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, 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.
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, 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. Editors Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne Trautmann, Hogarth Press.
After Textermination, she felt blocked in her production of fiction, and attempted an autobiography as an exercise,
Brooke-Rose, Christine. Invisible Author: Last Essays. Ohio State University Press.
55
although she claimed to feel a deep prejudice against both autobiography and biographical criticism.
Brooke-Rose, Christine. Invisible Author: Last Essays. Ohio State University Press.
53
She...
Textual Production
Mary Agnes Hamilton
Mary Agnes Hamilton
published Special Providence: A Tale of 1917; either this or Hamilton's previous novel must be the one which Virginia Woolf
read this month and stringently criticised.
Carew, Dudley. “Special Providence”. Times Literary Supplement, No. 1470, p. 294.
294
Woolf, Virginia. The Diary of Virginia Woolf. Editors Bell, Anne Olivier and Andrew McNeillie, Hogarth Press.
3: 296
Textual Production
Dora Carrington
In June 1919, Virginia Woolf
wrote to Carrington about her plans for Round House, where one of the chief decorations is going to be a large showpiece by Carrington, found in an attic at...
Kirkpatrick, Brownlee Jean. A Bibliography of E. M. Forster. Clarendon.
53
Textual Production
T. S. Eliot
Virginia
and Leonard Woolf
published TSE
's early Poems (including Sweeney among the Nightingales) at the Hogarth Press
.
Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Editors Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne Trautmann, Hogarth Press.
2: 353n3
Woolmer, J. Howard. A Checklist of the Hogarth Press, 1917-1938. Hogarth Press.
31
Gallup, Donald Clifford. T.S. Eliot: A Bibliography. Harcourt, Brace.
24-5
Textual Production
Dora Carrington
Her penmanship is evocative, and her words are accompanied by striking illustrations: Jane Hill
suggests that in some of her images Carrington anticipates the comic violence of Charlie Chaplin
and Walt Disney
's Mickey Mouse...
Textual Production
Rose Macaulay
Over the years, RM
published several dozen literary articles in a wide range of magazines, newspapers, and commemorative volumes. She wrote on past and contemporary literary figures, including Leslie Stephen
, Stella Benson
, Rebecca West
Textual Production
Elizabeth Taylor
ET
published her fourth novel, A Wreath of Roses, with an epigraph from Woolf
's The Waves. It took her fifteen months to write, half as long again as her previous novels.
Leclercq, Florence. Elizabeth Taylor. Twayne.
41n10, 34
Beauman, Nicola. The Other Elizabeth Taylor. Persephone Books.
211
Textual Production
Flora Macdonald Mayor
FMM
's second major novel, The Rector's Daughter, appeared from the Hogarth Presson a commission basis, with the help of Leonard
and Virginia Woolf
.
“The Times Digital Archive 1785-2007”. Thompson Gale: The Times Digital Archive.
43695 (4 July 1924): 10
Williams, Merryn. Six Women Novelists, Macmillan.
45
Textual Production
Lady Cynthia Asquith
Her motive (when she decided to undertake this work, two years before it was published) was not money but pleasure: writing a novel makes me feel so much more alive—though she felt deterred by...
Textual Production
Doris Lessing
DL
also wrote such brief works of literary comment as a foreword for The Fox by D. H. Lawrence
, published by Hesperus
in 2002, and an article for the Guardian in June 2003 on...
Textual Production
Ethel Smyth
ES
broadcast Scrapbook for 1912: Scenes, Melodies and Personalities of 25 Years Ago; Virginia Woolf
listened in and enjoyed the programme.
Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Editors Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne Trautmann, Hogarth Press.
6: 113n2
Textual Production
Anne Carson
AC
's poetry collection Men in the Off Hours, 2000, variously inhabits the minds (and bodies) of Tolstoy
, Lazarus, Freud
, Catullus
, Sappho
and Emily Dickinson
, not to mention the French...
Textual Production
Elizabeth Robins
ER
wrote the book in 1933-34, but her brother Raymond
prevented its publication during his lifetime.
Gates, Joanne E. Elizabeth Robins, 1862-1952. University of Alabama Press.
253, 284
John, Angela V. Elizabeth Robins: Staging a Life, 1862-1952. Routledge.
136
Virginia Woolf
had promised to read the manuscript on 4 June 1939.
Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Editors Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne Trautmann, Hogarth Press.
6: 334
Textual Production
Stella Gibbons
SG
's literary criticism for The Lady includes a number of articles on women writers. One piece criticises Rose Macaulay
for her small range and lack of subtlety. Another praises Virginia Woolf
as a giant...
Timeline
1925: Leonard and Virginia Woolf published Edwin...
30 May 1929: Labour came in twenty-six votes ahead of...
National or international item
30 May 1929
Labour
came in twenty-six votes ahead of the Conservatives
in the first general election with full women's suffrage: the prospect of voting by women under thirty brought the demeaning nickname of the Flapper Election....
20 September 1929: In an Evening Standard article, Supreme Gift...
Women writers item
20 September 1929
In an Evening Standard article, Supreme Gift Denied to Women, James Laver
wrote that women did not reach the first rank as creative artists—though he did allow greatness to Virginia Woolf
.
1931: Margaret Llewelyn Davies edited a collection...
November 1933: An exhibition was held of the urban-domestic...
Building item
November 1933
An exhibition was held of the urban-domestic paintings of modern realist Walter Sickert
; Virginia Woolf
attended.
1935: M. G. Ostle edited The Note-books of a Woman...
Women writers item
1935
M. G. Ostle
edited The Note-books of a Woman Alone, selections from the diary of Eve or Evelyn Wilson
, who lived alone and wrote in seclusion.
21-25 June 1935: The First International Congress of Writers...
National or international item
21-25 June 1935
The First International Congress of Writers for the Defence of Culture (an anti-fascist event urging the responsibility of writers to their society) was held in Paris.
1 October 1935: At the Labour Party's annual conference Ernest...
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 December 1952: Woodcut-engraver Gwen Raverat, née Darwin,...
Women writers item
By December 1952
Woodcut-engraver Gwen Raverat, née Darwin
, published Period Piece, her extremely popular memoir of her Victorian childhood in Cambridge; by 1975 it had sold 120,000 copies in Britain alone.
Texts
Woolf, Virginia. The Common Reader. Editor McNeillie, Andrew, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1984.
Woolf, Virginia. The Complete Shorter Fiction of Virginia Woolf. Editor Dick, Susan, Hogarth Press, 1985.
Woolf, Virginia. The Death of the Moth. Hogarth Press, 1942.
Woolf, Virginia. The Diary of Virginia Woolf. Editors Bell, Anne Olivier and Andrew McNeillie, Hogarth Press, 1984.
Woolf, Virginia, and Virginia Woolf. “The Enchanted Organ: Anne Thackeray Ritchie”. Collected Essays, Harcourt Brace and World, 1967, pp. 4: 73 - 5.
Woolf, Virginia. The Essays of Virginia Woolf. Editors McNeillie, Andrew and Stuart Nelson Clarke, Hogarth Press, 2011.
Woolf, Virginia. “The Journal of Mistress Joan Martyn”. Twentieth Century Literature, edited by Susan M. Squier and Louise DeSalvo, Vol.
25
, No. 3/4, pp. 237-69.
Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Editors Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne Trautmann, Hogarth Press, 1980.
Woolf, Virginia. The Pargiters. Editor Leaska, Mitchell A., New York Public Library; Readex Books, 1977.
Woolf, Virginia. “The Scholar’s Daughter”. Times Literary Supplement, No. 214, p. 52.
Woolf, Virginia. The Second Common Reader. Hogarth Press, 1932.
Woolf, Virginia. “The Symbol”. London Review of Books, Vol.
7
, No. 11, p. 6.
Woolf, Virginia. The Voyage Out. Duckworth, 1915.
Woolf, Virginia. The Voyage Out. Hogarth Press, 1975.
Woolf, Virginia. The Waves. Hogarth Press, 1931.
Woolf, Virginia. The Waves. Hogarth Press, 1980.
Woolf, Virginia. The Waves: The two holograph drafts transcribed and edited. Editor Graham, J. W., University of Toronto Press, 1976.
Woolf, Virginia. The Years. Hogarth Press, 1937.
Woolf, Virginia. The Years. Hogarth Press, 1979.
Woolf, Virginia. The Years. Hogarth Press, 1990.
Woolf, Virginia. The Years. Oxford University Press, 1999.
Woolf, Virginia. “Thoughts on Peace in an Air Raid”. The Death of the Moth, edited by Leonard Woolf, Hogarth Press, 1942, pp. 154-7.
Woolf, Virginia. Three Guineas. Hogarth Press, 1938.
Woolf, Virginia. Three Guineas. Hogarth Press, 1986.
Woolf, Virginia. To the Lighthouse. Hogarth Press, 1927.