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.
PB
published a collection of short stories, Strange Fruit, one of which concerns an imaginary meeting between herself and Virginia Woolf
.
Sackville-West, Vita. The Letters of Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolf. Editors DeSalvo, Louise and Mitchell A. Leaska, Hutchinson.
275
Textual Production
Jackie Kay
JK
wrote one of the two introductions for the Vintage
classics edition of Virginia Woolf
's Between the Acts; a second introduction was written by academic Lisa Jardine
.
KM
left at least fifteen stories unfinished. The final book which she planned—and which she intended to be her first mature and fully-conceived work—was never written; nor were the novels which she meant to write...
Textual Production
Henry Green
One attempted and abandoned novel between Blindness and Living contained a garden scene which, according the literary critic John Russell, seems to have come straight out of Mrs. Woolf
's Kew Gardens.
Russell, John David. Henry Green: Nine Novels and an Unpacked Bag. Rutgers University Press.
12
The...
Textual Production
Helen Dunmore
HD
's many other writings include reviews (of both poetry and fiction), introductions (to the poems of Emily Brontë
, the stories of D. H. Lawrence
and F. Scott Fitzgerald
, and a study of...
Textual Production
Susan Hill
Jacob's Room is Full of Books, which followed on 5 October 2017,
mixes observations of nature and seasonal change (herons, moles, swifts) with desultory opinions, many of them about books and authors. No link...
Textual Production
Elizabeth Griffith
For this move into fiction they chose the epistolary style in which they had already succeeded, and used their former pseudonyms: by the authors of Henry and Frances. Richard's novel was The Gordian Knot...
Textual Production
Dorothy Richardson
DR
was said (by Woolf herself) to be working on a study of Virginia Woolf
's writings: since no such study ever appeared, and Richardson did not greatly admire Woolf's texts, this was likely a...
Shaw, Marion. The Clear Stream: A Life of Winifred Holtby. Virago.
xiii
Textual Production
Pat Barker
In the title of her novel Toby's Room, PB
signalled unmistakably its relationship to an earlier novel about the First World War and the loss of a brother, Virginia Woolf
's Jacob's Room, published in 1922.
Lee, Hermione. “The greater truths of war”. Guardian Weekly, pp. 38-9.
38
Textual Production
Christina Stead
In 1972 CS
spent three painful months over a commission to review Quentin Bell
's life of Virginia Woolf
. She found many aspects and supposed aspects of Woolf repugnant: her alleged lack of appreciation...
Textual Production
Maggie Gee
MG
made a swerve away from realism in her next novel, Virginia Woolf
in Manhattan, which is in large part set out in dialogue like a play.
Gebbie, Vanessa. “Crossing the Divide”. Mslexia, Vol.
68
, pp. 15-17.
16
Textual Production
Sir J. M. Barrie
SJMB
also wrote introductions for and reviews of the work of others. Virginia Woolf
reproved him for his high opinion of middle-brow novelist Leonard Merrick
, for whom he wrote an introduction in 1918,
Woolf, Virginia. The Essays of Virginia Woolf. Editors McNeillie, Andrew and Stuart Nelson Clarke, Hogarth Press.
2: 265ff
Textual Production
Violet Trefusis
VT
published Broderie Anglaise, a roman à clef written in French and based partly on reconsideration of the web of relationships linking herself, Vita Sackville-West
, and Virginia Woolf
.
Glendinning, Victoria, and Violet Trefusis. “Introduction”. Broderie Anglaise, translated by. Barbara Bray and Barbara Bray, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
v
Textual Production
Rosamond Lehmann
RL
's Letter to a Sister was published by Leonard
and Virginia Woolf
at the Hogarth Press
as the third in their Hogarth Letters Series.
Hastings, Selina. Rosamond Lehmann. Chatto and Windus.
132-3
Woolmer, J. Howard. A Checklist of the Hogarth Press, 1917-1938. Hogarth Press.
91
Timeline
1964: When Julia Ballam (an undergraduate at St...
Building item
1964
When Julia Ballam
(an undergraduate at St Hilda's College, Oxford
, who later became the scholar Julia Briggs) got pregnant, the college stripped her of her scholarship, but more remarkably for this date they did...
December 1964: Jean-Paul Sartre was awarded the Nobel Prize...
Writing climate item
December 1964
Jean-Paul Sartre
was awarded the Nobel
Prize in Literature but declined to accept it for personal and ideological reasons: the only person ever to do so.
1968: V. S. Pritchett, whose career as a prolific...
Writing climate item
1968
V. S. Pritchett
, whose career as a prolific man of letters ran from the early 1920s into the twenty-first century, issued his most successful book, A Cab at the Door, the earlier volume...
September 1998: Literary historian Nicola Beauman founded...
Women writers item
September 1998
Literary historian Nicola Beauman
founded Persephone Books
, aimed at reprinting in beautiful format forgotten classics by twentieth-century (mostly women) writers.
13 July 2006: A rare book sale at Sotheby's brought under...
Writing climate item
13 July 2006
A rare book sale at Sotheby's
brought under the hammer both a First Folio of the works of Shakespeare
and a copy of the first edition of Woolf
's Orlando inscribed to Vita Sackville-West
.
April 2016: A bot, or Twitter account programmed to issue...
Writing climate item
April 2016
A bot, or Twitter
account programmed to issue a piece of writing divided into fragments of 140 characters or less, entitled Sappho
@sapphobot, was launched this month and became Twitter's most popular poetry bot (apart from...
Texts
Woolf, Virginia. To the Lighthouse. Hogarth Press, 1982.
Woolf, Virginia. To the Lighthouse. The original holograph draft. Editor Dick, Susan, University of Toronto Press, 1982.
Woolf, Virginia, and Leonard Woolf. Two Stories. Hogarth Press, 1917.
Woolf, Virginia, and Michèle Barrett. Women and Writing. Women’s Press, 1979.