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.
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
Textual Production
Sir J. M. Barrie
SJMB
also wrote introductions for and reviews of the work of others. Virginia Woolf
reproved him for his high opinion of middle-brow novelist Leonard Merrick
, for whom he wrote an introduction in 1918,
Woolf, Virginia. The Essays of Virginia Woolf. Editors McNeillie, Andrew and Stuart Nelson Clarke, Hogarth Press.
2: 265ff
Textual Production
Rosamond Lehmann
RL
's Letter to a Sister was published by Leonard
and Virginia Woolf
at the Hogarth Press
as the third in their Hogarth Letters Series.
Hastings, Selina. Rosamond Lehmann. Chatto and Windus.
132-3
Woolmer, J. Howard. A Checklist of the Hogarth Press, 1917-1938. Hogarth Press.
91
Textual Production
Julia Strachey
JS
' first novel, Cheerful Weather for the Wedding, was published by Virginia
and Leonard Woolf
's Hogarth Press
.
Cheerful Weather was the title of a waltz current in the year of publication.
Woolmer, J. Howard, and Mary E. Gaither. A Checklist of the Hogarth Press, 1917-1946. Woolmer/Brotherson.
109
Textual Production
Elizabeth Bowen
She was only beginning it on 6 January; Virginia Woolf
had her advance copy by early June.
Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Editors Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne Trautmann, Hogarth Press.
5: 360, 400
Textual Production
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...
Textual Production
Christine Brooke-Rose
After Textermination, she felt blocked in her production of fiction, and attempted an autobiography as an exercise,
Brooke-Rose, Christine. Invisible Author: Last Essays. Ohio State University Press.
55
although she claimed to feel a deep prejudice against both autobiography and biographical criticism.
Brooke-Rose, Christine. Invisible Author: Last Essays. Ohio State University Press.
53
She...
Textual Production
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.
Mary Agnes Hamilton
published Special Providence: A Tale of 1917; either this or Hamilton's previous novel must be the one which Virginia Woolf
read this month and stringently criticised.
Carew, Dudley. “Special Providence”. Times Literary Supplement, No. 1470, p. 294.
294
Woolf, Virginia. The Diary of Virginia Woolf. Editors Bell, Anne Olivier and Andrew McNeillie, Hogarth Press.
3: 296
Textual Production
Beatrice Webb
BW
sent to Leonard
and Virginia Woolf
something which was probably a draft version of her second volume of autobiography, published after her death as Our Partnership.
Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Editors Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne Trautmann, Hogarth Press.
4: 305
Textual Production
Dora Carrington
In June 1919, Virginia Woolf
wrote to Carrington about her plans for Round House, where one of the chief decorations is going to be a large showpiece by Carrington, found in an attic at...
Kirkpatrick, Brownlee Jean. A Bibliography of E. M. Forster. Clarendon.
53
Textual Production
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
Textual Production
Norah Lofts
Pargeters, the last novel by NL
, was issued posthumously the year after her death, and in two separate paperback editions the next year.
It has no apparent relation to Virginia Woolf
's The...
Textual Production
T. S. Eliot
Virginia
and Leonard Woolf
published TSE
's early Poems (including Sweeney among the Nightingales) at the Hogarth Press
.
Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Editors Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne Trautmann, Hogarth Press.
2: 353n3
Woolmer, J. Howard. A Checklist of the Hogarth Press, 1917-1938. Hogarth Press.
31
Gallup, Donald Clifford. T.S. Eliot: A Bibliography. Harcourt, Brace.
24-5
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.