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.
Virginia Woolf
was angered by AM
's opinion that Jane Austen
was a frump (and was even angrier that Meynell advised reading Sterne
's Tristram Shandy in an expurgated edition).
Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Editors Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne Trautmann, Hogarth Press.
2: 503
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.
6: 33
he had...
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.
6: 376
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
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 Setting
Rhoda Broughton
The disparity in age between husband and wife in this novel, unlike that in Nancy, suggests only insurmountable difference. Belinda Churchill, resident in an ancient university town which Broughton calls Oxbridge, marries the...
Material Conditions of Writing
Hope Mirrlees
HM
's friend Virginia Woolf
noted in a letter that Mirrlees took some years to write her first novel, and then (no doubt because of its lesbian theme) had it refused by six or seven...
Material Conditions of Writing
Roger Fry
According to Virginia Woolf
it took friendly pressure to get him to work on this book.
Woolf, Virginia. Roger Fry. Hogarth Press.
258
Occupation
Nina Hamnett
NH
recounts how, feeling brave one morning, she entered the post-impressionist Omega Workshops
, and asked to see Mr. [Roger] Fry. This charming man with grey hair told her, on her request for work...
In September 1917, HSW
agreed to serialize James Joyce's Ulysses in The Egoist, paying him an advance of £50. But when her printers, the Complete Press
saw the first episode (Telemachus) they...
Occupation
Barbara Pym
This work gave her considerable free time, most of which she spent reading such authors as Austen
, Johnson
, Scott
, and Trollope
. She particularly admired the forms of Mansfield
's published scrapbook...
Occupation
Naomi Royde-Smith
By February 1923 NRS
was either literary editor on The Nation or still a candidate for the position: Virginia Woolf
was trying to unseat her, in order to pull wires and establish T. S. Eliot
Occupation
Edith Craig
Virginia Woolf
described in her diary a rehearsal of two plays by Beatrice Mayor
, directed by EC
.
Woolf, Virginia. The Diary of Virginia Woolf. Editors Bell, Anne Olivier and Andrew McNeillie, Hogarth Press.
2: 173, 174n
Occupation
Roger Fry
Fry travelled to Paris with Clive Bell, Desmond MacCarthy
, and Lady Ottoline Morrell
to select the paintings. On 6 November 1910, RF
launched the Manet
and the Post-Impressionists exhibition at the Grafton Gallery, which...