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.
The book was widely and favourably reviewed. Lady Rhondda
found it [e]xtraordinarily interesting. I sat up reading it till long past my usual bedtime and have been reading it again all this morning.
Gorham, Deborah. Vera Brittain: A Feminist Life. Blackwell.
1
Virginia Woolf
Literary responses
Harriette Wilson
Contemporary admirers of HW
on literary grounds included Walter Scott
, who praised her dialogue and intelligence, and thought her out and out
Thirkell, Angela. The Fortunes of Harriette. Hamish Hamilton.
Virginia Woolf
wrote in strict confidence that she thought the poems not very very [sic] good; but interesting; prose poems; not good enough and difficult to sell of course.
Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Editors Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne Trautmann, Hogarth Press.
6: 34 and n1
Literary responses
Rose Allatini
Meanwhile the Times Literary Supplement saw the novel as well-written—evidently the work of a woman. The reviewer judged that as a frank and sympathetic study of certain types of mind and character, it is of...
Literary responses
Mary Russell Mitford
John Kenyon
wrote in 1833 to tell MRM
of the delight taken by himself and his brother in her tolerant and humanizing pen.
Mitford, Mary Russell. The Life of Mary Russell Mitford: Told by Herself in Letters To Her Friends. Editor L’Estrange, Alfred Guy Kingham, Harper and Brothers.
2: 145
Her reputation as a financially successful author brought her unwelcome...
Literary responses
E. Arnot Robertson
The reviewer for Queen magazine placed EAR
in the second rank of women novelists (with Pearl S. Buck
as well as Virginia Woolf
in the first)—and did this after first raising the question of whether...
Literary responses
Charlotte Brontë
Jane Eyre has become a sensitive barometer of feminist criticism. With its author it became the focus of Victorian women critics, including Anne Thackeray Ritchie
and Charlotte Mew
. Virginia Woolf
admired the poetry of...
Literary responses
Romer Wilson
In her diary on 3 May 1921, Virginia Woolf
, who had not yet read the novel, accurately predicted that it would win the Hawthornden Prize. Six days later, she recorded her disappointment in it:...
Literary responses
Pearl S. Buck
In her review for The New York Times, Katherine Wood
pointed out some of the parallels between these opinions on gender and those of (the recently dead) Virginia Woolf
.
Conn, Peter. Pearl S. Buck. A Cultural Biography. Cambridge University Press.
248
Literary responses
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Alison Winch
has recently put forward a lesbian reading of the Turkish baths letter which supposes that Montagu was flirting with the Lady — to whom it is (in the edited version though not necessarily...
Literary responses
Dorothy Richardson
Virginia Woolf
reviewed The Tunnel for the Times Literary Supplement on 13 February 1919. She set out to make it clear to potential readers that here was a challenge: DR
, she said, allowed no...
Literary responses
Colette
Virginia Woolf
(who in 1936 had eagerly anticipated her reading of Mes Apprentissages) found Duoall about love and rather too slangy for her perfectly to understand its French, but what a born writer...
Literary responses
Vita Sackville-West
Her biographer Victoria Glendinning describes her Diary of a Journey to France with Virginia Woolf
in 1928 as rather flat.
Glendinning, Victoria. Vita. Penguin.
200
Literary responses
Ray Strachey
Virginia Woolf
, clearly delighted at her introduction to Willard, praised the book in her Times Literary Supplement review for its directness and candour and complete lack of padding, as well as the vividness with...
Literary responses
Emily Brontë
Since the early criticism which took its lead from Charlotte's biographical portrait, a biographical and hagiographic industry has arisen around all three Brontë sisters and their home in Haworth. A. Mary F. Robinson
published...