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.
Strachey, Julia, and Frances Partridge. Julia: A Portrait of Julia Strachey. Little, Brown.
43
Rendel, who had diverse skills and interests, was Virginia Woolf
's chief physician during...
Family and Intimate relationships
Lady Anne Clifford
LAC
was married, at midnight, to Richard Sackville
. Two days later, on his father's death, he became Earl of Dorset and she became mistress of Knole House.
This is the great house which...
Family and Intimate relationships
Lady Anne Clifford
LAC
's father, George Clifford, third Earl of Cumberland
, was not only a land-owner but also a merchant-adventurer. From his most successful voyages he returned with cargoes of exotic produce and artefacts (as mentioned...
Family and Intimate relationships
Dora Carrington
DC
began a long friendship with Virginia Woolf
when she was summoned to Woolf's country home, Asheham, after breaking into the house with Barbara Hiles
and David Garnett
.
Gerzina, Gretchen. Carrington: A Life of Dora Carrington, 1893-1932. John Murray.
95-6
Family and Intimate relationships
Constance Garnett
David married twice and had four children by the time of his mother's death. His first wife, Ray Garnett
, was an artist and illustrator. His second wife, Angelica Bell
, was the daughter of...
Family and Intimate relationships
Vita Sackville-West
VSW
's growing romance with Virginia Woolf
, which had lasted for three years, produced a significant moment of intimacy
Glendinning, Victoria. Vita. Penguin.
149
during a visit by Woolf to Long Barn.
Glendinning, Victoria. Vita. Penguin.
149
Family and Intimate relationships
Dora Carrington
DC
met her greatest love, the writer Lytton Strachey
, during a three-day stay at Asheham, the Sussex home of Virginia
(and Leonard) Woolf
.
This was a year which in Virginia Woolf's life was...
Education
Maggie Gee
This ran to 140,000 words. Looking back, she wrote, I felt like a camel, awkwardly humping a huge top-heavy burden of words across the desert. At every step, something more truthful, wilder, simpler or more...
Education
Fay Weldon
Fay attended another progressive establishment, the co-educational Burgess Hill School
, which she found absurd, not only noisy and disorderly but actively anti-academic. The best thing about it was being taught English briefly by the...
Education
Doris Lessing
Before attending school and after she left, Doris educated herself by reading. Her parents possessed copies of the classics, like Scott
, Dickens
, and Kipling
. She read widely in the nineteenth century—her favourites...
Education
Eleanor Rathbone
She then, in 1892, began to study Greek under Janet Case
, later Virginia Woolf
's tutor and friend. Another point of similarity between the two authors' early educations can be seen in Rathbone's comment...
Education
Flannery O'Connor
In summer 1945 Mary Flannery O'Connor graduated from Georgia College (describing it in the yearbook as [t]he usual bunk).
Gooch, Brad. Flannery. Little, Brown and Co.
116
She applied to two universities, and the University of Iowa
offered her a scholarship...
Education
Rumer Godden
RG
's determination to become a writer fuelled a continued self-education. Books were hard to come by in India, yet she managed to find and devour recent publications: Edith Sitwell
's Troy Park and Façade...