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.
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...
Literary responses
Eudora Welty
Not all responses were favourable. Lionel Trilling
likened Welty to Woolf
, which he did not intend to be complimentary.
American National Biography. http://www.anb.org/articles/home.html.
The aforementioned TLS reviewer, who hailed the humour of the title piece, noted that in...
Literary responses
Stella Gibbons
SG
's Cold Comfort Farm won the Prix Femina Vie-Heureuse, worth forty pounds (as Webb
's Precious Bane had done only seven years previously). Gibbons's award was presented in June 1934.
Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Editors Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne Trautmann, Hogarth Press, 1975–1980, 6 vols.
5: 303-4 and 303n1
Literary responses
Enid Bagnold
The novel was very well received, both in England and the United States. In the New York Herald Tribune, Lewis Gannett
recommended it as a book to buy, to read, to remember and...
Literary responses
E. H. Young
One review discerned a possible influence from Dorothy Richardson
, but thought EHY
(whom it supposed to be male) a saner person than Richardson (whom it knew to be female).
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.
316-17
Virginia Woolf
(who had...
Literary responses
Mary Augusta Ward
Critically, MAW
has not fared well since her death, despite her immense popularity in her lifetime and the seriousness with which her contemporaries read her. She was quickly cast as more Victorian than Edwardian...
Literary responses
Ethel Smyth
Woolf
responded to this book with the comment that her own chief glory was that I, Virginia, kept Ethel at it.
Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Editors Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne Trautmann, Hogarth Press, 1975–1980, 6 vols.
6: 376
Literary responses
Mary Agnes Hamilton
Virginia Woolf
read this novel soon after its publication, with fascinated disapproval. She felt that MAH
had energy and ability, and the wits to construct the method of telling a story, but that she had...
Literary responses
Alice Meynell
In his review for The Sphere, Clement Shorter
deemed this matchless.
qtd. in
Badeni, June. The Slender Tree: A Life of Alice Meynell. Tabb House, 1981.
234
The young Woolf
, too, wrote in the Times Literary Supplement that AM
's essays were courageous, authoritative, and individual.
qtd. in
Schaffer, Talia. The Forgotten Female Aesthetes: Literary Culture in Late-Victorian England. University Press of Virginia , 2000.
193
Literary responses
A. E. Housman
At AEH
's death Virginia Woolf
wrote that although she had personal reservations about his muse—Always too laden with a peculiar scent for my taste. May, death, lads, Shropshire—
Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Editors Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne Trautmann, Hogarth Press, 1975–1980, 6 vols.
6: 33
he had...
Literary responses
Hope Mirrlees
Paris was received by an appreciative audience. Before its publication Virginia Woolf
described it as very obscure, indecent, and brilliant.
Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Editors Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne Trautmann, Hogarth Press, 1975–1980, 6 vols.
2: 385
As Julia Briggs
observes, its readership remained strictly limited; [but] those, like T. S. Eliot
Literary responses
Harriette Wilson
Contemporary admirers of HW
on literary grounds included Walter Scott
, who praised her dialogue and intelligence, and thought her out and out
qtd. in
Thirkell, Angela. The Fortunes of Harriette. Hamish Hamilton, 1936.
Beauman, Nicola. The Other Elizabeth Taylor. Persephone Books, 2009.
214-15
ET
herself felt that it expanded her range, but that the result was not successful: that she had produced a cold...
Literary responses
Vita Sackville-West
Virginia Woolf
, who was present in the audience, looked ironical (she did not agree with these opinions) and saw that Sackville-West was out of her depth.
