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
Literary responses Anthony Trollope
AT 's critical reputation fell into the doldrums a few years after his death; it has been argued, not quite convincingly, that this was a result of his autobiography's ascribing his success to sheer hard...
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
Literary responses Ethel Smyth
Woolf liked Beecham and Pharoah less that Smyth's other books, and suspected this was because of the caution that was necessary in writing of people still alive. She declined to give an opinion on Maurice...
Literary responses Dorothy Richardson
Virginia Woolf reviewed The Tunnel for the Times Literary Supplement on 13 February 1919. She set out to make it clear to potential readers that here was a challenge: DR , she said, allowed no...
Literary responses Beatrice Harraden
The young Virginia Stephen (who as a daughter of the editor of the equally colossal Dictionary of National Biography, must have felt a particular interest in this book), reviewed it for the Times Literary...
Literary responses Rosamond Lehmann
Some commentators, including Vera Brittain , felt this essay too clearly reflected the influence of Virginia Woolf .
Hastings, Selina. Rosamond Lehmann. Chatto and Windus, 2002.
133
Critic Ruth Siegel commends it as displaying the assertiveness characteristic of Lehmann's expository prose, which could...
Literary responses Violet Hunt
VH 's biography was warmly received both formally and informally. H. D. (Hilda Doolittle ) wrote to Hunt from Switzerland on 30 September 1932, imagining [h]ow happy the book must make you! The style...
Literary responses Vita Sackville-West
On its appearance Woolf praised its suavity and ease; and its calm; and its air of rings widening widening till they imperceptibly touch the bank.
Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Editors Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne Trautmann, Hogarth Press, 1975–1980, 6 vols.
4: 256
Years later she still thought it the best...
Literary responses Anna Steele
The Academy wrote about Lesbia through an extended equestrian analogy, picking up on a scene where Lesbia, on a runaway horse, is rescued by her future husband. It notes that there are a number of...
Literary responses E. Arnot Robertson
The reviewer for Queen magazine placed EAR in the second rank of women novelists (with Pearl S. Buck as well as Virginia Woolf in the first)—and did this after first raising the question of whether...
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 Dorothy Richardson
Again the Times Literary Supplement reviewer was Woolf , who made here her remarkable, well-known statement about the uniquely feminine qualities of DR 's writing.
Woolf, Virginia, and Michèle Barrett. Women and Writing. Women’s Press, 1979.
191
Literary responses Rebecca West
Virginia Woolf judged it to be in a different and higher league than the novels of Hugh Walpole , although produced, like ornamental porcelain, according to a convention which was tight and affected and occasionally...
Literary responses Olive Schreiner
The book is a landmark text. In an introduction to an edition of 1968, Doris Lessing (who first read it when she was fourteen) identified it as one of the few rare books ....
Literary responses Vita Sackville-West
Critical response was disappointingly muted. Woolf particularly liked the poem addressed to Enid Bagnold , which includes the self-description, I, God's truth, a damned out-moded poet.
Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Editors Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne Trautmann, Hogarth Press, 1975–1980, 6 vols.
5: 252n1
qtd. in
Glendinning, Victoria. Vita. Penguin, 1984.
267

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