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, 1981, 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, 2005.
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, 1986–1994, 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, 1975–1980, 6 vols.
4: 231
Well-known black and white photograph of Virginia Stephen (later Virginia Woolf), 1902. She is seen in profile, with her hair loosely caught back in a bun
Photograph of Virginia Woolf with hand on face wearing a fur stole. This is a picture from one of Virginia Woolf's own photo albums at Monk's House which were acquired at an auction at Sotheby's in 1982 (cf. Maggie Humm, Snapshots of Bloomsbury: The Private Lives of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell, p. 187), gifted in 1983 by Frederick R. Koch to the Harvard Theater Collection, Houghton Libray, Harvard University, and afterwards scanned and uploaded by the library.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Leisure and Society Christopher St John
The Annual Ellen Terry Memorial Performance was held at the Barn Theatre , Smallhythe: the three women commemorated were Ellen Terry , Edith Craig , and Virginia Woolf .
Cockin, Katharine. Edith Craig (1869-1947): Dramatic Lives. Cassell, 1998.
176
Leisure and Society Mary Russell Mitford
MRM delighted in owning dogs. Her greyhounds or spaniels accompanied her on the country walks which were one of her chief forms of recreation, and supplied innumerable stories for her letters. One beloved pet, Flush...
Leisure and Society Edith Craig
Radclyffe Hall and Una Troubridge , who lived nearby, were among those who attended the Barn Theatre performances.
Cockin, Katharine. Edith Craig (1869-1947): Dramatic Lives. Cassell, 1998.
161
Virginia Woolf 's letters to Vita Sackville-West reflect her interest in attending, though it is not...
Leisure and Society Eleanor Farjeon
EF seems never to have read the modernist male poets, Eliot or Pound or Auden; however, she did read and appreciate such women as Rosamond Lehmann , Storm Jameson , Katherine Mansfield , and Virginia Woolf .
Farjeon, Annabel. Morning has Broken: A Biography of Eleanor Farjeon. Julia MacRae, 1986.
181
Literary responses Vita Sackville-West
There was a widespread feeling that VSW had been too circumspect and scholarly. Virginia Woolf told Vita that she found the book solid, strong, satisfactory
Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Editors Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne Trautmann, Hogarth Press, 1975–1980, 6 vols.
6: 49
, but wished she had allowed herself a...
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.
qtd. in
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, Sept. 2001, pp. 303-31.
307
This novel...
Literary responses Ethel Smyth
Reviewing it in the New Statesman, Woolf wrote: Can be strident, she is never sentimental.
qtd. in
Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Editors Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne Trautmann, Hogarth Press, 1975–1980, 6 vols.
4: 137n1
Literary responses Rosamond Lehmann
This novel was not a popular success. Reviews were mostly negative, although there were some flattering comments scattered among the criticism. New Republic termed the book excellent, but the Times Literary Supplement called it disappointing...
Literary responses Marie de Sévigné
For years MS was ridiculed for her incorrect orthography, but in fact her unorthodox spelling was modern. It was that advocated by the reformers, participants in a movement to reduce the number of unphonetic letters...
Literary responses Violet Hunt
To varying degrees, critics have valued VH 's recollections of artistic contemporaries more than her style or other aspects of the memoirs. In a brief review in the Nation and Athenæum on 20 March 1926,...
Literary responses Elinor Mordaunt
Johnson thought these stories less successful that EM 's novels. He may have been influenced by his declared belief that women have seldom excelled in short fiction.
Johnson, R. Brimley. Some Contemporary Novelists (Women). Books for Libraries Press, 1967.
57
Woolf , too, was less warm in...
Literary responses Charlotte Brontë
Jane Eyre has become a sensitive barometer of feminist criticism. With its author it became the focus of Victorian women critics, including Anne Thackeray Ritchie and Charlotte Mew . Virginia Woolf admired the poetry of...
Literary responses Vita Sackville-West
Virginia Woolf reported that she read it like a shark swallowing mackerel. I think its [sic] far better than Saint Joan, more masterly and controlled. She added: It must be a bestseller into the...
Literary responses Pearl S. Buck
In her review for The New York Times, Katherine Wood pointed out some of the parallels between these opinions on gender and those of (the recently dead) Virginia Woolf .
Conn, Peter. Pearl S. Buck. A Cultural Biography. Cambridge University Press, 1996.
248
Literary responses D. H. Lawrence
Early critics, including the novelist Ivy Low , pointed out the book's resonances with Freudian psychoanalysis, although Lawrence insisted that he did not intentionally use Freud .
“Contemporary Authors”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Centre-LRC.
In Notes on D.H. Lawrence (1931), Virginia Woolf

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