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.
Molly
, Blanche's youngest child but one, married the literary journalist and critic Desmond MacCarthy
, and became a friend of Virginia Woolf
.
Family and Intimate relationships
E. B. C. Jones
Lucas, at first a classicist, became both a scholar and critic of English and a creative writer. He was a member of the Apostles
society; his fellow-members were, according to Virginia Woolf
, amazed at...
Family and Intimate relationships
Mary Butts
Mary's brother, Anthony Bacon Drury Butts
(Tony) was eleven years her junior. He became a painter and also an author under the pen name William d'Arfey. Although MB
spoke affectionately of her brother, he...
Family and Intimate relationships
Julia Strachey
JS
married sculptor Stephen Tomlin
at St Pancras Church
in London. Virginia Woolf
and other Bloomsbury friends were among the guests.
Strachey, Julia, and Frances Partridge. Julia: A Portrait of Julia Strachey. Little, Brown.
108
Family and Intimate relationships
E. B. C. Jones
In 1926 Virginia Woolf
(perhaps in fun) had represented Topsy as murderously angry with anyone who failed to recognise the genius of that stiff little prig (but adorable man, I quite agree) her husband.
Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Editors Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne Trautmann, Hogarth Press.
6: 513
Family and Intimate relationships
Sarah Trimmer
Their second daughter, Sarah known as Selina
, taught the younger ones and also some neighbour children.
Yarde, Doris M. Sarah Trimmer of Brentford and her Children, with Some of her Early Writings 1780-1786. Hounslow and District History Society.
Strachey, Julia, and Frances Partridge. Julia: A Portrait of Julia Strachey. Little, Brown.
43
Rendel, who had diverse skills and interests, was Virginia Woolf
's chief physician during...
Family and Intimate relationships
Lady Anne Clifford
LAC
was married, at midnight, to Richard Sackville
. Two days later, on his father's death, he became Earl of Dorset and she became mistress of Knole House.
This is the great house which...
Education
Ann Quin
Yet at this time books discovered in the public library taught her the possibilities in writing: Greek and Elizabethan dramatists. Dostoievsky (Crime and Punishment and Virginia Woolf
's The Waves . ....
Education
Fay Weldon
Fay attended another progressive establishment, the co-educational Burgess Hill School
, which she found absurd, not only noisy and disorderly but actively anti-academic. The best thing about it was being taught English briefly by the...
Education
Kathleen Raine
KR
was very impressed by the occasion on which Virginia Woolf
, accompanied by Vita Sackville-West
, gave her paper A Room of One's Own to the Girton Literary Society
before its publication. She was...
Education
Mary Kingsley
She was always insecure about her lack of formal education. In Three GuineasVirginia Woolf
uses MK
's situation as an example to illustrate her thesis that the daughters of educated men received an unpaid-for...
Education
Maggie Gee
This ran to 140,000 words. Looking back, she wrote, I felt like a camel, awkwardly humping a huge top-heavy burden of words across the desert. At every step, something more truthful, wilder, simpler or more...
Education
Doris Lessing
Before attending school and after she left, Doris educated herself by reading. Her parents possessed copies of the classics, like Scott
, Dickens
, and Kipling
. She read widely in the nineteenth century—her favourites...