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.
Mary's brother, Anthony Bacon Drury Butts
(Tony) was eleven years her junior. He became a painter and also an author under the pen name William d'Arfey. Although MB
spoke affectionately of her brother, he...
Literary responses
Mary Butts
Although her work received mixed reviews, MB
was generally recognized as an important if eccentric literary figure during her lifetime, and she was highly praised by other modernist writers, including Ezra Pound
, Marianne Moore
Cultural formation
Catherine Byron
CB
sees herself as having experienced various complications with regard to nation, religion, and writerly identity, as a result of her heritage and places of living. Though her mother was from the Republic of Ireland...
Intertextuality and Influence
Catherine Byron
As an Irish poet, CB
takes inspiration from traditional tales and myths, and from such Irish writers as W. B. Yeats
and Seamus Heaney
(though she does not consider either of them as role models...
Cultural formation
May Cannan
MC
was indeed, in Virginia Woolf
's phrase, one of the daughters of educated men.
Woolf, Virginia. Three Guineas. Hogarth Press.
16
Her parents were more educated than most: highly talented members of that ancient-university world into which another poet, Frances Cornford
Literary responses
Jane Welsh Carlyle
Virginia Woolf
declared in Geraldine
and Jane (in The Second Common Reader) that JWC
's letters owe their incomparable brilliancy to the hawk-like swoop and descent of her mind upon facts.
Woolf, Virginia, and Virginia Woolf. “Geraldine and Jane”. The Second Common Reader, Hogarth Press, pp. 186-01.
198
Family and Intimate relationships
Dora Carrington
DC
began a long friendship with Virginia Woolf
when she was summoned to Woolf's country home, Asheham, after breaking into the house with Barbara Hiles
and David Garnett
.
Gerzina, Gretchen. Carrington: A Life of Dora Carrington, 1893-1932. John Murray.
95-6
Family and Intimate relationships
Dora Carrington
DC
met her greatest love, the writer Lytton Strachey
, during a three-day stay at Asheham, the Sussex home of Virginia
(and Leonard) Woolf
.
This was a year which in Virginia Woolf's life was...
Publishing
Dora Carrington
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
Family and Intimate relationships
Dora Carrington
Woolf
recalled their first conversation to Garnett
: It flatters us a good deal to see what a reputation for a temper we've got. I telephoned to Miss Carrington, and heard her quake at the...
Family and Intimate relationships
Dora Carrington
As part of a suicide watch around Carrington organized by her friends, Virginia
and Leonard Woolf
visited her at Ham Spray on 10 March. Virginia
later wrote in her diary: She burst into tears &...
Textual Production
Dora Carrington
In June 1919, Virginia Woolf
wrote to Carrington about her plans for Round House, where one of the chief decorations is going to be a large showpiece by Carrington, found in an attic at...
Textual Production
Dora Carrington
Her penmanship is evocative, and her words are accompanied by striking illustrations: Jane Hill
suggests that in some of her images Carrington anticipates the comic violence of Charlie Chaplin
and Walt Disney
's Mickey Mouse...
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...
Literary responses
Catherine Carswell
Reviews were mixed. Rebecca West
, reviewing the book before the libel charges, felt that CC
overdid her loyalty to Lawrence.
Pilditch, Jan. Catherine Carswell. A Biography. John Donald.
142
Virginia Woolf
, having at first thought the book interesting, changed her mind...