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.
This collection, which consists of RW
's contributions to the Bookman in the years 1929-1930, includes Feminist Revolt, Old and New, Notes on the Effect of Women Writers on Mr. Max Beerbohm, and...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Jeanette Winterson
In these essays JW
defends the power and importance of art, and the necessity of difficult art, discusses the works of Virginia Woolf
, T. S. Eliot
, and Gertrude Stein
, and explores her...
According to The Feminist Companion, Beginning the Avocadoexemplifies GA
's imagistic precision in poems about war, women writers (Virginia Woolf
, Sylvia Plath
) and the act of writing..
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Kathleen Nott
KN
approvingly cites Mary Warnock
for discerning and hailing a tendency among moral philosophers to address the complexities of actual choice, and actual decisions, thus making moral philosophy more difficult, perhaps much more embarrassing...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Ursula K. Le Guin
The publication of 2018 is a selection, designed for UK readers, from four decades of essays, talks, introductions, reviews and meditations: as she herself said, a carrier bag full of ideas and responses, thoughts...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Michèle Roberts
The contents of this volume span a range of genres and moods. poems about places or natural objects observe with precision; love poems are often ambivalent: won't you make my blood / jump? won't you...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Elizabeth Jenkins
EJ
writes here of her own career and of her memories of encounters in the literary London of the twentieth century, with vivid and idiosyncratic pen-portraits of literary lions. She describes Edith Sitwell
with enormous...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Susan Tweedsmuir
The opening proper of this volume invokes with some trepidation George Sand
's statement that there is nothing more tedious than the dregs of an old régime.
Tweedsmuir, Susan. A Winter Bouquet. G. Duckworth.
20
Again the structure of the book is...
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.
Woolmer, J. Howard, and Mary E. Gaither. A Checklist of the Hogarth Press, 1917-1946. Woolmer/Brotherson.
25
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...
Textual Production
Jan Morris
JM
edited Travels with Virginia Woolf, much of whose material consists of excerpts from Woolf
's letters and diaries.
In 1934 Vanessa Bell
did the decor for Fête Galante, of which Smyth sent Woolf
the synopsis in autumn 1932, when she was trying to get it performed. She conducted its score at Queen's...
Timeline
1904: Madame C. de Broutelles founded the Prix...
Writing climate item
1904
Madame C. de Broutelles
founded the Prix Femina Vie Heureuse, a prestigious French literary prize awarded by a jury of twelve women. A. Mary F. Robinson
(an English writer living in France) was a co-founder.
1907: Edmund Gosse anonymously published Father...
Writing climate item
1907
Edmund Gosse
anonymously published Father and Son, an autobiography of his early years which presents his father, the scientist Philip Gosse
, as an oppressive, small-minded bigot.
Birch, Dinah. “Fond Father”. London Review of Books, pp. 3-5.
3
1 November 1907: The British Museum's reading room reopened...
Building item
1 November 1907
The British Museum
's reading room reopened after being cleaned and redecorated; the dome was embellished with the names of canonical male writers, beginning with Chaucer
and ending with Browning
.
6 May 1910: King Edward VII died, and George V assumed...
National or international item
6 May 1910
King Edward VII
died, and George V
assumed the throne; Virginia Woolf
dated a section of The Years from the old king's death.
6 November 1910: Roger Fry organised the Manet and Post-Impressionists...
After 18 February 1914: Leonard Woolf published his second novel,...
Writing climate item
After 18 February 1914
Leonard Woolf
published his second novel, The Wise Virgins (which he had begun to write on his honeymoon). Quite different in genre from his first, it is a roman à clef reputedly presenting harsh caricatures...
28 April-1 May 1915: At the International Women's Peace Congress...
National or international item
28 April-1 May 1915
At the International Women's Peace Congress in The Hague, thirteen hundred women delegates from twelve countries founded the International Committee of Women for Permanent Peace
; it became the Women's International League for Peace...
From early summer 1915: Garsington Manor, near Oxford, the home of...
Building item
From early summer 1915
Garsington Manor, near Oxford, the home of Lady Ottoline
and Philip Morrell
, became a centre for many pacifists, conscientious objectors, and non-pacifist critics of the war.
1 January 1916: The British edition of Vogue (an American...
Building item
1 January 1916
The British edition of Vogue (an American fashion magazine) began publishing from Condé Nast
in Hanover Square, London.
1917: Scientist and travel-writer Norman Douglas...
Writing climate item
1917
Scientist and travel-writer Norman Douglas
published his most famous book, the novelSouth Wind, whose ironic questioning of conventional morality appealed to a war-weary public, bringing it great success.
11 November 1918: At 11 a.m. (the eleventh hour of the eleventh...
National or international item
11 November 1918
At 11 a.m. (the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month), the Armistice, signed at Compiègne, went into effect, officially ending World War I.
14 May 1920: Time and Tide began publication, offering...
Building item
14 May 1920
Time and Tide began publication, offering a feminist approach to literature, politics, and the arts: Naomi Mitchison
called it the first avowedly feminist literary journal with any class, in some ways ahead of its time.
Mitchison, Naomi. You May Well Ask: A Memoir 1920-1940. Gollancz.
168
1924: Leonard and Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth...
Woolf, Virginia. “Mrs. Dalloway in Bond Street”. The Dial, 1880-1929, Vol.
75
, No. 20-7.
Woolf, Virginia. Night and Day. Duckworth, 1919.
Woolf, Virginia. Night and Day. Hogarth Press, 1977.
Woolf, Virginia, and Margot Asquith. “Obituary: Lady Ottoline Morrell”. Times, p. 16.
Woolf, Virginia. “On Being Ill”. The New Criterion, edited by T. S. Eliot, Vol.
4
, No. 1, pp. 32-45.
Woolf, Virginia. Orlando. Hogarth Press, 1928.
Woolf, Virginia. Orlando. Hogarth Press, 1978.
Woolf, Virginia. “Phyllis and Rosamond”. The Complete Shorter Fiction of Virginia Woolf, edited by Susan Dick, Hogarth Press, 1985, pp. 17-29.
Woolf, Virginia. “Professions for Women”. The Death of the Moth and Other Essays, Hogarth Press, 1981, pp. 149-54.
Woolf, Virginia. “Review of Dora Sigerson Shorter: <span data-tei-ns-tag="tei_title" data-tei-title-lvl=‘m’>The Sad Years</span>”;. Times Literary Supplement, No. 867, p. 403.
Woolf, Virginia. “Review of W. D. Howells: <span data-tei-ns-tag="tei_title" data-tei-title-lvl=‘m’>The Son of Royal Langbrith</span>”;. The Guardian, 1846-1951.
Woolf, Virginia. Roger Fry. Hogarth Press, 1940.
Woolf, Virginia. “Sara Coleridge”. The Death of the Moth and Other Essays, Penguin Books, 1961, pp. 98-104.
Bell, Quentin, and Virginia Woolf. The Charleston Bulletin Supplements. Editor Olk, Claudia, British Library, 2013.
Woolf, Virginia. The Common Reader. Hogarth Press, 1925.