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, 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
Literary responses Romer Wilson
In her diary on 3 May 1921, Virginia Woolf , who had not yet read the novel, accurately predicted that it would win the Hawthornden Prize. Six days later, she recorded her disappointment in it:...
Literary responses Radclyffe Hall
A number of writers rallied in support of RH . E. M. Forster and Leonard Woolf drafted a letter protesting the suppression of The Well of Loneliness. Its signatories included Bernard Shaw , T. S. Eliot
Literary responses Dora Sigerson
Virginia Woolf , in her review of the volume for the Times Literary Supplement, characterised DS as one of the class of poets who use poetry for offloading any personal experience, whether trivial or...
Literary responses Rebecca West
Virginia Woolf judged it to be in a different and higher league than the novels of Hugh Walpole , although produced, like ornamental porcelain, according to a convention which was tight and affected and occasionally...
Literary responses Elinor Mordaunt
This received the accolade of a warm welcome in the Times Literary Supplement from the highly critical young Virginia Woolf . The novel confirmed her sense that EMtakes a very high place among living...
Literary responses Romer Wilson
This book garnered RW much praise. The Times Literary Supplement printed a rave review which concluded, the whole book is a tour de force as a reconstruction of a creative artist's intense hunger for more...
Literary responses Radclyffe Hall
Privately, Virginia Woolf was unenthusiastic about The Well. She described it as so pure, so sweet, so sentimental, that none of us can read it, and claimed that the dulness of the book is...
Literary responses Rose Macaulay
Potterism was both popular and favourably reviewed. For years it remained RM 's best-known work. She later felt it was rather jejune and too much of a tract. I feel I hammered away with a...
Literary responses Mary Butts
Although her work received mixed reviews, MB was generally recognized as an important if eccentric literary figure during her lifetime, and she was highly praised by other modernist writers, including Ezra Pound , Marianne Moore
Literary responses Beatrice Webb
The Times reviewer praised the fullness, the intimacy, and the extraordinary range of this diary, its power of observation, gift of expression, and freedom from egotism.
“The Times Digital Archive 1785-2007”. Thompson Gale: The Times Digital Archive.
(26 February 1926): 8
Reading it the following year,...
Literary responses Marcel Proust
The novel at once gave rise to an intellectual cult, and not among the French. Woolf wished she could write like Proust, though Joyce is reported as seeing no special talent in him.
Borne Back Daily. 2001, http://borneback.com/ .
16 November 2010
Literary responses Elinor Mordaunt
Johnson thought these stories less successful that EM 's novels. He may have been influenced by his declared belief that women have seldom excelled in short fiction.
Johnson, R. Brimley. Some Contemporary Novelists (Women). Books for Libraries Press, 1967.
57
Woolf , too, was less warm in...
Literary responses Romer Wilson
RW 's novels, tackling the complex philosophical and social issues that faced people in European countries in the years after the Great War, have been largely, if not entirely, forgotten. Her death at thirty-nine years...
Literary responses Laura Riding
LR wrote to Time and Tide on 9 May 1931, to complain that a reviewer had blasted four of her books: Woolf felt she sounded shallow and egotistical, I mean, I feel, what will people...
Literary responses Elizabeth Taylor
At Mrs. Lippincote's set the tone for reception of ET by attracting very mixed reviews. She treasured praise from L. P. Hartley , Richard Church (who was reminded of Woolf 's Mrs Dalloway), and...

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