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 Hogarth Press
published DW
's poem Matrix as number 3 of the series Hogarth Living Poets (it had been ready for Virginia Woolf
to read and and give her opinion about on 31 January)...
Textual Production
Rose Macaulay
Over the years, RM
published several dozen literary articles in a wide range of magazines, newspapers, and commemorative volumes. She wrote on past and contemporary literary figures, including Leslie Stephen
, Stella Benson
, Rebecca West
Textual Production
Elizabeth Taylor
ET
published her fourth novel, A Wreath of Roses, with an epigraph from Woolf
's The Waves. It took her fifteen months to write, half as long again as her previous novels.
Leclercq, Florence. Elizabeth Taylor. Twayne.
41n10, 34
Beauman, Nicola. The Other Elizabeth Taylor. Persephone Books.
211
Textual Production
Flora Macdonald Mayor
FMM
's second major novel, The Rector's Daughter, appeared from the Hogarth Presson a commission basis, with the help of Leonard
and Virginia Woolf
.
“The Times Digital Archive 1785-2007”. Thompson Gale: The Times Digital Archive.
43695 (4 July 1924): 10
Williams, Merryn. Six Women Novelists, Macmillan.
45
Textual Production
Doris Lessing
DL
also wrote such brief works of literary comment as a foreword for The Fox by D. H. Lawrence
, published by Hesperus
in 2002, and an article for the Guardian in June 2003 on...
Textual Production
Ethel Smyth
ES
broadcast Scrapbook for 1912: Scenes, Melodies and Personalities of 25 Years Ago; Virginia Woolf
listened in and enjoyed the programme.
Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Editors Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne Trautmann, Hogarth Press.
6: 113n2
Textual Production
Muriel Jaeger
MJ
's first novel, The Man with Six Senses, was published by Leonard
and Virginia Woolf
at the Hogarth Press
. It deals with human evolution towards abilities currently seen as paranormal.
Virginia Woolf's...
Textual Features
Vita Sackville-West
The story sounds eerily familiar. Its protagonist is an eternally young and beautiful fairy who has attended every famous event in fairy history, from Cinderella' s ball and Sleeping Beauty' s kiss to the creation...
Textual Features
Mary Renault
Lesbianism had been the subject of novels in the 1920s and 30s. Virginia Woolf
's Mrs. Dalloway and Elizabeth Bowen
's The Hotel had both been criticised (the latter severely) for sympathetic treatments of emotional...
Textual Features
Eva Figes
Her novels are not for the faint-hearted or for the reader seeking either cheerfulness or a straightforward narrative line. She works regularly with a double focus: on the one hand, the isolated moment captured in...
Textual Features
Anne Manning
A recent critic, pointing to the theological correctness of the way the fictional Askew accepts her burden of martyrdom, classes this work with other sectarian, Protestant Reformation novels.
Burstein, Miriam Elizabeth. “Reviving the Reformation: Victorian women writers and the Protestant historical novel”. Women’s Writing, Vol.
DR
's pieces for Vanity Fair include Women and the Future: A Trembling of the Veil Before the Eternal Mystery of La Giaconda [sic], and Women in the Arts: Some Notes on the Eternally...
Textual Features
Elizabeth Robins
This wide-ranging and somewhat disjointed work, explicitly addressed to women (These pages are not addressed to the masculine mind),
sets out the dangers of assuming that gender equality has now been achieved...
Textual Features
Phyllis Bottome
In March 1928, Vita Sackville-West
and Woolf exchanged letters about a story by PB
in which Woolf
appears as the character Avery Fleming. Sackville-West, who met Bottome in Germany, noted that she wrote the story...