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.
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
Dora Carrington
As part of a suicide watch around Carrington organized by her friends, Virginia
and Leonard Woolf
visited her at Ham Spray on 10 March. Virginia
later wrote in her diary: She burst into tears &...
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
(Joan) Pernel Strachey
(1876-1951) was Tutor, Lecturer in Modern Languages, Vice-Principal, and then from 1923 to 1941 Principal of Newnham College
. She hosted Virginia Woolf
in October 1928 when Woolf addressed the Newnham Arts Society
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
Sybille Bedford
Since the first attempt had been prevented by Home Office
suspicion that SB
was an undesirable foreign prostitute taking this means to begin plying her trade in Britain, the best man on the second occasion...
Family and Intimate relationships
Marghanita Laski
The political theorist Harold Laski
was ML
's uncle. Laski, a professor at the London School of Economics, was the best-known socialist intellectual of his era. His books on the Second World War, the...
Family and Intimate relationships
Dorothy Bussy
Janie Bussy became a painter and writer like her parents; she also lived with them all her life. Of the Bussys' friends, the Bells and Virginia Woolf
were especially close to Janie. Janie was fully...
Education
Flannery O'Connor
In summer 1945 Mary Flannery O'Connor graduated from Georgia College (describing it in the yearbook as [t]he usual bunk).
Gooch, Brad. Flannery. Little, Brown and Co.
116
She applied to two universities, and the University of Iowa
offered her a scholarship...
Education
Rumer Godden
RG
's determination to become a writer fuelled a continued self-education. Books were hard to come by in India, yet she managed to find and devour recent publications: Edith Sitwell
's Troy Park and Façade...
Education
Margaret Forster
As a very small child MF
was noisy and demanding and given to tantrums.
Forster, Margaret. Hidden Lives. Viking.
121-2
At two she talked in long sentences . . . and never stopped asking questions and wanting to try to...
Education
Olivia Manning
At home Olivia was encouraged to love poetry, learned to read by the time she was four, and was later subjected to piano lessons which taught her nothing. As a teenager and thinking of herself...
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
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...