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.
SB
's letter-writing kept her in touch with communities of writers and was a personal lifeline during her isolated years in China. Among her correspondents were Virginia Woolf
and Sydney Schiff
(Stephen Hudson). Some letters...
Textual Features
Theodora Benson
Which Way?, another novel about love and diversions in high society, seems to imitate or even foreshadow certain effects used by Virginia Woolf
. The story is written on three levels,
Jenkins, Elizabeth. “Hon. Theodora Benson”. Times, No. 57452, p. 8.
8
each of...
Textual Production
Eavan Boland
EB
alluded in the title of her poetry volume A Woman Without a Country to Virginia Woolf
's outsider pronouncement: as a woman, I have no country.
McAuliffe, John. “Rare playfulness marks Eavan Boland’s fine new collection”. The Irish Times.
Textual Production
Phyllis Bottome
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 Features
Phyllis Bottome
In March 1928, Vita Sackville-West
and Woolf exchanged letters about a story by PB
in which Woolf
appears as the character Avery Fleming. Sackville-West, who met Bottome in Germany, noted that she wrote the story...
Friends, Associates
Elizabeth Bowen
EB
loved Oxford (where she and her husband spent ten years) and became a social success there. She met and became friends with John
and Susan Buchan
, and it was through them that she...
Friends, Associates
Elizabeth Bowen
Frequent guests at Bowen's Court (where, says Victoria Glendinning, they ate and drank royally)
Glendinning, Victoria. Elizabeth Bowen. Alfred A. Knopf.
She was only beginning it on 6 January; Virginia Woolf
had her advance copy by early June.
Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Editors Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne Trautmann, Hogarth Press.
5: 360, 400
Literary responses
Elizabeth Bowen
Glendinning writes: She is what happened after Bloomsbury; she is the link that connects Virginia Woolf
with Iris Murdoch
and Muriel Spark
.
Glendinning, Victoria. Elizabeth Bowen. Alfred A. Knopf.
xv
Elizabeth Jenkins
characteristically remarked that as Britain's leading woman of letters...
Intertextuality and Influence
Elizabeth Bowen
The authors whom EB
wrote of for the British Council in English Novelists are (as the commission required) canonical and mostly male. She was deeply influenced by Virginia Woolf
, and wrote after Woolf's death...
Textual Features
Marjorie Bowen
MB
credits British women novelists for modifying the methods of the great European novelists, noting in particular Dorothy Richardson
's perfection of the stream-of-consciousness technique. She draws a contrast between Dorothy Richardson
's Miriam and...
MB
's writing career was fuelled by an early admiration for Shaw
, Joyce
, and especially Woolf
. A Room of One's Own had such an impact on her within a few years of...
Education
Dorothy Brett
Brett proved an exceptional Slade student. She received first prize for figure painting in her final year. She particularly drew the attention of two of her instructors, Henry Tonks
andFrederick Brown
. She was...
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.