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 Alice Meynell
Woolf met AM in 1909 at a tea-party in Florence, Italy. She recorded her first, not entirely positive, impression: a lean, attenuated woman, who had a face like that of a transfixed hare....
Literary responses Margaret Haig Viscountess Rhondda
Virginia Woolf liked the work, but observed that MHVR was not subtle.
Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Editors Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne Trautmann, Hogarth Press, 1975–1980, 6 vols.
5: 167
Close friend Winifred Holtby , journalist and novelist, thought that the autobiography was splendidly free from bunk,
qtd. in
Eoff, Shirley. Viscountess Rhondda: Equalitarian Feminist. Ohio State University Press, 1991.
103
a sentiment that...
Literary responses Winifred Holtby
South Riding was enormously successful. It was chosen by the Book Society as their Book of the Month for March, and sold 25,000 copies within the first three weeks of its publication. In 1937 it...
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 Elizabeth Jenkins
Miss Cartwright , EJ 's headmistress when she was eight, wrote to congratulate her but implicitly to warn her against writing for self-glorification.
Jenkins, Elizabeth. The View from Downshire Hill. Michael Johnson, 2004.
17
Reviews in general were excellent, as indicated by snippets quoted...
Literary responses Edna Lyall
In 1912 Virginia Woolf , reviewing a book about Dickens, remarked how in country inns on a wet weekend the walker frustrated by the weather would find on the single bookshelf just two authors: Dickens
Literary responses Elizabeth Robins
The young Virginia Stephen (usually a reviewer hard to please) praised this book warmly: few living novelists are so genuinely gifted as Miss Robins, or can produce work to match hers for strength and sincerity...
Literary responses Emily Brontë
Since the early criticism which took its lead from Charlotte's biographical portrait, a biographical and hagiographic industry has arisen around all three Brontë sisters and their home in Haworth. A. Mary F. Robinson published...
Literary responses Stella Gibbons
As a result of this publication, Virginia Woolf invited SG to submit some poems to the Hogarth Press , but nothing came of the proposal.
Oliver, Reggie. Out of the Woodshed: A Portrait of Stella Gibbons. Bloomsbury, 1998.
50
Literary responses Ethel Smyth
Virginia Woolf wrote of Impressions that Remained that Smyth's method appeared to consist of extreme courage and extreme candour.
qtd. in
Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Editors Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne Trautmann, Hogarth Press, 1975–1980, 6 vols.
4: 137n1
She later called the book a masterpiece, and teased Smyth about corrupting youth because...
Literary responses Viola Meynell
Writing in the Times Literary Supplement, Virginia Woolf judged that this novel, lacking realism, is but an intricate pattern . . . hidden in a secluded place where the sun, falling through greenish panes...
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 Mary Russell Mitford
John Kenyon wrote in 1833 to tell MRM of the delight taken by himself and his brother in her tolerant and humanizing pen.
qtd. in
Mitford, Mary Russell. The Life of Mary Russell Mitford: Told by Herself in Letters To Her Friends. Editor L’Estrange, Alfred Guy Kingham, Harper and Brothers, 1870, 2 vols.
2: 145
Her reputation as a financially successful author brought her unwelcome...
Literary responses Winifred Holtby
Woolf read the book only very cursorily, because, she said, I didnt [sic] want to be written about (not personally).
Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Editors Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne Trautmann, Hogarth Press, 1975–1980, 6 vols.
6: 381
But in pronouncing it readable, though wildly inaccurate
Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Editors Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne Trautmann, Hogarth Press, 1975–1980, 6 vols.
6: 43
she was ranking...
Literary responses Vita Sackville-West
Woolf (who claimed that Seducers in Ecuador was the sort of thing I should like to write myself) praised the beauty and fantasticallity [sic] of the details, though she also felt that it...

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