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.
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...
Literary responses
Enid Bagnold
The novel was very well received, both in England and the United States. In the New York Herald Tribune, Lewis Gannett
recommended it as a book to buy, to read, to remember and...
Intertextuality and Influence
Elizabeth Baker
Penelope, a working-class woman in her thirties, determines to leave her philandering husband. Her plans to find work to support herself, however, are hampered by employers' prejudices against taking on a divorced woman with children...
Textual Features
Anna Letitia Barbauld
She strikes a newly bold, almost an insurrectionary note here, calling upon revolutionary France, indeed, to provide a model. [W]hatever is corrupted must be lopt away, she writes, as people assert their long forgotten...
Textual Production
Pat Barker
In the title of her novel Toby's Room, PB
signalled unmistakably its relationship to an earlier novel about the First World War and the loss of a brother, Virginia Woolf
's Jacob's Room, published in 1922.
Lee, Hermione. “The greater truths of war”. Guardian Weekly, pp. 38-9.
38
Textual Production
Sir J. M. Barrie
SJMB
also wrote introductions for and reviews of the work of others. Virginia Woolf
reproved him for his high opinion of middle-brow novelist Leonard Merrick
, for whom he wrote an introduction in 1918,
Woolf, Virginia. The Essays of Virginia Woolf. Editors McNeillie, Andrew and Stuart Nelson Clarke, Hogarth Press.
2: 265ff
Textual Features
Simone de Beauvoir
SB
's next novel, Tous les hommes sont mortels, 1946 (translated into English as All Men Are Mortal, 1954), features, like Woolf
's Orlando, a protagonist who is immortal, living on from...
Family and Intimate relationships
Sybille Bedford
Since the first attempt had been prevented by Home Office
suspicion that SB
was an undesirable foreign prostitute taking this means to begin plying her trade in Britain, the best man on the second occasion...
Author summary
Aphra Behn
It is difficult to summarise AB
's immense and complex importance for the history of women's writing. Virginia Woolf
said she deserved from all women a tribute of flowers because she was the first to...
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
death
Arnold Bennett
Virginia Woolf
wrote in her diary of feeling unexpectedly moved and sorry at the death of this lovable genuine man with whom she had crossed swords.
Drabble, Margaret. Arnold Bennett: A Biography. Weidenfeld and Nicolson.
350
Literary responses
Arnold Bennett
AB
's reviews, combined with his visibly privileged lifestyle, did not help his reputation among younger writers (such as those in the Bloomsbury Group
) as a wealthy snob or a philistine. Wyndham Lewis
attacked...
Grant, Joy. Stella Benson: A Biography. Macmillan.
254, 255
Residence
Stella Benson
SB
returned from China to England to receive the Femina Vie Hereuse prize for Tobit Transplanted. During the voyage she read Virginia Woolf
's The Waves.
Grant, Joy. Stella Benson: A Biography. Macmillan.
290-1
Scott, Bonnie Kime. Refiguring Modernism. Indiana University Press.
1: 220
Timeline
1904: Madame C. de Broutelles founded the Prix...
Writing climate item
1904
Madame C. de Broutelles
founded the Prix Femina Vie Heureuse, a prestigious French literary prize awarded by a jury of twelve women. A. Mary F. Robinson
(an English writer living in France) was a co-founder.
1907: Edmund Gosse anonymously published Father...
Writing climate item
1907
Edmund Gosse
anonymously published Father and Son, an autobiography of his early years which presents his father, the scientist Philip Gosse
, as an oppressive, small-minded bigot.
Birch, Dinah. “Fond Father”. London Review of Books, pp. 3-5.
3
1 November 1907: The British Museum's reading room reopened...
Building item
1 November 1907
The British Museum
's reading room reopened after being cleaned and redecorated; the dome was embellished with the names of canonical male writers, beginning with Chaucer
and ending with Browning
.
6 May 1910: King Edward VII died, and George V assumed...
National or international item
6 May 1910
King Edward VII
died, and George V
assumed the throne; Virginia Woolf
dated a section of The Years from the old king's death.
6 November 1910: Roger Fry organised the Manet and Post-Impressionists...
After 18 February 1914: Leonard Woolf published his second novel,...
Writing climate item
After 18 February 1914
Leonard Woolf
published his second novel, The Wise Virgins (which he had begun to write on his honeymoon). Quite different in genre from his first, it is a roman à clef reputedly presenting harsh caricatures...
28 April-1 May 1915: At the International Women's Peace Congress...
National or international item
28 April-1 May 1915
At the International Women's Peace Congress in The Hague, thirteen hundred women delegates from twelve countries founded the International Committee of Women for Permanent Peace
; it became the Women's International League for Peace...
From early summer 1915: Garsington Manor, near Oxford, the home of...
Building item
From early summer 1915
Garsington Manor, near Oxford, the home of Lady Ottoline
and Philip Morrell
, became a centre for many pacifists, conscientious objectors, and non-pacifist critics of the war.
1 January 1916: The British edition of Vogue (an American...
Building item
1 January 1916
The British edition of Vogue (an American fashion magazine) began publishing from Condé Nast
in Hanover Square, London.
1917: Scientist and travel-writer Norman Douglas...
Writing climate item
1917
Scientist and travel-writer Norman Douglas
published his most famous book, the novelSouth Wind, whose ironic questioning of conventional morality appealed to a war-weary public, bringing it great success.
11 November 1918: At 11 a.m. (the eleventh hour of the eleventh...
National or international item
11 November 1918
At 11 a.m. (the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month), the Armistice, signed at Compiègne, went into effect, officially ending World War I.
14 May 1920: Time and Tide began publication, offering...
Building item
14 May 1920
Time and Tide began publication, offering a feminist approach to literature, politics, and the arts: Naomi Mitchison
called it the first avowedly feminist literary journal with any class, in some ways ahead of its time.
Mitchison, Naomi. You May Well Ask: A Memoir 1920-1940. Gollancz.
168
1924: Leonard and Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth...
Woolf, Virginia. “Mrs. Dalloway in Bond Street”. The Dial, 1880-1929, Vol.
75
, No. 20-7.
Woolf, Virginia. Night and Day. Duckworth, 1919.
Woolf, Virginia. Night and Day. Hogarth Press, 1977.
Woolf, Virginia, and Margot Asquith. “Obituary: Lady Ottoline Morrell”. Times, p. 16.
Woolf, Virginia. “On Being Ill”. The New Criterion, edited by T. S. Eliot, Vol.
4
, No. 1, pp. 32-45.
Woolf, Virginia. Orlando. Hogarth Press, 1928.
Woolf, Virginia. Orlando. Hogarth Press, 1978.
Woolf, Virginia. “Phyllis and Rosamond”. The Complete Shorter Fiction of Virginia Woolf, edited by Susan Dick, Hogarth Press, 1985, pp. 17-29.
Woolf, Virginia. “Professions for Women”. The Death of the Moth and Other Essays, Hogarth Press, 1981, pp. 149-54.
Woolf, Virginia. “Review of Dora Sigerson Shorter: <span data-tei-ns-tag="tei_title" data-tei-title-lvl=‘m’>The Sad Years</span>”;. Times Literary Supplement, No. 867, p. 403.
Woolf, Virginia. “Review of W. D. Howells: <span data-tei-ns-tag="tei_title" data-tei-title-lvl=‘m’>The Son of Royal Langbrith</span>”;. The Guardian, 1846-1951.
Woolf, Virginia. Roger Fry. Hogarth Press, 1940.
Woolf, Virginia. “Sara Coleridge”. The Death of the Moth and Other Essays, Penguin Books, 1961, pp. 98-104.
Bell, Quentin, and Virginia Woolf. The Charleston Bulletin Supplements. Editor Olk, Claudia, British Library, 2013.
Woolf, Virginia. The Common Reader. Hogarth Press, 1925.