Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Virginia Woolf
-
Standard Name: Woolf, Virginia
Birth Name: Adeline Virginia Stephen
Nickname: Ginia
Married Name: Adeline Virginia Woolf
Thousands of readers over three or four generations have known that Virginia Woolf was—by a beadle—denied access to the library of a great university. They may have known, too, that she was a leading intellect of the twentieth century. If they are feminist readers they will know that she thought . . . back through her mothers and also sideways through her sisters and that she contributed more than any other in the twentieth century to the recovery of women's writing.
Marcus, Jane. “Introduction”. New Feminist Essays on Virginia Woolf, edited by Jane Marcus, Macmillan, 1981, p. i - xx.
xiv
Educated in her father's library and in a far more than usually demanding school of life, she radically altered the course not only of the English tradition but also of the several traditions of literature in English.
Froula, Christine. Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Avant-Garde. Columbia University Press, 2005.
2
She wrote prodigiously—nine published novels, as well as stories, essays (including two crucial books on feminism, its relation to education and to war), diaries, letters, biographies (both serious and burlesque), and criticism. As a literary journalist in a wide range of forums, she addressed the major social issues of her time in more than a million words.
Woolf, Virginia. “Introduction; Editorial Note”. The Essays of Virginia Woolf, edited by Andrew McNeillie, Hogarth Press, 1994, pp. vols. 1 - 4: various pages.
ix
She left a richly documented life in words, inventing a modern fiction, theorising modernity, writing the woman into the picture. She built this outstandingly influential work, which has had its impact on both writing and life, on her personal experience, and her fictions emerge to a striking degree from her life, her gender, and her moment in history. In a sketch of her career written to Ethel Smyth
she said that a short story called An Unwritten Novelwas the great discovery . . . . That—again in one second—showed me how I could embody all my deposit of experience in a shape that fitted it.
Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne TrautmannEditors , Hogarth Press, 1980.
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"Virginia Woolf" Retrieved from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Virginia_Woolf_1927.jpg.This work is licensed under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication license. This work is in the public domain.
Many of the poems first saw print in Cambridge journals or in Leonard
and Virginia Woolf
's Cambridge Poetry, Hogarth Press
,1929. This volume followed on a privately-printed Poems issued by the Fox and Daffodil Press
Anthologization
Eleanor Rathbone
ER
contributed an essay on Changes in Public Life to Our Freedom and Its Results, a feminist anthology edited by Ray Strachey
and published by Leonard
and Virginia Woolf
.
Pedersen, Susan. Eleanor Rathbone and the Politics of Conscience. Yale University Press, 2004.
380
Cultural formation
Ethel Smyth
In addition to her relationship with Henry Brewster
, ES
's life was punctuated by a series of intense emotional attachments to women. In a letter to Brewster, she wondered why it is so much...
Cultural formation
Hope Mirrlees
Her friend Virginia Woolf
wrote in her diary this month: It is said that Hope has become a Roman Catholic on the sly.
Woolf, Virginia. The Diary of Virginia Woolf. Bell, Anne Olivier and Andrew McNeillieEditors , Hogarth Press, 1984.
3: 268
Cultural formation
Ali Smith
In 1995 Smith spoke in Caroline Gonda
's series of interviews with gay Scottish women writers, which questioned what level of community exists among them and the extent to which they believe their sexuality to...
Cultural formation
Catherine Byron
CB
sees herself as having experienced various complications with regard to nation, religion, and writerly identity, as a result of her heritage and places of living. Though her mother was from the Republic of Ireland...
Cultural formation
May Cannan
MC
was indeed, in Virginia Woolf
's phrase, one of the daughters of educated men.
Woolf, Virginia. Three Guineas. Hogarth Press, 1986.
16
Her parents were more educated than most: highly talented members of that ancient-university world into which another poet, Frances Cornford
death
George Eliot
Her younger husband wrote that he was stunned by the frightful suddenness of her death.
Ashton, Rosemary. George Eliot: A Life. Hamish Hamilton, 1996.
379
She was buried in Highgate Cemetery, London; the large attendance at the funeral included her estranged brother Isaac
death
Lady Ottoline Morrell
Before her death LOM
named three literary executors, including her friend Hope Mirrlees
. Her literary estate consisted primarily of letters, journals, and her drafted memoirs.
Seymour, Miranda. Ottoline Morrell: Life on the Grand Scale. Farrar Straus Giroux, 1992.
She is buried at Hampstead. Her death was prominently covered in the press; Virginia Woolf
wrote the official obituary for the Times Literary Supplement.
Shankman, Lillian F., and Anne Thackeray Ritchie. “Biographical Commentary and Notes”. Anne Thackeray Ritchie: Journals and Letters, edited by Abigail Burnham Bloom, John Maynard, Abigail Burnham Bloom, and John Maynard, Ohio State University Press, 1994, p. various pages.
xxviii
Gérin, Winifred. Anne Thackeray Ritchie: A Biography. Oxford University Press, 1981.
276
death
Arnold Bennett
Virginia Woolf
wrote in her diary of feeling unexpectedly moved and sorry at the death of this lovable genuine man with whom she had crossed swords.
Drabble, Margaret. Arnold Bennett: A Biography. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1974.
350
Dedications
Vita Sackville-West
She wrote most of it while on a walking tour in the Dolomites with her husband in July, and dedicated it to Virginia Woolf
.
Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne TrautmannEditors , Hogarth Press, 1980.
3: 116n2, 131
It was reprinted by November 1944 with...
Dedications
Ling Shuhua
The Hogarth Press
published Ling Shuhua
's memoir Ancient Melodies, with an introduction by Vita Sackville-West
. Ling Shuhua dedicated the book to Virginia Woolf
and Sackville-West, with whom she conferred at different stages...
Dedications
Vita Sackville-West
VSW
published Sissinghurst, a poem dedicated to Virginia Woolf
.
Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne TrautmannEditors , Hogarth Press, 1980.
4: 256
Dedications
Ethel Smyth
ES
continued her autobiography in As Time Went On; she dedicated it to Virginia Woolf
, who helped her choose its title.
Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne TrautmannEditors , Hogarth Press, 1980.
Margaret Paston
, née Mautby, wrote—that is, dictated—to her husband and sons (in Virginia Woolf
's words) long long letters . . . . explaining, asking advice, giving news, rendering accounts
Woolf, Virginia. The Essays of Virginia Woolf. McNeillie, Andrew and Stuart Nelson ClarkeEditors , Hogarth Press, 2011.
4: 23
about the family estate.
Early August 1591
Sir John Harington
's translation of Ariosto
's heroicromanceOrlando Furioso (which means something like Roland Run Mad) was published.
Francis Coventry
anonymously published The History of Pompey the Little; or, the life and adventures of a lap-dog, a novelà clef which satirizes Pompey's successive owners.
By 9 July 1822
The ladies of England subscribed for a gigantic statue of the Greek hero Achilles cast in metal from captured foreign guns, for Hyde Park in London, to honour the Duke of Wellington
.
1825
Alexander Dyce
, then a twenty-seven-year-old reluctant clergyman, published his Specimens of British Poetesses, a project in rediscovering women's literary history.
28 November 1832
Leslie Stephen
, father of Virginia Woolf
, first editor of the Dictionary of National Biography, editor of Cornhill Magazine, biographer, and agnostic, was born.
28 November 1832
Leslie Stephen
, father of Virginia Woolf
, first editor of the Dictionary of National Biography, editor of Cornhill Magazine, biographer, and agnostic, was born.
9 November 1857
The first issue appeared of the US magazineAtlantic Monthly. It set out to provide articles of an abstract and permanent value, while not ignoring the healthy appetite of the mind for entertainment in...
24 April 1869
Leslie Stephen
(later Virginia Woolf
's father) published in the Saturday Review an unsigned response to W. R. Greg
, entitled The Redundancy of Women.
April 1880
Virginia Woolf
chose this month to introduce the Pargiter family in her novel The Years: the Victorian mother is on her deathbed, leaving some of her children still young.
1885
Regular classes began at Morley College
in London, a few years after Emma Cons
leased the Old Vic Theatre
in Waterloo Road, as a venue not just for clean variety shows and concerts but...
June 1889
Nineteenth Century published An Appeal against Female Suffrage by Mary Augusta Ward
, signed by 103 other women.
6 October 1891
Charles Parnell
, Irish patriot, died at Brighton in Sussex; Virginia Woolf
used his death to date the second section in her novel The Years, 1937.
1898
Gerald Duckworth
(half-brother of Virginia Woolf
) founded his own publishing house at Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, London.