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 heroine of this novel, Muriel Rowbridge, is a journalist taking up life again after a mastectomy. She goes to Canada on an expenses-paid cultural trip as a result of which she is expected to...
Intertextuality and Influence
Monica Furlong
MF
herself supplies an introduction explaining the book's intention to address the narrower question of women's ordination and the broader question of the full evaluation of women within the Christian
community.
Furlong, Monica. Feminine in the Church. SPCK.
1
She deals briefly...
Intertextuality and Influence
Ruth Padel
RP
takes the journey as the most central of all poetic images. The first part of her book is a guide to reading poetry, divided under headings of which many include the words journey,...
Leisure and Society
Edith Somerville
In her later years ES
set out to extend her reading. She tried Woolf
's A Room of One's Own (at the behest of Ethel Smyth
) and admired it. But she could not like...
Leisure and Society
Mary Russell Mitford
MRM
delighted in owning dogs. Her greyhounds or spaniels accompanied her on the country walks which were one of her chief forms of recreation, and supplied innumerable stories for her letters. One beloved pet, Flush...
Leisure and Society
Susan Tweedsmuir
ST
describes in her memoirs the rituals of London balls and entertainments, into which as a young girl she came out (and into which, to the fascinated amusement of Virginia Woolf
, she later brought...
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...
Leisure and Society
Rupert Brooke
He belonged to the group dubbed by Virginia Woolf
the neo-pagans, who believed in the outdoor life, vegetarianism, and nude bathing.
Leisure and Society
Dorothy Bussy
The Pontigny conferences were founded by Paul Desjardins
in 1910 and were designed to facilitate discussion and exchange among invited international scholars, writers, and artists. Pontigny was closed in 1940 but later revived at Cerisy-la-Salle...
Leisure and Society
Christopher St John
The Annual Ellen Terry Memorial Performance was held at the Barn Theatre
, Smallhythe: the three women commemorated were Ellen Terry
, Edith Craig
, and Virginia Woolf
.
With books hard to come by, RG
read and re-read those she had, often sent her by relatives and often new publications. She called Austenexactly what I need and likened herself to Emma.
Godden, Rumer. A Time to Dance, No Time to Weep. Macmillan.
207
Leisure and Society
E. B. C. Jones
EBCJ
had many friends among the Bloomsbury group. Virginia Woolf
hovered between liking and disliking, feeling she could never become intimate with Topsy but welcoming the spruce shining mind.
Woolf, Virginia. The Diary of Virginia Woolf. Editors Bell, Anne Olivier and Andrew McNeillie, Hogarth Press.
Virginia Woolf
's letters to Vita Sackville-West
reflect her interest in attending, though it is not...
Leisure and Society
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Flush became an invaluable companion to her in the seclusion of the following years, and contributed to her recovery: This dog watched beside a bed Day and night unweary, Watched within a curtained room Where...