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 Susan Tweedsmuir
ST later wrote that the book did not sell well, but that I was always proud and pleased to think that Virginia had liked it.
Tweedsmuir, Susan. A Winter Bouquet. G. Duckworth, 1954.
83
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.
Glendinning, Victoria. Vita. Penguin, 1984.
168
Literary responses Laetitia Pilkington
Wordsworth chose from her works eleven melancholy and religious couplets from Sorrow, for inclusion in his manuscript anthology presented to Lady Mary Lowther at Christmas 1819. He omitted the later part of the poem...
Literary responses Ivy Compton-Burnett
During the early part of ICB 's career she was little regarded or understood. Raymond Mortimer was one of the first to perceive her quality, and she quickly began to attract the attention of younger...
Literary responses Mary Wollstonecraft
The Vindication provoked a storm of comment and replies, in reviews (the Monthly was respectful both of her project and its execution, but the Critical, though its review was long and detailed, was scathingly...
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 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 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 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 Dorothy Wellesley
Leonard Woolf was for him, rather impressed with this sequence; Virginia said she approved of Wellesley's having decided to write about cats and rocks, instead of the birth of man.
Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Editors Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne Trautmann, Hogarth Press, 1975–1980, 6 vols.
4: 198
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 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 Joseph Conrad
Initial reviews were unfavourable. Several years after its publication, Virginia Woolf described the novel as a rare and magnificent wreck.
qtd. in
“Contemporary Authors”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Centre-LRC.

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