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.
The Woolfs were eager to publish it. Virginia
, who had encouraged Mansfield to get it finished,
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
wrote of it in her diary: It has the living power, the detached existence of a work of...
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Adrienne Rich
First published in 1971 (Rich's collections often include writings issued previously), the essay When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision is described in 1988 by Elizabeth Meese
as still inform[ing] much of the best work...
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Hope Mirrlees
Virginia Woolf
had asked by letter in January 1923: Are you writing your book again? I very much want to read it.
Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Editors Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne Trautmann, Hogarth Press.
The commission for this book from Chatto
had been spurred by an invitation from Frank Debenham
on behalf of the Colonial Office
for a book of 100,000 words, for which they would offer £400 and...
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Rose Macaulay
RM
's Catchwords and Claptrap, another volume of essays, was published by Leonard
and Virginia Woolf
at the Hogarth Press
.
Woolmer, J. Howard, and Mary E. Gaither. A Checklist of the Hogarth Press, 1917-1946. Woolmer/Brotherson.
42
Bensen, Alice. Rose Macaulay. Twayne.
93-4
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Katherine Mansfield
KM
left at least fifteen stories unfinished. The final book which she planned—and which she intended to be her first mature and fully-conceived work—was never written; nor were the novels which she meant to write...
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Susan Tweedsmuir
The next biography by Susan Buchan (later ST
), Funeral March of a Marionette: Charlotte of Albany, was published by Leonard
and Virginia Woolf
at the Hogarth Press
.
Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online. http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=OXVU1&fromLogin=true&reset_config=true.
Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Editors Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne Trautmann, Hogarth Press.
Woolmer, J. Howard, and Mary E. Gaither. A Checklist of the Hogarth Press, 1917-1946. Woolmer/Brotherson.
71
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Willa Cather
In the 1920s WC
was working for a maximum of three hours a day, banishing her work from her mind during the rest of day, but keeping herself fresh for it. She said her only...
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Edith Craig
Edith Craig appears in Clemence Dane
's play Eighty in the Shade as the dominant but dependent Blanche Carroll.
Theatre historian Julie Holledge
has suggested that Craig was the model for Virginia Woolf
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Vernon Lee
Virginia
and Leonard Woolf
's Hogarth Press
published VL
's The Poet's Eye, Notes on Some Differences Between Verse and Prose.
Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Editors Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne Trautmann, Hogarth Press.
3: 283n2
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Dorothy Richardson
DR
was said (by Woolf herself) to be working on a study of Virginia Woolf
's writings: since no such study ever appeared, and Richardson did not greatly admire Woolf's texts, this was likely a...
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Dorothy Wellesley
The Hogarth Press
published DW
's poem Matrix as number 3 of the series Hogarth Living Poets (it had been ready for Virginia Woolf
to read and and give her opinion about on 31 January)...
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Stella Benson
SB
's letter-writing kept her in touch with communities of writers and was a personal lifeline during her isolated years in China. Among her correspondents were Virginia Woolf
and Sydney Schiff
(Stephen Hudson). Some letters...
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E. B. C. Jones
EBCJ
wrote the review for the Cambridge Magazine of Virginia Woolf
's Night and Day, 1919. According to Woolf, EBCJ
did not like the novel's characters, but found Woolf to be in the forefront...