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.
Brett, Dorothy. Lawrence and Brett. J. B. Lippincott Company.
39-40
On the whole, however, she did not pursue literary friendships in the USA. She continued her...
Friends, Associates
Edith Somerville
Somerville and Smyth
became close friends, and visited and travelled together, though biographer Maurice Collis
thinks that Smyth
expected a sexual relationship where Somerville did not.
Collis, Maurice. Somerville and Ross: A Biography. Faber and Faber.
Woolf
, going to a party there on 5 June 1921, disliked Royde-Smith and her world at first sight. Never did I see a less attractive woman than Naomi. . . .I fixed her with...
Strachey, Julia, and Frances Partridge. Julia: A Portrait of Julia Strachey. Little, Brown.
105
Frances Partridge
writes that JS
was generally judged by them to be a lively and...
Friends, Associates
Nancy Cunard
Her boredom with this life (her mother's social milieu) was something that she shared with her friend Iris Tree
, also a poet. Despite her antipathy towards it, this life presented her with important literary...
Friends, Associates
Rose Allatini
Virginia Woolf
, who gives no indication of having met RA
herself, recorded satirically how in February 1919, after the appearace and prosecution of Despised and Rejected, Lady Ottoline Morrellswooped down upon Allatini...
Friends, Associates
Ling Shuhua
Ling Shuhua
began corresponding with Virginia Woolf
, inspired by her reading of A Room of One's Own and her intimate relationship with Woolf's late nephew Julian Bell
during his time in China.
Laurence, Patricia Ondek. Lily Briscoe’s Chinese Eyes: Bloomsbury, Modernism, and China. University of South Carolina Press.
253
Friends, Associates
Berta Ruck
In Virginia Woolf
's novel Jacob's Room, 1922, a tombstone is inscribed with the name Bertha Ruck. Ruck writes that it is inscribed to The Memory of Berta Ruck.
Ruck, Berta. A Story-Teller Tells the Truth. Hutchinson.
In 1921 RM
was spending several nights a week in a room she rented in the large house of writer Naomi Royde-Smith
at 44 Prince's Gardens, Kensington.
Emery, Jane. Rose Macaulay: A Writer’s Life. John Murray.
191
Babington Smith, Constance. Rose Macaulay. Collins.
100
Chosen by Royde-Smith as a...
Friends, Associates
Antonia White
In Chelsea AW
formed a friendship with the painter Eliot Seabrooke
, a large and centred personality
Dunn, Jane. Antonia White: A Life. Jonathan Cape.
72
who supplied an oasis of sanity in her life and helped her to sort out her opinions...
Friends, Associates
Ling Shuhua
He also introduced her to both Vanessa Bell
and his maternal aunt Virginia Woolf
, who became important correspondents for her.
Welland, Sasha Su-Ling. A Thousand Miles of Dreams: The Journeys of Two Chinese Sisters. Rowman & Littlefield.
255-7
Friends, Associates
Rose Macaulay
When RM
met Virginia Woolf
, their relationship was slow to develop, because of her nervousness among the intellectual aristocrats of Bloomsbury. However, they remained friends until Woolf's death, and RM
's friendships with others...
Friends, Associates
Ray Strachey
Virginia Woolf
visited RS
at Mud House (near Fernhurst in Sussex).
Strachey, Barbara. Remarkable Relations: The Story of the Pearsall Smith Women. Universe Books.
photo 225ff
Friends, Associates
Violet Trefusis
VT
had tea in London with Virginia Woolf
(whom she was hoping to persuade to publish her first novel written in English, Tandem). It appeared next year from Heinemann
.
Souhami, Diana. Mrs. Keppel and Her Daughter. Flamingo.