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, 1981, 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, 2005.
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, 1986–1994, 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, 1975–1980, 6 vols.
4: 231
Well-known black and white photograph of Virginia Stephen (later Virginia Woolf), 1902. She is seen in profile, with her hair loosely caught back in a bun
Photograph of Virginia Woolf with hand on face wearing a fur stole. This is a picture from one of Virginia Woolf's own photo albums at Monk's House which were acquired at an auction at Sotheby's in 1982 (cf. Maggie Humm, Snapshots of Bloomsbury: The Private Lives of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell, p. 187), gifted in 1983 by Frederick R. Koch to the Harvard Theater Collection, Houghton Libray, Harvard University, and afterwards scanned and uploaded by the library.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Publishing T. S. Eliot
Virginia and Leonard Woolf published the first English edition of TSE 's The Waste Land at the Hogarth Press in Richmond.
Gallup, Donald Clifford. T.S. Eliot: A Bibliography. Rev. and extended ed., Harcourt, Brace, 1969.
31
Woolmer, J. Howard. A Checklist of the Hogarth Press, 1917-1938. Hogarth Press, 1976.
40
Publishing Viola Tree
Michael Burn wrote an introduction for this book, and VT 's half-uncle Max Beerbohm wrote a letter which served as prefatory material. The book draws on a scrapbook or commonplace-book kept by Parsons: hence its...
Publishing E. M. Forster
Virginia and Leonard Woolf 's Hogarth Press published EMF 's The Story of the Siren in a print run of 500 copies.
Kirkpatrick, Brownlee Jean. A Bibliography of E. M. Forster. Clarendon, 1985.
24
Reception Dorothy Bussy
DB first wrote Olivia in 1933 and then sent the manuscript to her friend André Gide . Gide found it not very engaging
qtd. in
Caws, Mary Ann, and Sarah Bird Wright. Bloomsbury and France: Art and Friends. Oxford University Press, 2000.
344
and, according to Mary Ann Caws and Sarah Bird Wright ...
Reception Dorothy Richardson
DR thought less of Woolf 's writing, and disliked juxtapositions of their work by critics. In 1937 she refused requests from Life and Letters Today and the London Mercury to review Woolf's The Years because...
Reception Rupert Brooke
Virginia Woolf hated the memoir by Marsh which appeared in the London Collected Poems. She called Marsh's image of RB a hairdresser's block. A memoir by Maurice Brown published at Chicago in 1927...
Reception Tillie Olsen
An honorary degree from the University of Nebraska in Lincoln made TO remember how Woolf portrayed academic ceremonials in Three Guineas as masculine posturing. This was one of what became a large harvest of honorary...
Reception Ann Lady Fanshawe
The 1907 edition was reviewed by the future Virginia Woolf . Sandra Findley wrote about ALF under the heading Seventeenth Century Women's Autobiography in Literature and Power in the Seventeenth Century, edited by Francis...
Reception Jane Austen
In 1933 there was excitement in the book-collecting world when a small collection of books that Austen had owned (by writers like Ariosto , Goldsmith , Hume , and Thomson ) appeared in the catalogue...
Reception Rhoda Broughton
In a lamentable
Lowndes, Marie Belloc. Diaries and Letters of Marie Belloc Lowndes, 1911-1947. Editor Marques, Susan Lowndes, Chatto and Windus, 1971.
217
article on the death of Virginia Woolf , Hugh Walpole accused literary ladies of acting like priestesses engaged in throwing fragrant incense on their own altars. The first name he mentions...
Reception Jane Ellen Harrison
The lecture series was launched by distinguished supporters including J. G. Frazer , Sir Arthur Evans , Roger Fry , and Virginia and Leonard Woolf .
Beard, Mary. The Invention of Jane Harrison. Harvard University Press, 2000.
1
Reception Ling Shuhua
LS's memoir is at the centre of her body of writing. From the start of her exchanges with Bell and Woolf , LS sent them drafts of it, written in English. She conveyed her appreciation...
Reception Vita Sackville-West
Woolf reported reading the novel all in a gulp with pleasure in bed; very well done I think.
Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Editors Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne Trautmann, Hogarth Press, 1975–1980, 6 vols.
5: 214
It was a Book Society Choice, recommended by Clemence Dane and Hugh Walpole , and...
Reception Ling Shuhua
This correspondence was generative on multiple levels. LS lost her manuscript during the tumult of the Sino-Japanese War. Virginia Woolf kept the chapters LS sent to her and when, years after Woolf died, LS arrived...
Reception Q. D. Leavis
With some minor exceptions, interactions between QDL and Virginia Woolf were hostile. Both Leavises regularly took up an anti-Bloomsbury stance in their lecturing and writing. After reading QDL 's review, Woolf remarked in her...

Timeline

No timeline events available.

Texts