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 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 Helen Waddell
Of these editions by HW , the school anthology was well reviewed by none other than her old antagonist G. G. Coulton , with the comment that the editor's name was sufficient warrant for its...
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 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Alison Winch has recently put forward a lesbian reading of the Turkish baths letter which supposes that Montagu was flirting with the Lady — to whom it is (in the edited version though not necessarily...
Literary responses Christina Stead
From her first discovery until this point in her career, CS was held in high esteem by the literary worlds of London (always excepting her damning reviews in the Times Literary Supplement) and New...
Literary responses Rose Macaulay
Potterism was both popular and favourably reviewed. For years it remained RM 's best-known work. She later felt it was rather jejune and too much of a tract. I feel I hammered away with a...
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 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
Literary responses Elinor Mordaunt
This received the accolade of a warm welcome in the Times Literary Supplement from the highly critical young Virginia Woolf . The novel confirmed her sense that EMtakes a very high place among living...
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 Ray Strachey
Virginia Woolf , clearly delighted at her introduction to Willard, praised the book in her Times Literary Supplement review for its directness and candour and complete lack of padding, as well as the vividness with...
Literary responses Stevie Smith
Novel on Yellow Paper was an immediate critical success. Appreciation expressed in reviews by Naomi Mitchison and Rosamond Lehmann laid the foundations for SS 's friendships with these and other writers.
Spalding, Frances. Stevie Smith: A Critical Biography. Faber and Faber, 1988.
125
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.
A poet, Robert Nichols
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 Kathleen Raine
Virginia Woolf wrote in strict confidence that she thought the poems not very very [sic] good; but interesting; prose poems; not good enough and difficult to sell of course.
qtd. in
Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Editors Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne Trautmann, Hogarth Press, 1975–1980, 6 vols.
6: 34 and n1
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...

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