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.
There are three characters in this text: Woolf
herself, appearing both in her youth and in maturity; The Man (who represents now her father Leslie Stephen
and now her husband Leonard Woolf
); and Woolf's...
Textual Features
Anne Stevenson
In the title-poem, each of five stanzas ends with a version of the first closing lines: we thought we were living now, / but we were living then.
Stevenson, Anne. Selected Poems, 1956-1986. Oxford University Press.
128
These we, it seems, are...
Textual Features
Vita Sackville-West
Written several years before Woolf
's Orlando, this tale features a fairy who lives through eons of fairy history before settling in the dolls' house at the present day, wearing a 1920s short skirt.
Textual Features
Violet Trefusis
The novel details the literary and romantic triangles among writer Anne Lindell (a sketch to some extent inspired by VT
herself), the former lover of aristocrat John Shorne (Sackville-West
), who is having an...
Woolmer, J. Howard, and Mary E. Gaither. A Checklist of the Hogarth Press, 1917-1946. Woolmer/Brotherson.
25
Textual Production
Anne Carson
AC
's poetry collection Men in the Off Hours, 2000, variously inhabits the minds (and bodies) of Tolstoy
, Lazarus, Freud
, Catullus
, Sappho
and Emily Dickinson
, not to mention the French...
Textual Production
Elizabeth Robins
ER
wrote the book in 1933-34, but her brother Raymond
prevented its publication during his lifetime.
Gates, Joanne E. Elizabeth Robins, 1862-1952. University of Alabama Press.
253, 284
John, Angela V. Elizabeth Robins: Staging a Life, 1862-1952. Routledge.
136
Virginia Woolf
had promised to read the manuscript on 4 June 1939.
Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Editors Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne Trautmann, Hogarth Press.
6: 334
Textual Production
Stella Gibbons
SG
's literary criticism for The Lady includes a number of articles on women writers. One piece criticises Rose Macaulay
for her small range and lack of subtlety. Another praises Virginia Woolf
as a giant...
Textual Production
Jan Morris
JM
edited Travels with Virginia Woolf, much of whose material consists of excerpts from Woolf
's letters and diaries.
In 1934 Vanessa Bell
did the decor for Fête Galante, of which Smyth sent Woolf
the synopsis in autumn 1932, when she was trying to get it performed. She conducted its score at Queen's...
Textual Production
E. M. Forster
Essays here include Anonymity, Art for Art's Sake, Does Culture Matter?, and What I Believe (expressing Bloomsbury Group ideals), as well as several pieces on World War Two.
Kirkpatrick, Brownlee Jean. A Bibliography of E. M. Forster. Clarendon.
57-8
It also contains...
Textual Production
Pamela Hansford Johnson
For seventeen years PHJ
wrote a weekly review of new fiction.
Johnson, Pamela Hansford. Important to Me. Macmillan; Scribner.
243
In April 1937 she was one of the few who to be enthusiastic, instead of lukewarm, about The Years, which she judged...
Textual Production
E. M. Delafield
In the year of this publication, 1935, Virginia Woolf
wrote to her niece, Angelica Bell
, I've been seeing E. M. Delafield who writes The Provincial Lady: she is called Dashwood really; Elizabeth Dashwood; and...
Textual Production
Margiad Evans
Among other writers of stories, she admired not Virginia Woolf
or Katherine Mansfield
, but the greater power and fury of Eudora Welty
,
Lloyd-Morgan, Ceridwen, and Margiad Evans. “Introduction”. The Old and the Young, Seren, pp. 7-17.
15
as well as several male Welsh writers in English, and...