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.
4: 231

Connections

Connections Author name Sort descending Excerpt
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 Features Theodora Benson
Which Way?, another novel about love and diversions in high society, seems to imitate or even foreshadow certain effects used by Virginia Woolf . The story is written on three levels,
Jenkins, Elizabeth. “Hon. Theodora Benson”. Times, No. 57452, p. 8.
8
each of...
Textual Production Eavan Boland
EB alluded in the title of her poetry volume A Woman Without a Country to Virginia Woolf 's outsider pronouncement: as a woman, I have no country.
Blackwell’s Online Bookshop. http://Bookshop.Blackwell.co.uk.
McAuliffe, John. “Rare playfulness marks Eavan Boland’s fine new collection”. The Irish Times.
Textual Production Phyllis Bottome
PB published a collection of short stories, Strange Fruit, one of which concerns an imaginary meeting between herself and Virginia Woolf .
Sackville-West, Vita. The Letters of Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolf. Editors DeSalvo, Louise and Mitchell A. Leaska, Hutchinson.
275
Textual Features Phyllis Bottome
In March 1928, Vita Sackville-West and Woolf exchanged letters about a story by PB in which Woolf appears as the character Avery Fleming. Sackville-West, who met Bottome in Germany, noted that she wrote the story...
Textual Features Marjorie Bowen
MB credits British women novelists for modifying the methods of the great European novelists, noting in particular Dorothy Richardson 's perfection of the stream-of-consciousness technique. She draws a contrast between Dorothy Richardson 's Miriam and...
Literary responses Marjorie Bowen
MB was admired in her own day by others who prided themselves on the popular touch in their writing: Mark Twain , Walter de la Mare , Compton Mackenzie , and Hugh Walpole , who...
Friends, Associates Elizabeth Bowen
EB loved Oxford (where she and her husband spent ten years) and became a social success there. She met and became friends with John and Susan Buchan , and it was through them that she...
Friends, Associates Elizabeth Bowen
Frequent guests at Bowen's Court (where, says Victoria Glendinning, they ate and drank royally)
Glendinning, Victoria. Elizabeth Bowen. Alfred A. Knopf.
254
included William Plomer , Sean O'Faolain , and Cyril Connolly . Virginia Woolf stayed there once; Iris Murdoch also...
Textual Production Elizabeth Bowen
She was only beginning it on 6 January; Virginia Woolf had her advance copy by early June.
Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Editors Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne Trautmann, Hogarth Press.
5: 360, 400
Literary responses Elizabeth Bowen
Glendinning writes: She is what happened after Bloomsbury; she is the link that connects Virginia Woolf with Iris Murdoch and Muriel Spark .
Glendinning, Victoria. Elizabeth Bowen. Alfred A. Knopf.
xv
Elizabeth Jenkins characteristically remarked that as Britain's leading woman of letters...
Intertextuality and Influence Elizabeth Bowen
The authors whom EB wrote of for the British Council in English Novelists are (as the commission required) canonical and mostly male. She was deeply influenced by Virginia Woolf , and wrote after Woolf's death...
Intertextuality and Influence Muriel Box
MB 's film comedy The Truth About Women (the film she felt personally significant to me above all others,
Box, Muriel. Odd Woman Out. Leslie Frewin.
222
inspired by Woolf 's A Room of One's Own) opened at the New Victoria Cinema
Intertextuality and Influence Muriel Box
MB 's writing career was fuelled by an early admiration for Shaw , Joyce , and especially Woolf . A Room of One's Own had such an impact on her within a few years of...
Education Dorothy Brett
Brett proved an exceptional Slade student. She received first prize for figure painting in her final year. She particularly drew the attention of two of her instructors, Henry Tonks andFrederick Brown . She was...

Timeline

1925: Leonard and Virginia Woolf published Edwin...

Writing climate item

1925

Leonard and Virginia Woolf published Edwin Muir 's First Poems.

1928: Edwin Muir published The Structure of the...

Writing climate item

1928

Edwin Muir published The Structure of the Novel.

1928: Members of the British Federation of University...

Building item

1928

Members of the British Federation of University Women (later known as the British Federation of Women Graduates ) established the Sybil Campbell Libraryfor the study of the expansion of the role of women in recent generations.

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...

Writing climate item

1931

Margaret Llewelyn Davies edited a collection of reminiscences about the Women's Co-operative Guild (WCG) entitled Life as We Have Known It.

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...

National or international item

1 October 1935

At the Labour Party 's annual conference Ernest Bevin made a dramatic attack on the pacifist views of the leader, George Lansbury , who thereupon resigned.

1936: The Church of England Archbishops' Commission...

Building item

1936

The Church of EnglandArchbishops' Commission on Women and the Ministry drew its conclusions and published its report.

7 March 1936: Hitler marched into and appropriated the...

National or international item

7 March 1936

Hitler marched into and appropriated the Rhineland: neither France nor Britain opposed him.

: The second number of Orion. A Miscellany...

Writing climate item

Autumn1945

The second number of Orion. A Miscellany appeared: Rosamond Lehmann was one of the editors, along with C. Day Lewis and Edwin Muir .

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.