Virginia Woolf

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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.
4: 231

Connections

Connections Sort descending Author name Excerpt
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 Q. D. Leavis
All three of the Roth children had their early education at Latymer School in Hazelbury Lane, Edmonton. This was a co-educational school at which they thrived. Ian MacKillop (biographer of F. R. Leavis) suggests...
Family and Intimate relationships Ray Strachey
RS 's sister, Karin , was one of the first Freudian psychoanalysts.
Strachey, Barbara. Remarkable Relations: The Story of the Pearsall Smith Women. Universe Books.
13
She became the first woman at Cambridge to receive a Star, or Distinction, in Philosophy.
Strachey, Barbara. Remarkable Relations: The Story of the Pearsall Smith Women. Universe Books.
264
She married Adrian Stephen , Virginia Woolf 's younger brother.
Strachey, Barbara. Remarkable Relations: The Story of the Pearsall Smith Women. Universe Books.
270
Family and Intimate relationships Julia Frankau
Her daughter Joan (by marriage Joan Bennett ) became a university teacher and published books in the 1940s on George Eliot and Virginia Woolf .
Frankau, Reuben. Emails to Orlando about Julia Frankau, with attached bibliography.
Family and Intimate relationships Walter Pater
WP was particularly close to his unmarried sisters. Both women were accomplished in their own right. The elder sister, Hester , became known as a talented embroiderer and friend to Mary Augusta Ward and Virginia Woolf
Family and Intimate relationships Ethel Smyth
ES met Virginia Woolf ; their friendship continued until Woolf's death in 1941.
Collis, Louise. Impetuous Heart: The Story of Ethel Smyth. William Kimber.
175
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...
Family and Intimate relationships Elizabeth Taylor
The couple had two children: a son, Renny, born in June 1937, and a daughter, Joanna, born on 1 February 1941, after a labour during which ET was mostly alone while her husband was out...
Family and Intimate relationships Lady Anne Clifford
LAC 's father, George Clifford, third Earl of Cumberland , was not only a land-owner but also a merchant-adventurer. From his most successful voyages he returned with cargoes of exotic produce and artefacts (as mentioned...
Family and Intimate relationships Dora Carrington
DC began a long friendship with Virginia Woolf when she was summoned to Woolf's country home, Asheham, after breaking into the house with Barbara Hiles and David Garnett .
Gerzina, Gretchen. Carrington: A Life of Dora Carrington, 1893-1932. John Murray.
95-6
Family and Intimate relationships Dora Carrington
DC met her greatest love, the writer Lytton Strachey , during a three-day stay at Asheham, the Sussex home of Virginia (and Leonard) Woolf .
This was a year which in Virginia Woolf's life was...
Family and Intimate relationships Constance Garnett
David married twice and had four children by the time of his mother's death. His first wife, Ray Garnett , was an artist and illustrator. His second wife, Angelica Bell , was the daughter of...
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 Dorothy Bussy
Dorothy's immediate family was large and vibrant: she had nine surviving siblings, most of whom distinguished themselves in the public realm. Her sister Philippa (Pippa) Strachey (1872-1968) was a longtime suffragist who organized the first...
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.
17
She later worked for as governess in the household of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire , and later...

Timeline

1925: Leonard and Virginia Woolf published Edwin...

Writing climate item

1925

Leonard and Virginia Woolf published Edwin Muir 's First Poems.

1928: Edwin Muir published The Structure of the...

Writing climate item

1928

Edwin Muir published The Structure of the Novel.

1928: Members of the British Federation of University...

Building item

1928

Members of the British Federation of University Women (later known as the British Federation of Women Graduates ) established the Sybil Campbell Libraryfor the study of the expansion of the role of women in recent generations.

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...

Writing climate item

1931

Margaret Llewelyn Davies edited a collection of reminiscences about the Women's Co-operative Guild (WCG) entitled Life as We Have Known It.

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...

National or international item

1 October 1935

At the Labour Party 's annual conference Ernest Bevin made a dramatic attack on the pacifist views of the leader, George Lansbury , who thereupon resigned.

1936: The Church of England Archbishops' Commission...

Building item

1936

The Church of EnglandArchbishops' Commission on Women and the Ministry drew its conclusions and published its report.

7 March 1936: Hitler marched into and appropriated the...

National or international item

7 March 1936

Hitler marched into and appropriated the Rhineland: neither France nor Britain opposed him.

: The second number of Orion. A Miscellany...

Writing climate item

Autumn1945

The second number of Orion. A Miscellany appeared: Rosamond Lehmann was one of the editors, along with C. Day Lewis and Edwin Muir .

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.