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.
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...
Literary responses
Rose Allatini
Meanwhile the Times Literary Supplement saw the novel as well-written—evidently the work of a woman. The reviewer judged that as a frank and sympathetic study of certain types of mind and character, it is of...
Textual Features
Gillian Allnutt
In the poemWhy NotGA
ponders the relationship between women's writing, the ambiguity of language, and the seduction of suicide. The speaker (presumably GA
) imaginatively places herself in the subject-position of Virginia Woolf
Intertextuality and Influence
Gillian Allnutt
Her poem Alien opens the section of feminist poetry and is preceded by an epigraph from Virginia Woolf's
non-fiction work Three Guineas, which reads, as a woman I have no country.GA
's text...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Gillian Allnutt
According to The Feminist Companion, Beginning the Avocadoexemplifies GA
's imagistic precision in poems about war, women writers (Virginia Woolf
, Sylvia Plath
) and the act of writing..
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.
Reception
Ann, Lady Fanshawe
The 1907 edition was reviewed by the future Virginia Woolf
. Sandra Findley
wrote about ALF
under the heading Seventeenth Century Women's Autobiography in Literature and Power in the Seventeenth Century, edited by Francis...
Leisure and Society
Lady Cynthia Asquith
From the 1920s onwards, while keeping up her work for Barrie and gradually becoming a writer herself, LCA
remained a society woman much of whose time was occupied with hairdressing, shopping for clothes, social appointments...
Textual Production
Lady Cynthia Asquith
Her motive (when she decided to undertake this work, two years before it was published) was not money but pleasure: writing a novel makes me feel so much more alive—though she felt deterred by...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Diana Athill
Part two, introduced by some comment on the nature of the relationship between writer and publisher, provides sketches and stories of many of the authors whom DA
worked with. Though she does not belabour the...
The world before is a slightly exaggerated and unmercifully satirised version of today's reality: gated communities, vertiginous inequalities, frequently mutating viruses, sadistic pornography online, and commodification of everything. True to Atwood's principles, she finds the...
Textual Features
W. H. Auden
It is no wonder than that Auden is an entertaining critic, with a penchant for the gnomic whether in titles (his essay on detective stories is called The Guilty Vicarage; his essay on Kafka
Reception
Jane Austen
In 1933 there was excitement in the book-collecting world when a small collection of books that Austen had owned (by writers like Ariosto
, Goldsmith
, Hume
, and Thomson
) appeared in the catalogue...
Friends, Associates
Enid Bagnold
Bagnold's biographer Anne Sebba
writes that try as [EB
] might to belong to the artists' milieu, she could not release her other foot from the smart set.
Sebba, Anne. Enid Bagnold: The Authorized Biography. Weidenfeld and Nicolson.
148
Bagnold's friends included socialist...
Literary responses
Enid Bagnold
EB
's friend Desmond MacCarthy
approached Virginia Woolf
to review the book, but she refused, having taken a dislike to Bagnold and assuming that she had enmeshed poor old Desmond.
Friedman, Lenemaja. Enid Bagnold. Twayne.
9
As Woolf put it...
Timeline
1441-78: Margaret Paston, née Mautby, wrote—that is,...
Women writers item
1441-78
Margaret Paston
, née Mautby, wrote—that is, dictated—to her husband and sons (in Virginia Woolf
's words) long long letters . . . . explaining, asking advice, giving news, rendering accounts
Woolf, Virginia. The Essays of Virginia Woolf. Editors McNeillie, Andrew and Stuart Nelson Clarke, Hogarth Press.
4: 23
about the family estate.
Early August 1591: Sir John Harington's translation of Ariosto's...
Writing climate item
Early August 1591
Sir John Harington
's translation of Ariosto
's heroicromanceOrlando Furioso (which means something like Roland Run Mad) was published.
20 October 1595: Michel de Montaigne's Essays were entered...
1752: Francis Coventry anonymously published The...
Writing climate item
1752
Francis Coventry
anonymously published The History of Pompey the Little; or, the life and adventures of a lap-dog, a novelà clef which satirizes Pompey's successive owners.
By 9 July 1822: The ladies of England subscribed for a gigantic...
Building item
By 9 July 1822
The ladies of England subscribed for a gigantic statue of the Greek hero Achilles cast in metal from captured foreign guns, for Hyde Park in London, to honour the Duke of Wellington
.
1825: Alexander Dyce, then a twenty-seven-year-old...
Women writers item
1825
Alexander Dyce
, then a twenty-seven-year-old reluctant clergyman, published his Specimens of British Poetesses, a project in rediscovering women's literary history.
28 November 1832: Leslie Stephen, father of Virginia Woolf,...
Writing climate item
28 November 1832
Leslie Stephen
, father of Virginia Woolf
, first editor of the Dictionary of National Biography, editor of Cornhill Magazine, biographer, and agnostic, was born.
28 November 1832: Leslie Stephen, father of Virginia Woolf,...
Writing climate item
28 November 1832
Leslie Stephen
, father of Virginia Woolf
, first editor of the Dictionary of National Biography, editor of Cornhill Magazine, biographer, and agnostic, was born.
9 November 1857: The first issue appeared of the US magazine...
Writing climate item
9 November 1857
The first issue appeared of the US magazineAtlantic Monthly. It set out to provide articles of an abstract and permanent value, while not ignoring the healthy appetite of the mind for entertainment in...
24 April 1869: Leslie Stephen (later Virginia Woolf's father)...
Writing climate item
24 April 1869
Leslie Stephen
(later Virginia Woolf
's father) published in the Saturday Review an unsigned response to W. R. Greg
, entitled The Redundancy of Women.
April 1880: Virginia Woolf chose this month to introduce...
Women writers item
April 1880
Virginia Woolf
chose this month to introduce the Pargiter family in her novel The Years: the Victorian mother is on her deathbed, leaving some of her children still young.
1885: Regular classes began at Morley College in...
Building item
1885
Regular classes began at Morley College
in London, a few years after Emma Cons
leased the Old Vic Theatre
in Waterloo Road, as a venue not just for clean variety shows and concerts but...
June 1889: Nineteenth Century published An Appeal against...
Building item
June 1889
Nineteenth Century published An Appeal against Female Suffrage by Mary Augusta Ward
, signed by 103 other women.
6 October 1891: Charles Parnell, Irish patriot, died at Brighton...
National or international item
6 October 1891
Charles Parnell
, Irish patriot, died at Brighton in Sussex; Virginia Woolf
used his death to date the second section in her novel The Years, 1937.
1898: Gerald Duckworth (half-brother of Virginia...
Writing climate item
1898
Gerald Duckworth
(half-brother of Virginia Woolf
) founded his own publishing house at Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, London.
Texts
Woolf, Virginia. “’Anon.’ and ’The Reader’”. Twentieth Century Literature, edited by Brenda Silver and Brenda Silver, Vol.
25
, No. 3/4, pp. 356-41.
Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own. Hogarth Press, 1929.
Woolf, Virginia, and Hermione Lee. A Room of One’s Own; and, Three Guineas. Chatto and Windus; Hogarth Press, 1984.
Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own; and, Three Guineas. Editor Shiach, Morag, Oxford University Press, 1998.
Woolf, Virginia. Between the Acts. Hogarth Press, 1941.
Woolf, Virginia. Between the Acts. Hogarth Press, 1981.
Woolf, Virginia. Carlyle’s House and Other Sketches. Editor Bradshaw, David, Hesperus, 2003.
Woolf, Virginia. “Dickens by a Disciple”. Times Literary Supplement, No. 897, p. 163.
Woolf, Virginia. Flush. Hogarth Press, 1933.
Lee, Hermione et al. “Foreword”. Hyde Park Gate News. The Stephen Family Newspaper, edited by Gill Lowe and Gill Lowe, Hesperus Press, 2005, p. vii - x.
Woolf, Virginia. “Frances Willard”. Times Literary Supplement, No. 568, p. 544.
Woolf, Virginia, and Virginia Woolf. “Geraldine and Jane”. The Second Common Reader, Hogarth Press, 1932, pp. 186-01.
Woolf, Virginia. Granite and Rainbow. Hogarth Press, 1958.
Woolf, Virginia et al. Hyde Park Gate News. The Stephen Family Newspaper. Editor Lowe, Gill, Hesperus, 2005.
Woolf, Virginia. “Introduction”. A Change of Perspective: The Letters of Virginia Woolf, 1923-1928, edited by Nigel Nicolson, Chatto and Windus, 1977, p. 3: xv - xxii.
Woolf, Virginia. “Introduction”. A Reflection of the Other Person: The Letters of Virginia Woolf, 1929-1931, edited by Nigel Nicolson, Chatto and Windus, 1978, p. 4: xiii - xxi.
Woolf, Virginia. “Introduction”. To the Lighthouse. The original holograph draft, edited by Susan Dick, University of Toronto Press, 1982, pp. 11-35.
McNeillie, Andrew, and Virginia Woolf. “Introduction”. The Common Reader, Annotated Edition, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1984, p. ix - xv.
Woolf, Virginia et al. “Introduction”. Hyde Park Gate News. The Stephen Family Newspaper, edited by Gill Lowe, Hesperus Press, 2005, p. xi - xviii.
Woolf, Virginia. “Introduction; Editorial Note”. The Essays of Virginia Woolf, edited by Andrew McNeillie, Hogarth Press, 1994, pp. vols. 1 - 4: various pages.
Woolf, Virginia et al. “Introductory Letter”. Life as We Have Known It, by Co-operative Working Women, edited by Margaret Llewelyn Davies, Reprint ed., Virago, 1977, p. xvii - xxxxi.