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.
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...
Leisure and Society
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Flush became an invaluable companion to her in the seclusion of the following years, and contributed to her recovery: This dog watched beside a bed Day and night unweary, Watched within a curtained room Where...
Textual Features
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Aurora Leigh engages with a wide range of contemporary debates and social issues, paramount among them the roles of women and the role of the poet in contemporary society. It challenges, for instance, long before...
Fictionalization
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
American poet Emily Dickinson
loved EBB
's poetry. The language of Aurora Leigh crops up throughout her oeuvre, and she recalls the transformative experience, sanctifying the soul, of her early reading in one poem: I...
Literary responses
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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...
Occupation
John Buchan
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...
Literary responses
Pearl S. Buck
In her review for The New York Times, Katherine Wood
pointed out some of the parallels between these opinions on gender and those of (the recently dead) Virginia Woolf
.
Conn, Peter. Pearl S. Buck. A Cultural Biography. Cambridge University Press.
248
Literary responses
Lady Charlotte Bury
The controversial quality of this book made it popular in the USA as well as in England, and several new editions followed. Thackeray
, however, wrote: We never met with a book more pernicious or...
Family and Intimate relationships
Dorothy Bussy
Dorothy's immediate family was large and vibrant: she had nine surviving siblings, most of whom distinguished themselves in the public realm. Her sister Philippa (Pippa) Strachey
(1872-1968) was a longtime suffragist who organized the first...
Family and Intimate relationships
Dorothy Bussy
(Joan) Pernel Strachey
(1876-1951) was Tutor, Lecturer in Modern Languages, Vice-Principal, and then from 1923 to 1941 Principal of Newnham College
. She hosted Virginia Woolf
in October 1928 when Woolf addressed the Newnham Arts Society
Janie Bussy became a painter and writer like her parents; she also lived with them all her life. Of the Bussys' friends, the Bells and Virginia Woolf
were especially close to Janie. Janie was fully...
Leisure and Society
Dorothy Bussy
The Pontigny conferences were founded by Paul Desjardins
in 1910 and were designed to facilitate discussion and exchange among invited international scholars, writers, and artists. Pontigny was closed in 1940 but later revived at Cerisy-la-Salle...
Reception
Dorothy Bussy
DB
first wrote Olivia in 1933 and then sent the manuscript to her friend André Gide
. Gide found it not very engaging
Caws, Mary Ann, and Sarah Bird Wright. Bloomsbury and France: Art and Friends. Oxford University Press.
Penruddock
's version of their story sets their elopement in the middle of a ball, and gives them two exciting years in London; Colette and de Beauvoir take a triumphalist view of their assumed lesbianism...