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.
During RL
's involvement with Goronwy Rees, they both encouraged novelist Henry Green
(actual name Henry Yorke
) to submit the manuscript of his Party Going to John Lehmann, who promoted it with Leonard
and...
Friends, Associates
Edith Somerville
Somerville and Smyth
became close friends, and visited and travelled together, though biographer Maurice Collis
thinks that Smyth
expected a sexual relationship where Somerville did not.
Collis, Maurice. Somerville and Ross: A Biography. Faber and Faber.
When ST
's parents and Leslie Stephen
tried to nurture a childhood friendship between Susan, Vanessa
(later Bell), and Virginia
(later Woolf), the relationship never took root. As an adult, however (having admired Woolf's early...
Woolf
, going to a party there on 5 June 1921, disliked Royde-Smith and her world at first sight. Never did I see a less attractive woman than Naomi. . . .I fixed her with...
Strachey, Julia, and Frances Partridge. Julia: A Portrait of Julia Strachey. Little, Brown.
105
Frances Partridge
writes that JS
was generally judged by them to be a lively and...
Friends, Associates
Rosamond Lehmann
While younger than the principal figures and sometimes inclined to feel herself marginal, RL
was positioned well within the Bloomsbury group. She was close friends with another younger associate, George Rylands
. During the early...
Friends, Associates
Violet Hunt
Among those who frequented VH
's house there were some to whom she became especially close. Her long friendship with Henry James
dated back to July 1882. Apart from an estrangement during the scandal over...
Friends, Associates
Ling Shuhua
Ling Shuhua
began corresponding with Virginia Woolf
, inspired by her reading of A Room of One's Own and her intimate relationship with Woolf's late nephew Julian Bell
during his time in China.
Laurence, Patricia Ondek. Lily Briscoe’s Chinese Eyes: Bloomsbury, Modernism, and China. University of South Carolina Press.
253
Friends, Associates
Gertrude Bell
Vita Sackville-West
stayed with GB
in Baghdad; during the visit she discussed Bell by letter with her friend Virginia Woolf
.
Howell, Georgina. Daughter of the Desert: the Remarkable Life of Gertrude Bell. Macmillan.
502
Winstone, Harry Victor Frederick. Gertrude Bell. J. Cape.
255
Friends, Associates
Berta Ruck
In Virginia Woolf
's novel Jacob's Room, 1922, a tombstone is inscribed with the name Bertha Ruck. Ruck writes that it is inscribed to The Memory of Berta Ruck.
Ruck, Berta. A Story-Teller Tells the Truth. Hutchinson.