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.
Carrington
contributed four illustrative woodcuts to Two Stories, the first publication of Virginia
and Leonard Woolf
's Hogarth Press
; she was paid 15s for this work.
Woolmer, J. Howard, and Mary E. Gaither. A Checklist of the Hogarth Press, 1917-1946. Woolmer/Brotherson.
3
Publishing
Dorothy Wellesley
The Hogarth Press
published DW
's poetry volume Jupiter and the Nun; she was not entirely satisfied, because she had wanted it out for the New Year. This was the last volume that the
Publishing
Hilary Mantel
HM
's contributions to the London Review of Books include memoir pieces such as Someone to Disturb, January 2009, about a failed attempt to build a friendship in Jeddah, across the barriers of...
Publishing
Kathleen Raine
KR
knew as a child that poetry was her vocation. Her mother wrote down her poems before she could hold a pencil herself.
Watts, Janet. “Kathleen Raine”. The Guardian, p. 25.
25
As an undergraduate she had poems published by William Empson
in...
Its dustjacket and preliminary materials give LS's name as Su Hua. She illustrated her prose with line drawings of scenes representing...
Publishing
H. G. Wells
HGW
published the earlier parts of The Outline of History, which has an important presence in Woolf
's last novel, Between the Acts.
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
34
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.
Cox, Michael, editor. The Oxford Chronology of English Literature. Oxford University Press.
McKillop, A. Brian. The Spinster and the Prophet. Macfarlane Walter and Ross.
Friedmann, Elizabeth. A Mannered Grace. Persea Books.
77
Publishing
Elizabeth Robins
The book was rejected by several publishers before Heinemann
took it on.
John, Angela V. Elizabeth Robins: Staging a Life, 1862-1952. Routledge.
232
One of those who rejected it in an earlier form was the Hogarth Press
, probably because it turned out too long...
Publishing
Viola Tree
Virginia Woolf
found that the production of this book required a lot of work in the closing stages from her as publisher. She received the (apparently corrected) proofs by 2 March in a state calculated...
Reception
Susan Hill
This novel won the Whitbread Literary Award for fiction for 1972.
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
14
Critic Michele Murray
called it a thoroughly created piece of work . . . wrought of language, built not from any personal experience,...
Reception
Betty Miller
St John Ervine
responded unsympathetically to news of this novel's existence, suggesting that the world had enough novelists already. Aren't there far too many women novelists and not enough good cooks?
Miller, Sarah, and Betty Miller. “Introduction”. On the Side of the Angels, Virago, p. vii - xviii.