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, 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.
EBB
's reputation fell sharply after the turn of the century. Virginia Woolf
wittily remarked in the 1930s: fate has not been kind to Mrs Browning as a writer. Nobody reads her, nobody discusses her...
Literary responses
Helen Dunmore
This novel won the McKitterick Prize for 1994.
Taylor, Debbie. “Interview with Helen Dunmore”. Mslexia, Vol.
12
, 1 Dec.–May 2002, pp. 39-40.
39
The work was a fine first novel by a sure hand, observed the unsigned Times reviewer; HD
's poetic incandescence also compared favourably with Virginia Woolf
's style.
qtd. in
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
267
Literary responses
Enid Bagnold
Not surprisingly, the article came under attack from many directions. Dame Ethel Smyth
responded in the next issue of the Sunday Times: It surprises me that so brilliant an intelligence should not remember that...
Literary responses
Jane Welsh Carlyle
Virginia Woolf
declared in Geraldine
and Jane (in The Second Common Reader) that JWC
's letters owe their incomparable brilliancy to the hawk-like swoop and descent of her mind upon facts.
Woolf, Virginia, and Virginia Woolf. “Geraldine and Jane”. The Second Common Reader, Hogarth Press, 1932, pp. 186-01.
198
Literary responses
E. H. Young
Mary Ross
found in this novel a quality of humanism and the play of an intelligence which understands and accepts the emotions.
qtd. in
Mezei, Kathy, and Chiara Briganti. “’She must be a very good novelist’: Rereading E. H. Young (1880-1949)”. English Studies in Canada, Vol.
27
, No. 3, Sept. 2001, pp. 303-31.
313
Ironically, while The Spectator reviewer attributed to EHYtoo studious an acquaintanceship...
Literary responses
James Joyce
T. S. Eliot
praised the book in the Athenæum for 4 July 1919; Ezra Pound
wrote to Joyce that Bloom is a great man; Virginia Woolf
wrote in her diary that the book reeled...
Literary responses
Naomi Mitchison
Winifred Holtby
, writing in The Bookman, ranked this novel as the most important of the year (a year that saw the appearance of Woolf
's The Waves),
Squier, Susan M., and Naomi Mitchison. “Naomi Mitchison: The Feminist Art of Making Things Difficult”. Solution Three, Feminist Press at The City University of New York, 1995, pp. 161-83.
165-6
and its author as...
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
Roger Fry
According to Virginia Woolf
it took friendly pressure to get him to work on this book.
Woolf, Virginia. Roger Fry. Hogarth Press, 1940.
258
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...
names
E. B. C. Jones
BirthName: Emily Beatrice Coursolles Jones
Nickname: Topsy
Her friends as well as family called her Topsy. Virginia Woolf
, entertaining her and her husband for probably the first time, asked, May I call you Topsy...
names
Olivia Manning
BirthName: Olivia Mary Manning
She almost never used her second given name.
Nickname: Ollov
This was her family nickname: necessary in a family unit consisting of two Olivers and two Olivias.
Married: Smith
Pseudonyms: Jacob...
Occupation
Nancy Cunard
Her purpose in founding the press was to publish mainly contemporary poetry of an experimental kind. Virginia Woolf
warned her that Your hands will always be covered with ink,
He made himself popular in Canada, partly through his skill with language, in French as well as in English. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography says, His intention was to develop a Canadian as well...
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...