Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
E. M. Forster
-
Standard Name: Forster, E. M.
Used Form: Edward Morgan Forster
EMF
was a major novelist of the early twentieth century (despite his slender lifetime output of five novels). He was also a short-story writer, an influential critic of fiction, and the author of travel writing, surviving letters, and an opera libretto. He produced a pioneering text of post-colonialism in his final published novel, A Passage to India. After his death he was accorded the status of an activist for the acceptance of homosexual love between men, on the appearance of his polemical, posthumously-published novel Maurice.
Early members of what VW
called Old Bloomsbury (to distinguish the original members of the group from later additions) included Virginia and Vanessa Stephen
, Leonard Woolf
, Clive Bell
, E. M. Forster
,...
Friends, Associates
Virginia Woolf
The cultural production of members of Bloomsbury was prodigious, embracing the imaginative, critical, and political writing of Virginia and Leonard Woolf
, E. M. Forster
, and Lytton Strachey
, the economic theories of Maynard Keynes
Family and Intimate relationships
Virginia Woolf
Leonard Woolf was a close Cambridge
friend of Virginia's brother Thoby Stephen
and a member of the Apostles
. A Jew, with family roots in London and Amsterdam, he grew up in London, first...
politics
Virginia Woolf
Each meeting consisted of dinner, followed by an address from a speaker, followed by discussion. Speakers included E. M. Forster
, Virginia's brother Adrian
, and Ray Strachey
. About a dozen working-class women attended...
Occupation
Virginia Woolf
The Press, which began as therapy and for the purpose of publishing the works of its owners, grew into a major engine of modern culture and thought.
Lee, Hermione. Virginia Woolf. Chatto and Windus.
371-3
Its political interests were served by enlightened...
Reception
Virginia Woolf
Quentin Bell reports that [a]s always, [Woolf] found publication an agitating business, and that when she received her own six copies, on 20 October, she immediately dispatched one to each of Vanessa
, Clive Bell
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
The first reviews of Mrs. Dalloway came out in the same month as those of The Common Reader (first series). Both the Western Mail and the Scotsman dismissed the novel as beyond the general reader...
Literary responses
Virginia Woolf
VW
found the Times Literary Supplement notice depressingly similar to the same journal's views of Jacob's Room and Mrs. Dalloway: that is, in her summary, gentlemanly, kindly, timid & praising beauty, doubting character.
Woolf, Virginia. The Diary of Virginia Woolf. Editors Bell, Anne Olivier and Andrew McNeillie, Hogarth Press.
3: 134
Literary responses
Virginia Woolf
Ethel Smyth
sent her responses to this book by telegram on publication day: Book astounding so far. Agitatingly increases value of life. Two days later she sent: Final paragraph almost smashes machine of life with...
