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.
During RL
's involvement with Goronwy Rees, they both encouraged novelist Henry Green
(actual name Henry Yorke
) to submit the manuscript of his Party Going to John Lehmann, who promoted it with Leonard
and...
When ST
's parents and Leslie Stephen
tried to nurture a childhood friendship between Susan, Vanessa
(later Bell), and Virginia
(later Woolf), the relationship never took root. As an adult, however (having admired Woolf's early...
Friends, Associates
Elizabeth Robins
In 1928 Octavia introduced ER
to her distant relative Virginia Woolf
(whose doctor she later became). Elizabeth and Octavia remained friendly with the Woolfs for years, and were devastated by Virginia's suicide in 1941. On...
While younger than the principal figures and sometimes inclined to feel herself marginal, RL
was positioned well within the Bloomsbury group. She was close friends with another younger associate, George Rylands
. During the early...
Friends, Associates
Gertrude Bell
Vita Sackville-West
stayed with GB
in Baghdad; during the visit she discussed Bell by letter with her friend Virginia Woolf
.
Howell, Georgina. Daughter of the Desert: the Remarkable Life of Gertrude Bell. Macmillan.
502
Winstone, Harry Victor Frederick. Gertrude Bell. J. Cape.
Wellesley, Dorothy. Far Have I Travelled. James Barrie.
133
In the years after the war she formed her important...
Friends, Associates
Violet Hunt
Among those who frequented VH
's house there were some to whom she became especially close. Her long friendship with Henry James
dated back to July 1882. Apart from an estrangement during the scandal over...
In 1933 Vita Sackville-West
formally introduced CSJ
and Edith Craig
to Virginia Woolf
.Woolf was not as fascinated by St John as she was by Craig and Terry, and saw her as a burden on...
Friends, Associates
Amabel Williams-Ellis
AWE
's friends and associates included Edith Sitwell
, whose poems she often published in The Spectator; Storm Jameson
, a political mentor
Williams-Ellis, Amabel. All Stracheys Are Cousins. Weidenfeld and Nicolson.
Graves and Riding were touchy as friends, between their sense of literary mission (they saw Graves's biography of T. E. Lawrence
as a somewhat demeaning potboiler, not part of his real work at all) and...
Friends, Associates
Aldous Huxley
This biography's four epigraphs include words from Dennis Gabor
, hoping that AH
will be remembered less for literary achievement than for his heritage to those who really care about the future of the human...