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, 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.
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, 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.
In the 1920s WC
was working for a maximum of three hours a day, banishing her work from her mind during the rest of day, but keeping herself fresh for it. She said her only...
Textual Production
Vernon Lee
Virginia
and Leonard Woolf
's Hogarth Press
published VL
's The Poet's Eye, Notes on Some Differences Between Verse and Prose.
Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Editors Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne Trautmann, Hogarth Press.
Ancient Melodies opens with Sackville-West
's Orientalist vision of the author's writing and life. She writes, A long time back, that is to say in 1938-39, one of the many daughters of an ex-Mayor of...
Textual Production
Stella Benson
SB
's letter-writing kept her in touch with communities of writers and was a personal lifeline during her isolated years in China. Among her correspondents were Virginia Woolf
and Sydney Schiff
(Stephen Hudson). Some letters...
Textual Production
E. B. C. Jones
EBCJ
wrote the review for the Cambridge Magazine of Virginia Woolf
's Night and Day, 1919. According to Woolf, EBCJ
did not like the novel's characters, but found Woolf to be in the forefront...
Textual Production
Edith Craig
Edith Craig appears in Clemence Dane
's play Eighty in the Shade as the dominant but dependent Blanche Carroll.
Theatre historian Julie Holledge
has suggested that Craig was the model for Virginia Woolf
Textual Production
Rose Tremain
RT
's third novel, The Cupboard, had for its protagonist a successful woman novelist, a former suffragist and a friend of Virginia Woolf
, being interviewed by a worshipping American journalist.
MJ
's first novel, The Man with Six Senses, was published by Leonard
and Virginia Woolf
at the Hogarth Press
. It deals with human evolution towards abilities currently seen as paranormal.
Virginia Woolf's...
Textual Production
Ling Shuhua
LS also wrote a short memoir about her encounters with Virginia Woolf
, five pages long and in manuscript form. In it, she discusses watching Edna O'Brien
's Virginia: A Play and reflects on her...
Textual Production
Tillie Olsen
TO
's dazzling performance as a Communist speaker was the first phase of a career that led towards her later years as a star literary lecturer. As a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute
she spoke...
Textual Production
Elizabeth Robins
She had suggested to Virginia Woolf
by February 1929 that she might write her memoirs.
Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Editors Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne Trautmann, Hogarth Press.
4: 26, 26n2
Textual Production
Olivia Manning
This authoritative information comes from her biography by Neville
and June Braybrooke
. Different versions put her at sixteen and the number of lurid mystery serials at four: she liked to keep secret both her...
30 May 1929: Labour came in twenty-six votes ahead of...
National or international item
30 May 1929
Labour
came in twenty-six votes ahead of the Conservatives
in the first general election with full women's suffrage: the prospect of voting by women under thirty brought the demeaning nickname of the Flapper Election....
20 September 1929: In an Evening Standard article, Supreme Gift...
Women writers item
20 September 1929
In an Evening Standard article, Supreme Gift Denied to Women, James Laver
wrote that women did not reach the first rank as creative artists—though he did allow greatness to Virginia Woolf
.
1931: Margaret Llewelyn Davies edited a collection...
November 1933: An exhibition was held of the urban-domestic...
Building item
November 1933
An exhibition was held of the urban-domestic paintings of modern realist Walter Sickert
; Virginia Woolf
attended.
1935: M. G. Ostle edited The Note-books of a Woman...
Women writers item
1935
M. G. Ostle
edited The Note-books of a Woman Alone, selections from the diary of Eve or Evelyn Wilson
, who lived alone and wrote in seclusion.
21-25 June 1935: The First International Congress of Writers...
National or international item
21-25 June 1935
The First International Congress of Writers for the Defence of Culture (an anti-fascist event urging the responsibility of writers to their society) was held in Paris.
1 October 1935: At the Labour Party's annual conference Ernest...
1946: Critic Erich Auerbach published, in German,...
Writing climate item
1946
Critic Erich Auerbach
published, in German, the influential study which became in its English translation, 1953, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature. He wrote it at Istanbul, as a Jewish refugee...
By December 1952: Woodcut-engraver Gwen Raverat, née Darwin,...
Women writers item
By December 1952
Woodcut-engraver Gwen Raverat, née Darwin
, published Period Piece, her extremely popular memoir of her Victorian childhood in Cambridge; by 1975 it had sold 120,000 copies in Britain alone.
Texts
Woolf, Virginia. The Common Reader. Editor McNeillie, Andrew, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1984.
Woolf, Virginia. The Complete Shorter Fiction of Virginia Woolf. Editor Dick, Susan, Hogarth Press, 1985.
Woolf, Virginia. The Death of the Moth. Hogarth Press, 1942.
Woolf, Virginia. The Diary of Virginia Woolf. Editors Bell, Anne Olivier and Andrew McNeillie, Hogarth Press, 1984.
Woolf, Virginia, and Virginia Woolf. “The Enchanted Organ: Anne Thackeray Ritchie”. Collected Essays, Harcourt Brace and World, 1967, pp. 4: 73 - 5.
Woolf, Virginia. The Essays of Virginia Woolf. Editors McNeillie, Andrew and Stuart Nelson Clarke, Hogarth Press, 2011.
Woolf, Virginia. “The Journal of Mistress Joan Martyn”. Twentieth Century Literature, edited by Susan M. Squier and Louise DeSalvo, Vol.
25
, No. 3/4, pp. 237-69.
Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Editors Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne Trautmann, Hogarth Press, 1980.
Woolf, Virginia. The Pargiters. Editor Leaska, Mitchell A., New York Public Library; Readex Books, 1977.
Woolf, Virginia. “The Scholar’s Daughter”. Times Literary Supplement, No. 214, p. 52.
Woolf, Virginia. The Second Common Reader. Hogarth Press, 1932.
Woolf, Virginia. “The Symbol”. London Review of Books, Vol.
7
, No. 11, p. 6.
Woolf, Virginia. The Voyage Out. Duckworth, 1915.
Woolf, Virginia. The Voyage Out. Hogarth Press, 1975.
Woolf, Virginia. The Waves. Hogarth Press, 1931.
Woolf, Virginia. The Waves. Hogarth Press, 1980.
Woolf, Virginia. The Waves: The two holograph drafts transcribed and edited. Editor Graham, J. W., University of Toronto Press, 1976.
Woolf, Virginia. The Years. Hogarth Press, 1937.
Woolf, Virginia. The Years. Hogarth Press, 1979.
Woolf, Virginia. The Years. Hogarth Press, 1990.
Woolf, Virginia. The Years. Oxford University Press, 1999.
Woolf, Virginia. “Thoughts on Peace in an Air Raid”. The Death of the Moth, edited by Leonard Woolf, Hogarth Press, 1942, pp. 154-7.
Woolf, Virginia. Three Guineas. Hogarth Press, 1938.
Woolf, Virginia. Three Guineas. Hogarth Press, 1986.
Woolf, Virginia. To the Lighthouse. Hogarth Press, 1927.