not frightened by the prospect...
Occupation
Harriet Shaw Weaver
Writer and suffragist Iris Barry
, summarizing a general admiration for HSW
on the part of Soho writers (Pound, Eliot, Wyndham Lewis, Violet Hunt
, and others), coined the phrase, the lion-hearted Miss Weaver who...
Timeline
11 January 1904: Father John Creagh began a series of fiery...
Building item
11 January 1904
Father John Creagh
began a series of fiery antisemitic sermons in Limerick, which provoked a pogrom.
2 July 1914: The first issue of the magazine Blast, edited...
Building item
2 July 1914
The first issue of the magazine Blast, edited by Wyndham Lewis
, formally announced the arrival of Vorticism, an avant-garde movement in art.
December 1919: The last issue of The Egoist: An Individualist...
Writing climate item
December 1919
The last issue of The Egoist: An Individualist Review was published.
1926: Soon after Chatto and Windus published The...
4 December 1931: The BBC announced the resignation of Hilda...
Writing climate item
4 December 1931
The BBC
announced the resignation of Hilda Matheson
, its director of talks, which she had actually submitted in October. This was the climax of a long-running struggle over a series of talks by Harold Nicolson
1946: Critic Erich Auerbach published, in German,...
Writing climate item
1946
Critic Erich Auerbach
published, in German, the influential study which became in its English translation, 1953, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature. He wrote it at Istanbul, as a Jewish refugee...
By late October 1975: The short-story volume Angels at the Ritz,...
Writing climate item
By late October 1975
The short-story volume Angels at the Ritz, by expatriate Irish writer William Trevor (born Trevor Cox
in 1928), was hailed by Graham Greene
as probably the best collection of stories since Joyce
's Dubliners.
October 1996: Irish journalist and writer Nuala O'Faolain...
Writing climate item
October 1996
Irish journalist and writer Nuala O'Faolain
published her autobiography Are You Somebody? The Accidental Memoir of a Dublin Woman.
22 January 2008: Day, the fifth novel by Scottish author,...
Women writers item
22 January 2008
Day, the fifth novel by Scottish author, playwright and stand-up comedian A. L. Kennedy
(whose unmentioned first name is Alison), won the 2007 Costa (formerly Whitbread) Book of the Year prize.
Texts
Joyce, James. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Egoist, 1917.
Joyce, James. Chamber Music. Elkin Mathews, 1907.
Joyce, James. Dubliners. Grant Richards, 1914.
Joyce, James. Exiles. Grant Richards, 1918.
Joyce, James. Finnegans Wake. Faber and Faber, 1939.
Joyce, James. Pomes Penyeach. Shakespeare and Company, 1927.
Joyce, James. Stephen Hero. J. Cape, 1944.
Joyce, James. Ulysses. Shakespeare and Company, 1922.
