Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
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.
LS also wrote a short memoir about her encounters with Virginia Woolf
, five pages long and in manuscript form. In it, she discusses watching Edna O'Brien
's Virginia: A Play and reflects on her...
Textual Production
Tillie Olsen
TO
's dazzling performance as a Communist speaker was the first phase of a career that led towards her later years as a star literary lecturer. As a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute
she spoke...
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Elizabeth Robins
She had suggested to Virginia Woolf
by February 1929 that she might write her memoirs.
Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Editors Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne Trautmann, Hogarth Press.
4: 26, 26n2
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Olivia Manning
This authoritative information comes from her biography by Neville
and June Braybrooke
. Different versions put her at sixteen and the number of lurid mystery serials at four: she liked to keep secret both her...
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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...
Woolmer, J. Howard, and Mary E. Gaither. A Checklist of the Hogarth Press, 1917-1946. Woolmer/Brotherson.
71
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Margaret Haig, Viscountess Rhondda
Time and Tide carried two excerpts from Woolf
's A Room of One's Own in November 1929, and the next year MHVR
wrote two series of articles on the treatment of women and gender in...
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Willa Cather
In the 1920s WC
was working for a maximum of three hours a day, banishing her work from her mind during the rest of day, but keeping herself fresh for it. She said her only...
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Lady Ottoline Morrell
LOM
began work on her memoirs in 1919, and returned to them more seriously in 1925.
Seymour, Miranda. Ottoline Morrell: Life on the Grand Scale. Farrar Straus Giroux.
SB
's letter-writing kept her in touch with communities of writers and was a personal lifeline during her isolated years in China. Among her correspondents were Virginia Woolf
and Sydney Schiff
(Stephen Hudson). Some letters...
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Wyndham Lewis
Margaret Drabble
notes that in this text Woolf
is characterized as Rhoda Hyman, the Empress of High-brow London, a lanky, sickly lady in Victorian muslins with a drooping, intellect-ravaged exterior.
Hussey, Mark. Virginia Woolf A to Z. Facts on File.
147
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E. B. C. Jones
EBCJ
wrote the review for the Cambridge Magazine of Virginia Woolf
's Night and Day, 1919. According to Woolf, EBCJ
did not like the novel's characters, but found Woolf to be in the forefront...
Textual Production
Edith Craig
Edith Craig appears in Clemence Dane
's play Eighty in the Shade as the dominant but dependent Blanche Carroll.