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.
Virginia Woolf
found that the production of this book required a lot of work in the closing stages from her as publisher. She received the (apparently corrected) proofs by 2 March in a state calculated...
In a letter to Ethel Smyth
on 1 March 1937, Virginia Woolf
described this work as a manuscript thrust on us.
Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Editors Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne Trautmann, Hogarth Press.
6: 111
Publishing
Viola Tree
Michael Burn
wrote an introduction for this book, and VT
's half-uncle Max Beerbohm
wrote a letter which served as prefatory material. The book draws on a scrapbook or commonplace-book kept by Parsons: hence its...
Literary responses
Viola Tree
VT
was admired throughout and after her lifetime for her commanding presence, beauty, and grace. Woolf
wrote in her diary in 1926 that Tree had the great egotism, the magnification of self, which any bodily...
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
Friends, Associates
Violet Trefusis
VT
was gathering material for her upcoming roman à clef, Broderie Anglaise, about herself, Vita Sackville-West
, and Woolf
(with whom Vita had been intimately involved for several years). Woolf wrote about the meeting...
Publishing
Violet Trefusis
When VT
met Virginia Woolf
for tea in London in November 1932, she asked her to publish this novel at the Hogarth Press
, Woolf declined.
Souhami, Diana. Mrs. Keppel and Her Daughter. Flamingo.
256-7
Holroyd, Michael. “A Tale of Three Novels”. London Review of Books, Vol.
32
, No. 3, pp. 31-2.
31
The Feminist Companion incorrectly lists the Hogarth Press
Textual Features
Violet Trefusis
The novel details the literary and romantic triangles among writer Anne Lindell (a sketch to some extent inspired by VT
herself), the former lover of aristocrat John Shorne (Sackville-West
), who is having an...
Intertextuality and Influence
Violet Trefusis
Broderie Anglaise may be read as the last of a variously-authored trilogy of novels featuring references to the affair between VT
and Vita Sackville-West
, following Vita's Challenge and Virginia Woolf
's Orlando (1928), both...
Souhami, Diana. Mrs. Keppel and Her Daughter. Flamingo.
257
Glendinning, Victoria, and Violet Trefusis. “Introduction”. Broderie Anglaise, translated by. Barbara Bray and Barbara Bray, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
v, xvi
In a critical essay, Broderie Anglaise...
Fictionalization
Violet Trefusis
In addition to her role in Challenge, VT
appeared in several creative pieces by others. The most famous example is Virginia Woolf
's Orlando, which reimagines VT
as the seductive Princess Sasha, who...
Friends, Associates
Violet Trefusis
VT
had tea in London with Virginia Woolf
(whom she was hoping to persuade to publish her first novel written in English, Tandem). It appeared next year from Heinemann
.
Souhami, Diana. Mrs. Keppel and Her Daughter. Flamingo.
256
Textual Production
Rose Tremain
RT
's third novel, The Cupboard, had for its protagonist a successful woman novelist, a former suffragist and a friend of Virginia Woolf
, being interviewed by a worshipping American journalist.
AT
's critical reputation fell into the doldrums a few years after his death; it has been argued, not quite convincingly, that this was a result of his autobiography's ascribing his success to sheer hard...