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.
4: 231

Connections

Connections Author name Sort ascending Excerpt
Literary responses E. H. Young
One review discerned a possible influence from Dorothy Richardson , but thought EHY (whom it supposed to be male) a saner person than Richardson (whom it knew to be female).
Mezei, Kathy, and Chiara Briganti. “’She must be a very good novelist’: Rereading E. H. Young (1880-1949)”. English Studies in Canada, Vol.
27
, No. 3, pp. 303-31.
316-17
Virginia Woolf (who had...
Literary responses E. H. Young
Mary Ross found in this novel a quality of humanism and the play of an intelligence which understands and accepts the emotions.
Mezei, Kathy, and Chiara Briganti. “’She must be a very good novelist’: Rereading E. H. Young (1880-1949)”. English Studies in Canada, Vol.
27
, No. 3, pp. 303-31.
313
Ironically, while The Spectator reviewer attributed to EHYtoo studious an acquaintanceship...
Literary responses E. H. Young
This time The Spectator, pursuing the line of excessive modernist influence, called EHY a thicker-skinned Virginia Woolf . . . but hardly less bogged in the undifferentiated welter of phenomenal experience.
Mezei, Kathy, and Chiara Briganti. “’She must be a very good novelist’: Rereading E. H. Young (1880-1949)”. English Studies in Canada, Vol.
27
, No. 3, pp. 303-31.
307
This novel...
Literary responses Dorothy Wordsworth
Virginia Woolf published an essay on DW in 1929 (reprinted in the Common Reader: Second Series, 1932). As early as 1940 (in his edition published the following year) Ernest de Selincourt wrote, Dorothy Wordsworth...
Literary responses Mary Wollstonecraft
The Vindication provoked a storm of comment and replies, in reviews (the Monthly was respectful both of her project and its execution, but the Critical, though its review was long and detailed, was scathingly...
Literary responses Mary Wollstonecraft
Virginia Woolf celebrated Wollstonecraft's immortality in 1929; Marjorie Bowen wrote of her critically in 1937 yet entitled her work This Shining Woman. The future anthropologist Ruth Benedict , with her own career yet to...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Jeanette Winterson
In these essays JW defends the power and importance of art, and the necessity of difficult art, discusses the works of Virginia Woolf , T. S. Eliot , and Gertrude Stein , and explores her...
Literary responses Ethel Wilson
Feminist responses to EW 's work emerged in the 1970s. Maggie Lloyd Vardoe's decision to leave a loveless marriage and independently pursue a more fulfilling one was lauded as radical for its time. In the...
Occupation Harriette Wilson
She may have had sexual relations with Sheridan ; but she left home (after another row with her father) and took her first step in her career as a courtesan by becoming Craven's mistress...
Literary responses Harriette Wilson
Contemporary admirers of HW on literary grounds included Walter Scott , who praised her dialogue and intelligence, and thought her out and out
Thirkell, Angela. The Fortunes of Harriette. Hamish Hamilton.
218
a better writer than Teresia Constantia Phillips or others in the...
Friends, Associates Romer Wilson
During the first world war RW shared a flat in London with Emily Beatrix Coursolles (E. B. C.) Jones , who later became a novelist, and who remained a friend.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
under Jones, Emily Beatrix Coursolles
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 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 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...
politics Amabel Williams-Ellis
Among those prepared to sign were Virginia and Leonard Woolf .

Timeline

1441-78: Margaret Paston, née Mautby, wrote—that is,...

Women writers item

1441-78

Margaret Paston , née Mautby, wrote—that is, dictated—to her husband and sons (in Virginia Woolf 's words) long long letters . . . . explaining, asking advice, giving news, rendering accounts
Woolf, Virginia. The Essays of Virginia Woolf. Editors McNeillie, Andrew and Stuart Nelson Clarke, Hogarth Press.
4: 23
about the family estate.

Early August 1591: Sir John Harington's translation of Ariosto's...

Writing climate item

Early August 1591

Sir John Harington 's translation of Ariosto 's heroicromanceOrlando Furioso (which means something like Roland Run Mad) was published.

20 October 1595: Michel de Montaigne's Essays were entered...

Writing climate item

20 October 1595

Michel de Montaigne 's Essays were entered in the Stationers' Register , three years after the author's death.

1752: Francis Coventry anonymously published The...

Writing climate item

1752

Francis Coventry anonymously published The History of Pompey the Little; or, the life and adventures of a lap-dog, a novelà clef which satirizes Pompey's successive owners.

By 9 July 1822: The ladies of England subscribed for a gigantic...

Building item

By 9 July 1822

The ladies of England subscribed for a gigantic statue of the Greek hero Achilles cast in metal from captured foreign guns, for Hyde Park in London, to honour the Duke of Wellington .

1825: Alexander Dyce, then a twenty-seven-year-old...

Women writers item

1825

Alexander Dyce , then a twenty-seven-year-old reluctant clergyman, published his Specimens of British Poetesses, a project in rediscovering women's literary history.

28 November 1832: Leslie Stephen, father of Virginia Woolf,...

Writing climate item

28 November 1832

Leslie Stephen , father of Virginia Woolf , first editor of the Dictionary of National Biography, editor of Cornhill Magazine, biographer, and agnostic, was born.

28 November 1832: Leslie Stephen, father of Virginia Woolf,...

Writing climate item

28 November 1832

Leslie Stephen , father of Virginia Woolf , first editor of the Dictionary of National Biography, editor of Cornhill Magazine, biographer, and agnostic, was born.

9 November 1857: The first issue appeared of the US magazine...

Writing climate item

9 November 1857

The first issue appeared of the US magazineAtlantic Monthly. It set out to provide articles of an abstract and permanent value, while not ignoring the healthy appetite of the mind for entertainment in...

24 April 1869: Leslie Stephen (later Virginia Woolf's father)...

Writing climate item

24 April 1869

Leslie Stephen (later Virginia Woolf 's father) published in the Saturday Review an unsigned response to W. R. Greg , entitled The Redundancy of Women.

April 1880: Virginia Woolf chose this month to introduce...

Women writers item

April 1880

Virginia Woolf chose this month to introduce the Pargiter family in her novel The Years: the Victorian mother is on her deathbed, leaving some of her children still young.

1885: Regular classes began at Morley College in...

Building item

1885

Regular classes began at Morley College in London, a few years after Emma Cons leased the Old Vic Theatre in Waterloo Road, as a venue not just for clean variety shows and concerts but...

June 1889: Nineteenth Century published An Appeal against...

Building item

June 1889

Nineteenth Century published An Appeal against Female Suffrage by Mary Augusta Ward , signed by 103 other women.

6 October 1891: Charles Parnell, Irish patriot, died at Brighton...

National or international item

6 October 1891

Charles Parnell , Irish patriot, died at Brighton in Sussex; Virginia Woolf used his death to date the second section in her novel The Years, 1937.

1898: Gerald Duckworth (half-brother of Virginia...

Writing climate item

1898

Gerald Duckworth (half-brother of Virginia Woolf ) founded his own publishing house at Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, London.

Texts

Woolf, Virginia. “’Anon.’ and ’The Reader’”. Twentieth Century Literature, edited by Brenda Silver and Brenda Silver, Vol.
25
, No. 3/4, pp. 356-41.
Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own. Hogarth Press, 1929.
Woolf, Virginia, and Hermione Lee. A Room of One’s Own; and, Three Guineas. Chatto and Windus; Hogarth Press, 1984.
Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own; and, Three Guineas. Editor Shiach, Morag, Oxford University Press, 1998.
Woolf, Virginia. A Writer’s Diary. Editor Woolf, Leonard, Hogarth Press, 1953.
Woolf, Virginia. Between the Acts. Hogarth Press, 1941.
Woolf, Virginia. Between the Acts. Hogarth Press, 1981.
Woolf, Virginia. Carlyle’s House and Other Sketches. Editor Bradshaw, David, Hesperus, 2003.
Woolf, Virginia. “Dickens by a Disciple”. Times Literary Supplement, No. 897, p. 163.
Woolf, Virginia. Flush. Hogarth Press, 1933.
Lee, Hermione et al. “Foreword”. Hyde Park Gate News. The Stephen Family Newspaper, edited by Gill Lowe and Gill Lowe, Hesperus Press, 2005, p. vii - x.
Woolf, Virginia. “Frances Willard”. Times Literary Supplement, No. 568, p. 544.
Woolf, Virginia. Freshwater. Editor Ruotolo, Lucio, Hogarth Press, 1976.
Woolf, Virginia, and Virginia Woolf. “Geraldine and Jane”. The Second Common Reader, Hogarth Press, 1932, pp. 186-01.
Woolf, Virginia. Granite and Rainbow. Hogarth Press, 1958.
Woolf, Virginia et al. Hyde Park Gate News. The Stephen Family Newspaper. Editor Lowe, Gill, Hesperus, 2005.
Woolf, Virginia. “Introduction”. A Change of Perspective: The Letters of Virginia Woolf, 1923-1928, edited by Nigel Nicolson, Chatto and Windus, 1977, p. 3: xv - xxii.
Woolf, Virginia. “Introduction”. A Reflection of the Other Person: The Letters of Virginia Woolf, 1929-1931, edited by Nigel Nicolson, Chatto and Windus, 1978, p. 4: xiii - xxi.
Woolf, Virginia. “Introduction”. To the Lighthouse. The original holograph draft, edited by Susan Dick, University of Toronto Press, 1982, pp. 11-35.
McNeillie, Andrew, and Virginia Woolf. “Introduction”. The Common Reader, Annotated Edition, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1984, p. ix - xv.
Woolf, Virginia et al. “Introduction”. Hyde Park Gate News. The Stephen Family Newspaper, edited by Gill Lowe, Hesperus Press, 2005, p. xi - xviii.
Woolf, Virginia. “Introduction; Editorial Note”. The Essays of Virginia Woolf, edited by Andrew McNeillie, Hogarth Press, 1994, pp. vols. 1 - 4: various pages.
Woolf, Virginia et al. “Introductory Letter”. Life as We Have Known It, by Co-operative Working Women, edited by Margaret Llewelyn Davies, Reprint ed., Virago, 1977, p. xvii - xxxxi.
Woolf, Virginia. Jacob’s Room. Hogarth Press, 1922.
Woolf, Virginia. Jacob’s Room. Hogarth Press, 1980.