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, 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.
The controversial quality of this book made it popular in the USA as well as in England, and several new editions followed. Thackeray
, however, wrote: We never met with a book more pernicious or...
Literary responses
Hope Mirrlees
But it has generally been read with less attention to its abstract meaning, as a covert treatment of the possible lesbian relationship between the author and Jane Harrison
. Virginia Woolf
had read it by...
Literary responses
Vita Sackville-West
Woolf
found the book full of nooks and corners which I enjoy exploring . . . . gives the sense of your being away, travelling, not in any particular geographical country: but travelling far away...
Literary responses
Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence
EPL
's involvement in the militant suffrage movement was necessarily controversial: contemporaries both lauded and reviled her. In her diary Virginia Woolf
described EPL
's style of public speaking in 1918 with some disdain. I...
Literary responses
Ethel Smyth
Woolf
reported that she liked it very much: Now and again it wobbled but righted itself.
Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Editors Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne Trautmann, Hogarth Press, 1975–1980, 6 vols.
6: 81
Literary responses
Dorothy Richardson
Pilgrimage and its author have been grouped with various other writers and literary methods, particularly with Virginia Woolf
, James Joyce
, and Marcel Proust
, who set out to explore and record linked elements...
The book came out five years after the Sexual Offences Act in Britain decriminalised many homosexual practices there, and three years after the Stonewall Inn Riots in New York marked the start of Gay Liberation...
Literary responses
George Eliot
The critical tide did not turn (despite some acute criticism from Virginia Woolf
, who called Middlemarchthe magnificent book which with all its imperfections is one of the few English novels written for grown-up...
Literary responses
Dorothy Wellesley
Woolf
, asked to comment on this poem before publication, wrote: I think it has great merit; but so bound up with faults—cobbled, jerked, patched . . . . could she re-write? Some fluency and...
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
Ivy Compton-Burnett
Leonard Woolf's decision proved a mistake. The book was not only praised to the skies by young, advanced reviewers, but also made the secondary Book of the Month for May by the newly-formed Book Society
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...