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.
In 1928 Octavia introduced ER
to her distant relative Virginia Woolf
(whose doctor she later became). Elizabeth and Octavia remained friendly with the Woolfs for years, and were devastated by Virginia's suicide in 1941. On...
Friends, Associates
Nancy Cunard
Her boredom with this life (her mother's social milieu) was something that she shared with her friend Iris Tree
, also a poet. Despite her antipathy towards it, this life presented her with important literary...
Friends, Associates
Rose Allatini
Virginia Woolf
, who gives no indication of having met RA
herself, recorded satirically how in February 1919, after the appearace and prosecution of Despised and Rejected, Lady Ottoline Morrellswooped down upon Allatini...
In 1933 Vita Sackville-West
formally introduced CSJ
and Edith Craig
to Virginia Woolf
.Woolf was not as fascinated by St John as she was by Craig and Terry, and saw her as a burden on...
Friends, Associates
Margaret Haig, Viscountess Rhondda
MHVR
corresponded with Virginia Woolf
about Three Guineas and the idea that the exclusion of women from decision-making positions had been the mainstay of sex-antagonism.
Eoff, Shirley. Viscountess Rhondda: Equalitarian Feminist. Ohio State University Press.
78n44
Friends, Associates
Lady Ottoline Morrell
LOM
's friendships were many and strongly felt. Developed mainly through her salons and other creative associations, they swept in Lytton Strachey
, Virginia Woolf
, Roger Fry
, Joseph Conrad
, T. S.
and...
Friends, Associates
Laura Riding
Graves and Riding were touchy as friends, between their sense of literary mission (they saw Graves's biography of T. E. Lawrence
as a somewhat demeaning potboiler, not part of his real work at all) and...
Friends, Associates
Elizabeth Jenkins
Pernel Strachey
was then Principal of Newnham. EJ
, as secretary of the college literary society, was privileged to invite Edith Sitwell
to address the society, and to meet and entertain the great poet.
Jenkins, Elizabeth. The View from Downshire Hill. Michael Johnson.
21
Friends, Associates
Elizabeth Bowen
EB
loved Oxford (where she and her husband spent ten years) and became a social success there. She met and became friends with John
and Susan Buchan
, and it was through them that she...
HM
probably joined this social circle through Virginia Woolf
, whom she had met by early 1919, likely through their common acquaintance with Karin Costelloe (later Stephen)
, Mirrlees's friend and Woolf's sister-in-law.
Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Editors Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne Trautmann, Hogarth Press.
2: 331
Friends, Associates
Elizabeth Jenkins
Having met Edith Sitwell
when she was an undergraduate (an acquaintance which she later kept up) EJ
was asked by Pernel Strachey
when she left Newnham whether she would like an invitation to Leonard
and...