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.
JK
wrote one of the two introductions for the Vintage
classics edition of Virginia Woolf
's Between the Acts; a second introduction was written by academic Lisa Jardine
.
For this move into fiction they chose the epistolary style in which they had already succeeded, and used their former pseudonyms: by the authors of Henry and Frances. Richard's novel was The Gordian Knot...
Ancient Melodies opens with Sackville-West
's Orientalist vision of the author's writing and life. She writes, A long time back, that is to say in 1938-39, one of the many daughters of an ex-Mayor of...
Textual Production
Olivia Manning
This authoritative information comes from her biography by Neville
and June Braybrooke
. Different versions put her at sixteen and the number of lurid mystery serials at four: she liked to keep secret both her...
Textual Production
Rose Tremain
RT
's third novel, The Cupboard, had for its protagonist a successful woman novelist, a former suffragist and a friend of Virginia Woolf
, being interviewed by a worshipping American journalist.
In the title of her novel Toby's Room, PB
signalled unmistakably its relationship to an earlier novel about the First World War and the loss of a brother, Virginia Woolf
's Jacob's Room, published in 1922.
Gebbie, Vanessa. “Crossing the Divide”. Mslexia, Vol.
68
, pp. 15-17.
16
Textual Production
Ling Shuhua
LS also wrote a short memoir about her encounters with Virginia Woolf
, five pages long and in manuscript form. In it, she discusses watching Edna O'Brien
's Virginia: A Play and reflects on her...
Textual Production
Tillie Olsen
TO
's dazzling performance as a Communist speaker was the first phase of a career that led towards her later years as a star literary lecturer. As a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute
she spoke...
Textual Production
Elizabeth Robins
She had suggested to Virginia Woolf
by February 1929 that she might write her memoirs.
Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Editors Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne Trautmann, Hogarth Press.
4: 26, 26n2
Textual Production
Rosamond Lehmann
RL
's Letter to a Sister was published by Leonard
and Virginia Woolf
at the Hogarth Press
as the third in their Hogarth Letters Series.
Hastings, Selina. Rosamond Lehmann. Chatto and Windus.
132-3
Woolmer, J. Howard. A Checklist of the Hogarth Press, 1917-1938. Hogarth Press.
91
Textual Production
Sir J. M. Barrie
SJMB
also wrote introductions for and reviews of the work of others. Virginia Woolf
reproved him for his high opinion of middle-brow novelist Leonard Merrick
, for whom he wrote an introduction in 1918,
Woolf, Virginia. The Essays of Virginia Woolf. Editors McNeillie, Andrew and Stuart Nelson Clarke, Hogarth Press.
2: 265ff
Textual Production
Hope Mirrlees
Virginia Woolf
had asked by letter in January 1923: Are you writing your book again? I very much want to read it.
Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Editors Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne Trautmann, Hogarth Press.