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.
EB
loved Oxford (where she and her husband spent ten years) and became a social success there. She met and became friends with John
and Susan Buchan
, and it was through them that she...
Friends, Associates
Elizabeth Bowen
Frequent guests at Bowen's Court (where, says Victoria Glendinning, they ate and drank royally)
Glendinning, Victoria. Elizabeth Bowen. Alfred A. Knopf.
She was only beginning it on 6 January; Virginia Woolf
had her advance copy by early June.
Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Editors Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne Trautmann, Hogarth Press.
5: 360, 400
Literary responses
Elizabeth Bowen
Glendinning writes: She is what happened after Bloomsbury; she is the link that connects Virginia Woolf
with Iris Murdoch
and Muriel Spark
.
Glendinning, Victoria. Elizabeth Bowen. Alfred A. Knopf.
xv
Elizabeth Jenkins
characteristically remarked that as Britain's leading woman of letters...
Intertextuality and Influence
Elizabeth Bowen
The authors whom EB
wrote of for the British Council in English Novelists are (as the commission required) canonical and mostly male. She was deeply influenced by Virginia Woolf
, and wrote after Woolf's death...
Textual Production
Phyllis Bottome
PB
published a collection of short stories, Strange Fruit, one of which concerns an imaginary meeting between herself and Virginia Woolf
.
Sackville-West, Vita. The Letters of Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolf. Editors DeSalvo, Louise and Mitchell A. Leaska, Hutchinson.
275
Textual Features
Phyllis Bottome
In March 1928, Vita Sackville-West
and Woolf exchanged letters about a story by PB
in which Woolf
appears as the character Avery Fleming. Sackville-West, who met Bottome in Germany, noted that she wrote the story...
Textual Production
Eavan Boland
EB
alluded in the title of her poetry volume A Woman Without a Country to Virginia Woolf
's outsider pronouncement: as a woman, I have no country.
Grant, Joy. Stella Benson: A Biography. Macmillan.
254, 255
Residence
Stella Benson
SB
returned from China to England to receive the Femina Vie Hereuse prize for Tobit Transplanted. During the voyage she read Virginia Woolf
's The Waves.
Grant, Joy. Stella Benson: A Biography. Macmillan.
290-1
Scott, Bonnie Kime. Refiguring Modernism. Indiana University Press.
1: 220
Textual Production
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...
Textual Features
Theodora Benson
Which Way?, another novel about love and diversions in high society, seems to imitate or even foreshadow certain effects used by Virginia Woolf
. The story is written on three levels,
Jenkins, Elizabeth. “Hon. Theodora Benson”. Times, No. 57452, p. 8.
8
each of...
death
Arnold Bennett
Virginia Woolf
wrote in her diary of feeling unexpectedly moved and sorry at the death of this lovable genuine man with whom she had crossed swords.
Drabble, Margaret. Arnold Bennett: A Biography. Weidenfeld and Nicolson.