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 Woolfs were eager to publish it. Virginia
, who had encouraged Mansfield to get it finished,
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
wrote of it in her diary: It has the living power, the detached existence of a work of...
Textual Production
Adrienne Rich
First published in 1971 (Rich's collections often include writings issued previously), the essay When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision is described in 1988 by Elizabeth Meese
as still inform[ing] much of the best work...
Woolmer, J. Howard, and Mary E. Gaither. A Checklist of the Hogarth Press, 1917-1946. Woolmer/Brotherson.
25
Textual Production
E. M. Forster
Essays here include Anonymity, Art for Art's Sake, Does Culture Matter?, and What I Believe (expressing Bloomsbury Group ideals), as well as several pieces on World War Two.
Kirkpatrick, Brownlee Jean. A Bibliography of E. M. Forster. Clarendon.
57-8
It also contains...
Textual Production
Pamela Hansford Johnson
For seventeen years PHJ
wrote a weekly review of new fiction.
Johnson, Pamela Hansford. Important to Me. Macmillan; Scribner.
243
In April 1937 she was one of the few who to be enthusiastic, instead of lukewarm, about The Years, which she judged...
Textual Production
Katherine Mansfield
KM
left at least fifteen stories unfinished. The final book which she planned—and which she intended to be her first mature and fully-conceived work—was never written; nor were the novels which she meant to write...
Textual Production
E. M. Delafield
In the year of this publication, 1935, Virginia Woolf
wrote to her niece, Angelica Bell
, I've been seeing E. M. Delafield who writes The Provincial Lady: she is called Dashwood really; Elizabeth Dashwood; and...
Textual Production
Dorothy Richardson
DR
was said (by Woolf herself) to be working on a study of Virginia Woolf
's writings: since no such study ever appeared, and Richardson did not greatly admire Woolf's texts, this was likely a...
Textual Production
Margiad Evans
Among other writers of stories, she admired not Virginia Woolf
or Katherine Mansfield
, but the greater power and fury of Eudora Welty
,
Lloyd-Morgan, Ceridwen, and Margiad Evans. “Introduction”. The Old and the Young, Seren, pp. 7-17.
15
as well as several male Welsh writers in English, and...
Textual Production
Q. D. Leavis
QDL
published her most notorious review: her Scrutiny piece, Caterpillars of the Commonwealth Unite!, on Virginia Woolf
's Three Guineas.
Kinch, M. B. et al. F.R. Leavis and Q.D. Leavis: An Annotated Bibliography. Garland.
157
Textual Production
Rupert Brooke
Thirteen of the letters had been written for the Weekly Westminster Gazette and two for the New Statesman. The volume was re-issued in 1968, edited by Geoffrey Keynes
. As far back as 1931...
Textual Production
Christina Stead
In 1972 CS
spent three painful months over a commission to review Quentin Bell
's life of Virginia Woolf
. She found many aspects and supposed aspects of Woolf repugnant: her alleged lack of appreciation...
Textual Production
Elspeth Huxley
The commission for this book from Chatto
had been spurred by an invitation from Frank Debenham
on behalf of the Colonial Office
for a book of 100,000 words, for which they would offer £400 and...
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.
Woolmer, J. Howard, and Mary E. Gaither. A Checklist of the Hogarth Press, 1917-1946. Woolmer/Brotherson.
71
Timeline
1964: When Julia Ballam (an undergraduate at St...
Building item
1964
When Julia Ballam
(an undergraduate at St Hilda's College, Oxford
, who later became the scholar Julia Briggs) got pregnant, the college stripped her of her scholarship, but more remarkably for this date they did...
December 1964: Jean-Paul Sartre was awarded the Nobel Prize...
Writing climate item
December 1964
Jean-Paul Sartre
was awarded the Nobel
Prize in Literature but declined to accept it for personal and ideological reasons: the only person ever to do so.
1968: V. S. Pritchett, whose career as a prolific...
Writing climate item
1968
V. S. Pritchett
, whose career as a prolific man of letters ran from the early 1920s into the twenty-first century, issued his most successful book, A Cab at the Door, the earlier volume...
September 1998: Literary historian Nicola Beauman founded...
Women writers item
September 1998
Literary historian Nicola Beauman
founded Persephone Books
, aimed at reprinting in beautiful format forgotten classics by twentieth-century (mostly women) writers.
13 July 2006: A rare book sale at Sotheby's brought under...
Writing climate item
13 July 2006
A rare book sale at Sotheby's
brought under the hammer both a First Folio of the works of Shakespeare
and a copy of the first edition of Woolf
's Orlando inscribed to Vita Sackville-West
.
April 2016: A bot, or Twitter account programmed to issue...
Writing climate item
April 2016
A bot, or Twitter
account programmed to issue a piece of writing divided into fragments of 140 characters or less, entitled Sappho
@sapphobot, was launched this month and became Twitter's most popular poetry bot (apart from...
Texts
Woolf, Virginia. To the Lighthouse. Hogarth Press, 1982.
Woolf, Virginia. To the Lighthouse. The original holograph draft. Editor Dick, Susan, University of Toronto Press, 1982.
Woolf, Virginia, and Leonard Woolf. Two Stories. Hogarth Press, 1917.
Woolf, Virginia, and Michèle Barrett. Women and Writing. Women’s Press, 1979.