Virginia Woolf Miscellany

NUMBER 87
To the Readers:
SPRING/SUMMER 2015

– TABLE of CONTENTS – This is not to say that particular scholars have not
1930s Woolf
See page 16 attempted to reorient discussions of the 1930s and
Valentine Cunningham, in his iconic British
International Virginia Woolf its literature. Most notably, Jed Esty, in his 2004
Writers of the Thirties (1988), argues against
Society Column A Shrinking Island, examines the 1930s literary
the traditional characterization of the decade’s
See page 56 production of modernist writers, specifically T. S.
literature as exclusively shaped and reflected by
IVWS Officers and Members-at-Large Eliot, E. M. Forster, and Virginia Woolf. However,
the Auden Generation. This characterization,
See page 55 instead of integrating these canonical modernist
deeply engrained in the scholarly discourse
–EVENTS, INFO and CFPs– writers into a broader examination of the 1930s
by Cunningham’s 1988 publication date—and
MLA 2016 in Austin literary scene in order to investigate the reciprocal
due in large part to Auden and Company’s self-
See page 3 relationships between 1930s literary trends and
mythologizing proclivities—places poetry above
2016 Annual Conference on modernism, Esty focuses on the development and
prose, realism above modernism, and political
Virginia Woolf: role of modernism through the 1930s. Esty argues
commitment above aesthetic innovation. And,
Virginia Woolf and Heritage that rather than relinquishing its position as the
not surprisingly, men above women. Despite the
Leeds Trinity University, UK dominant cultural force in the decade—as many
reality that Cunningham’s comprehensive text
See page 4 narratives of 1930s literature seem to imply—
inadvertently contributes to this traditional and
2017 Annual Conference on modernism reorients itself. According to Esty,
narrow understanding of the 1930s more than
Virginia Woolf: modernism takes an “anthropological turn” in
it disrupts or expands it, he does articulate his
Woolf and the World of Books which modernist aesthetics are redirected towards
inclusive intentions early in his book. An example
University of Reading, UK a pastoral, English nativism. In other words, rather
of his inclusive intentions is his reference to
3rd Korea-Japan Woolf Conference than examining what sympathies Woolf, Eliot, and
Virginia Woolf’s Shakespeare’s sister. Within
See page 52 Forster might share with their younger generation
this context, Cunningham describes the gender
literary counterparts during the decade, Esty
dynamics of the interwar literary scene: “The About the Leonard Woolf Society
focuses on how Victorian-born modernists adapt
neglected sister—why didn’t we know more See page 5
to political and cultural currents that dominate the
about Shakespeare’s sister, Virginia Woolf asked,
About the Virginia Woolf Miscellany decade, thus reinforcing the distinction between
famously and influentially in A Room of One’s
Editorial note: writers of the 1930s and modernists writing in the
Own (1928), inspiring numerous recent feminist While previously published work may be submitted for
1930s.
inquiries—was finding her modern voice in consideration, both the original publication and any
other versions of it must be acknowledged and cited in
the ’20s and ’30s, and her critical and editorial the text at the time of submission. As the title of this issue of the Virginia Woolf
brother was still trying to stifle it” (26). Although Special Topics & CFPs Miscellany, “1930s Woolf,” suggests, the
Woolf, in her role with Leonard Woolf as owner For more detailed versions of the CFPs contributing scholars look closely at Woolf’s
and operator of the Hogarth Press, was not only see page 46
writing and literary politics of the decade,
a writer in the 1930s but also a literary arbiter, Virginia Woolf Miscellany constellating her with canonical 1930s writers
her position in the literary history of the first half Issue #89--Spring 2016: (such as Isherwood and Upward) and other
of the twentieth century is indisputably that of A Truly Miscellaneous Issue women writers publishing in the decade (Dorothy
female modernist. (It is worth noting that this Editor: Diana Swanson
<[email protected]>
Sayers and Victoria Ocampo) as well as attending
characterization has not always been secure: to Woolf’s responses to her earlier writing and
Essays on any topic related to Virginia Woolf
feminist scholars dedicated a tremendous amount are welcome; however, we do have particular emerging cultural trends of the decade. In this
of energy in the last few decades of the twentieth interest in essays on post-colonial, eco-critical, manner, I hope that “1930s Woolf” offers to
century to advocating for Woolf’s place in the LGBT, and historical topics.
readers of Woolf and readers of the decade a way
Please send queries and submissions to Diana L.
male-dominated modernist canon, not as a woman to move beyond scholarly categorizations that
Swanson at <[email protected].>
but simply as a modernist.) Consequently, she is Essays should be between 2,000 and 2,500 words distinguish between Woolf and her canonical
hardly ever given a place within studies of the and use MLA citation style. 1930s counterparts by highlighting the way
1930s, despite the fact that her most innovative Submit files in Word or RTF format. Woolf’s work in the decade took seriously her
fiction, The Waves (1931), and her bestselling Deadline: 1 September 2015
literary, historical, and cultural moment, her own
novel, The Years (1937), were published in the Issue #90—Fall 2016:
Woolf and Illness
continued evolution, and the appearance of new
decade, not to mention her political tour de force, literary and cultural discourses. The goal is not to
Guest Editor: Cheryl Hindrichs
Three Guineas, published in 1938. Regardless of <[email protected]> claim Woolf as a 1930s writer. Rather, my aim is
her support of the now canonical 1930s writers— Deadline: 31 March 2016 to open up the decade designation in such a way
publishing Christopher Isherwood and Edward Issue #91—Spring 2017: as to encourage common readers and scholars of
Upward, corresponding with Stephen Spender, Virginia Woolf, Bloomsbury, and the Woolf to “trespass freely and fearlessly” over and
and working with John Lehmann—Woolf is War to End War
Guest Editor: Karen Levenback
through literary territories—historical as well as
distinguished from both the writers and the aesthetic and political—because, as she reminds
<[email protected]>
literary zeitgeist of the decade; although, unlike Deadline: 1 August 2016. us in “The Leaning Tower” (1940), “literature is
many of her female counterparts in the 1930s, she Any queries regarding the Virginia Woolf common ground” (154).
is far from stifled, she is rarely welcomed into Miscellany should be addressed to
the critical conversation examining the decade’s Vara Neverow For Woolf, the end of the decade brought into
literature, politics, and position in the history of <[email protected]> relief the dangers of exclusivity and boundary-
the novel in the twentieth century. drawing, not just in literature as “The Leaning
1
Tower” argues specifically, but also in life, as Three Guineas recognizes. Both Sarah Cornish and Jennifer Mitchell, like Johnsen, employ
In fact, “The Leaning Tower,” its subject the younger generation the decade as the frame for their readings of Woolf’s 1930s writing.
of writers commonly known as the Thirties Writers or the Auden Cornish, through her attention to Le Corbusier’s architectural concept
Generation, ends with a peroration: “It is thus that English literature of ineffable space, suggests the influence of architectural discourse
will survive this war and cross the gulf—if commoners and outsiders on Woolf’s thinking and writing during the 1930s. Reading Woolf in
like ourselves make that country our own country, if we teach ourselves conjunction with Le Corbusier, Cornish argues that “Woolf challenges
how to read and write, how to preserve, and how to create” (154). meanings, dominant narratives, and patriarchal ideologies found in
Although we all know that English literature did indeed survive “this the built environment, contributing to her well-documented interest
war” and continues to survive, I think it is important to revisit Woolf’s in the relationship between a gendered body and the city.” Her close
concluding reminder: we must continue to teach ourselves how to read, reading of Woolf’s 1938 essay, “America, Which I Have Never
write, preserve, and create, a kind reminder to scholars as much as to Seen,” by way of the concept of ineffable space illustrates how Woolf
novelists and poets. If we allow ourselves to be confined by scholarly reconceives of the male dominated discourse of architecture in service
designations, we may never “find our own way for ourselves.” This issue of creating a “liberated, feminist space.” Similarly, Mitchell draws
of the Virginia Woolf Miscellany is dedicated to just that: finding our way upon the increased circulation and familiarity of sexological works by
with Woolf through the 1930s. Richard von Kraft-Ebbing and Havelock Ellis during the decade, citing
critics’ acknowledgement of Ellis’s direct influence on Woolf and her
Many scholars have joined me in this effort and I am proud to showcase conception of androgyny. It is Woolf’s 1933 mock-biography, Flush,
them in this issue. Peter Stansky and Alice Keane both directly address that, for Mitchell, stands as an “experiment in masochistic subjectivity.”
the scholarly divide between canonical modernists and canonical 1930s “The emotional capacity ascribed to Flush, and its ensuing struggles,”
writers by examining connections cultivated through Woolf’s role in Mitchell claims, “echo contemporaneous sexological tracts that uncover
the Hogarth Press and the rise of fascism at home and abroad. Stansky and explore the direct relationship between love and suffering.” When
leads the issue with his investigation into the relationship between Woolf read together, both Cornish and Mitchell draw our attention to the
and Edward Upward, arguably the most committed Communist of the manner in which Woolf was an attentive cultural consumer and critic
politically outspoken Auden Generation. Through the Hogarth Press, during the 1930s, absorbing the cultural discourses that were circulating
Woolf is introduced to Upward by Isherwood and Lehmann, and, despite during the interwar generally and the 1930s specifically.
Woolf’s skepticism concerning the younger generation of emerging
writers, the Hogarth Press published Upward’s Journey to the Border Leslie Kathleen Hankins and Annette Oxindine each look closely
in 1938. A similar publishing affiliation underlies Alice Keane’s essay, at Woolf’s writing in the decade, focusing on her essays for British
“‘Miserably Devaluated Currency’: Language, Economy, and Fascism Good Housekeeping (Hankins) and her novel The Years (Oxindine).
in Christopher Isherwood’s The Berlin Stories and Virginia Woolf’s The Hankins takes readers on a lively journey through her research process:
Years.” Although initially their relationship is solely professional with examining Woolf’s The London Scene essays in their original Good
the Hogarth Press publishing Isherwood’s first novel, The Memorial, Housekeeping context. Culminating in a close reading of the image
in 1932, by the end of the decade, Keane argues, Woolf and Isherwood accompanying Woolf’s essay “This is the House of Commons”—“an
“both experiment with narrative realism, repetition, and variation around external view of the Houses of Parliament, with the little people below
questions of modern economies as they struggle to locate possibilities rather like ants, and atop the building, a series of huge, looming statues
of resistance to the commercially and politically driven ‘devaluation’ of of statesman somehow superimposed or cut and pasted in”—Hankins
language.” Together, both Stansky’s and Keane’s essays offer productive raises questions about the relationship between text and image, the
ways of thinking across the divide traditionally separating modernism relationship between Woolf’s essay and her other writings of the
and 1930s writing, encouraging readers to place modernists like Woolf period, and the aesthetic and political role of statues in Woolf work.
alongside canonical 1930s writers like Upward and Isherwood in service If Hankins immerses herself and her readers in a deep appreciation
of complicating the commonplace narratives that dominate the scholarly of the visual complement to Woolf’s Good Housekeeping essay,
construction of the decade and its literature. then Oxindine takes a broader view. Fully considering Hermione
Lee’s “tantalizing claim that ‘in a way The Years rewrote [Woolf’s]
Continuing the exploration of often overlooked or undervalued earlier books,’” Oxindine addresses Woolf’s increasing resistance to
constellations, scholars Matthew Beeber and Rosemary Johnsen each didacticism by analyzing “Woolf’s intratextual strategies for resisting
situate Woolf and her writing of the decade in relation to female authors or undermining the creation of a unified vision in The Years” in service
infrequently found in conversation with Woolf particularly and/or of “interrogat[ing] evocations of visionary wholeness present in Woolf’s
modernism generally. In “Virginia Woolf, Victoria Ocampo, and the earlier works and [considering] the ways in which Woolf in the 1930s
National/Transnational Dialectic in Three Guineas,” Beeber suggests might be ‘rewriting’ some part of her 1920’s oeuvre.”
“a comparison of Woolf and Ocampo’s work which acknowledges and
critically addresses the gap between center and periphery which divides As I hope this brief introduction suggests, “1930s Woolf” encompasses
their work.” In so doing, Beeber’s essay both highlights a connection productive interpretations of her work from the decade, new perspectives
between Woolf and Ocampo that is under-examined outside the annual on the way the literary, cultural, and political trends of the decade are
Woolf conferences and expands our understanding of the decade integrated into her work, and fresh connections between Woolf’s writing
designation to include writers beyond the boundaries of England and and that of her female contemporaries. Moreover, I hope this special
the British colonies. Rosemary Johnsen, like Beeber, considers Woolf’s issue of the Virginia Woolf Miscellany is the first step in our collective
relationship to another female writer of the decade, Dorothy L. Sayers, reprisal of Woolf’s writing in the 1930s. Not only will Woolf studies
a novelist unassociated with modernism because of her commitment benefit from this decade-specific approach, but also, modernist studies
to detective fiction. Despite the obvious differences in aesthetics and and studies of 1930s literature will benefit as more complex conceptions
politics—literary and otherwise—Johnsen argues that Woolf and of the decade’s literature enrich our understanding of—and the
Sayers “do not need documentary or formal political allegiances” to affiliations among—aging modernists, Auden Generation writers, and
offer a fresh and productive perspective on the decade, its literature, those unrecognized by either dominant category.
and its gender politics. Rather, Johnsen convincingly and engagingly
claims that “in terms of our understanding of the period, they are our And what would this edition be without a poem from Sandra Inskeep-
correspondents, reporting on the situation of the woman intellectual Fox, the poet laureate of the Virginia Woolf Miscellany?  Here, Inskeep-
under pressure in the latter half of the 1930s.” Fox frames her verse with epigraphs from Ernest Hemingway and Woolf,
suggesting, like others in this issue, that throughout the decade Woolf’s

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work was in conversation with many, crossing divisions scholarly,
gendered, political, and continental!
Virginia Woolf Miscellany
Erica Delsandro EDITORIAL BOARD
Bucknell University CURRENT EDITORS
Kristin Czarnecki, Georgetown College
Works Cited <[email protected]>
Cunningham, Valentine. British Writers of the Thirties. Oxford: Oxford Jeanne Dubino, Appalachian State University
UP, 1988. <[email protected]>
Esty, Jed. A Shrinking Island: Modernism and National Culture in Mark Hussey, Pace University
England. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2004. <[email protected]>
Woolf, Virginia. “The Leaning Tower.” The Moment and Other Essays.
Vara Neverow, Southern Connecticut State University
New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1948. <[email protected]>
Merry Pawlowski, California State University-Bakersfield
<[email protected]>
Diana Swanson, Northern Illinois University
MLA in Austin, TX <[email protected]>
January 7-10, 2016 BOOK REVIEW EDITOR
Friday, 8 January 3:30-4:45 p.m. Karen Levenback
363. Textual Woolf <[email protected]>
Program arranged by the International Virginia Woolf Society
FORMER
Presiding: Mark F. Hussey, Pace University, New York
SENIOR ASSOCIATE EDITOR
1. “How Should One Read a Draft? Virginia Woolf and Moments of
2003-2014:
Publication,” John Young, Marshall University
Susan Wegener, Purdue University
2. “Kindling Taste; or, How I Tried Going Paperless and (Finally) Be-
<[email protected]>
came a Common Reader,” Benjamin Hagen, University of South
Dakota
3. “Macroanalyzing Woolf,” Jana Millar Usiskin, University of Victoria
For abstracts, contact [email protected]
Saturday, 9 January 8:30-9:45 a.m.
Issues of the Virginia Woolf Miscellany dating from
451. Woolf and Disability
Spring 2003 (issue 62) to the present are currently available online in full
Program arranged by the International Virginia Woolf Society and the
MLA Committee on Disability Issues in the Profession
text PDF format at:
Presiding: Maren T. Linett, Purdue University, West Lafayette <virginiawoolfmiscellany.wordpress.com>
1. “On Being Still: Woolf, Illness, and Immobility,” Louise Hornby, A project to scan and post all earlier issues of the Miscellany (still in
University of California, Los Angeles progress) is also currently underway at:
2. “Woolf, Wheelchairs, Feminism,” Lisa Griffin, University of Saint <https://virginiawoolfmiscellany.wordpress.com/the-virginia-woolf-
Andrews miscellany-from-spring-2003-to-spring-2013/>
3. “Labor Pains: Disability, Work, and Reproduction in To the
Lighthouse,” Matt Franks, Bates College If you need access to a specific article that is not currently available
For abstracts, contact [email protected] online, please contact Vara Neverow< [email protected]>
Join us for a night of conversation and companionship at our All issues to the present as well as those from Fall 1973-Fall 2002 are
Woolf Society dinner on Saturday, January 9, at 7:30 p.m. at the also available in digital format through EBSCOhost’s
highly recommended and festive-looking Fonda San Miguel (http:// Humanities International Complete
www.fondasanmiguel.com/). The reservation is for 30 people, and EBSCOhost’s Literary Reference Center.
so if you’d like a spot, please email me at kristin_czarnecki@ More recent issues are also available through through
georgetowncollege.edu. ProQuest Literature Online (LION) and Gale Group/Cengage.
An Index of the VWM from Fall 1973-Fall 2011 is available from
Susan Devoe at <[email protected]>
Many thanks to the International Virginia Woolf
Society for its generous and continuing support
of the Virginia Woolf Miscellany.
Be sure to consult Paula Maggio’s
For more information about the International Virginia Blogging Woolf for up-to-date information
about all things Woolfian
Woolf Society go to <http://sites.utoronto.ca/IVWS/ including information about upcoming Woolf conferences and
Like the IVWS on Facebook! recent publications from Cecil Woolf Publishers.
https://www.facebook.com/pages/International- <bloggingwoolf.wordpress.com>
Virginia-Woolf-Society/224151705144

For information about the history of

the Annual Conference on Virginia Woolf go to:
<http://www.home.southernct.edu/~neverowv1/annual_conference_on_virginia_woolf.html>
Please note that the Annual Conference is not sponsored by the International Virginai Woolf Society

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 The 26th Annual Conference on Virginia Woolf:
Virginia Woolf and Heritage
Leeds Trinity University — 16-19 June 2016

https://virginiawoolf2016.wordpress.com/

About the Conference

Leeds Trinity University is honoured to be hosting the 26th Annual and physical exhibitions; libraries, archives and collections; plaques,
Conference on Virginia Woolf: Virginia Woolf and Heritage. memorials, and statues; and at National Trust or other properties such
as Monk’s House and Knole.
​​
This international conference will investigate how Virginia Woolf
engaged with heritage, and how she understood and represented it. When and where?
One strand will look at her experience of the heritage industry, for ​​16-19 June 2016, Leeds Trinity University
example: libraries, museums, art galleries, authors’ houses, artists’
houses, stately homes, London’s heritage sites, and tourist sites in Who should attend?
Britain and abroad. ​ An international audience of academics, postgraduates, students, and
general readers.
​ lternatively, the topic encompasses Woolf ’s constructions of heritage,
A
including literary heritage, intellectual heritage, family histories, ​ ow to book:
H
the history of women and the history of lesbians. The conference We will be setting up an online booking portal, but in the meantime
will also consider ways in which Woolf has been represented and please email [email protected] or join the Facebook group
even appropriated by the heritage industry, for example in virtual https://www.facebook.com/virginiawoolf2016.

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 Virginia Woolf and the World of Books
27th Annual Conference on
Virginia Woolf
University of Reading, UK
Thursday 29 June- Sunday 2 July 2017
Conference theme: We envisage a conference premised around the broad idea of Woolf and ‘the world of books’,
incorporating readings of the past, present and future of Virginia Woolf ’s works. The Annual Conference on Virginia
Woolf at the University of Reading in 2017 will also coincide with the centenary of the Hogarth Press. During the
conference, we will share some of the materials from the Hogarth Press in our Special Collections.

Attendees are invited to submit papers related to all aspects of the Woolfs and print culture, including topics exploring
Leonard and Virginia Woolf and the Hogarth Press; the production, reception and distribution of Woolf ’s books; new
media studies of Woolf and her circle; Woolf and Digital Humanities; materiality and textuality; Woolf and objects; the
global literary marketplace; collecting, bookselling, advertising and reviewing; writing practices; editing and revision;
translation; Woolf and her readers; Hogarth press authors; modernist publishing and publishers; Bloomsbury writers and
connections.

We will also include special sessions/workshops on the Hogarth Press; modernist publishers and publishing; global
modernisms; Woolf and the Digital Humanities

Conference Location: The University of Reading is half an hour away from London Paddington by train and those
on international flights can get the Heathrow Express direct from London Heathrow to Paddington station with an easy
connection from there to Reading. There are also direct trains between Reading and Gatwick airport.

Organizers: Dr Nicola Wilson (Reading), Dr Claire Battershill (Reading)

Program Committee: Dr Maddi Davies (Reading), Dr Alice Staveley (Stanford), Dr Helen Southworth (Oregon), Dr
Elizabeth Willson Gordon (King’s, Canada).

Please contact Dr Nicola Wilson [email protected] if you have questions about the conference.

The 3rd Korea-Japan Virginia Woolf Conference 2016

Virginia Woolf and Her Legacy in the Age of Globalization
August 25th-26th, 2016
Kookmin University, Seoul, Korea
Call for Papers
The Leonard Woolf Society
held a meeting on May 23, 2015 in London, UK
Since 2010 scholars of Virginia Woolf from Japan and Korea have held joint
conferences on Woolf, exchanging thoughts and sharing friendship. Seeking & will also hold a meeting on March 2016 in Sri Lanka
to enlarge participation, the upcoming 3rd Korea-Japan Virginia Woolf (Details to be decided.)
Conference, which will take place in Seoul, Korea on August 25-26, 2016, Surendra Paul, Chair, LWS, UK
will be held as an international conference and invites papers from not only
the two countries but also other countries. The two-day conference will focus <[email protected]>
on critical issues related to Woolf’s legacy in the age of globalization. Possible Nathan Sivasambu/London/UK
topics might include: Virginia Woolf studies in Asia; Woolf and Victorianism;
<[email protected]>
Woolf and modernism; Woolf and life-writing; Woolf and posthumanism;
and Woolf in the age of postfeminism. We also welcome papers on any other AnneMarie Bantzinger/Bilthoven/The Netherlands
topics that will refresh our perspectives on Woolf’s works and widen the <[email protected]>
horizon of Woolf studies.
Please send 250-word abstracts in English and a one-page CV to the office of
the Virginia Woolf Society of Korea at [email protected] by January
15, 2016. You will receive the official notification of acceptance by March 15,
2016.
Registration:
v
Regular Fee: 50 USD
Fee for Graduate students: 25 USD
Conference Important Dates:
Abstracts/Papers Submission Date January 15, 2016
Notification of Acceptance (by Email) March 15, 2016
Final Papers for Conference Proceedings July 15, 2016

5
 How to Join Société d’Études Woolfiennes
The International Virginia Woolf Society The Société d’Études Woolfiennes (SEW) is a French society which promotes
<http://www.utoronto.ca/IVWS> the study of Virginia Woolf, the Bloomsbury Group and Modernism. It was
founded in 1996 to develop Woolf studies in France and to create further
To join, update membership or donate to the links between French specialists and their counterparts abroad. It welcomes
International Virginia Woolf Society, please either: academics and students in the field of English and Comparative Literature who
download the membership form from the IVWS website and mail to the share a strong interest in the different aspects of Virginia Woolf’s work (the
surface address provided or use the PayPal feature available online at the canonical as well as the lesser known works).
IVWS website. Over the years, the SEW has aimed to create a rich working atmosphere that is
Regular membership: both warm and generous to all involved, intellectually vibrant and challenging.
a 12-month membership ($20) We are keen to maintain this complementary association of academic poise
a 5-year membership ($95) and spontaneous enthusiasm, so that members, potential members and passing
guests all feel welcome and valued.
Student or not full-time employed membership:
12-month membership ($10) The dedication of its founding members and more recent participants has
enabled the SEW to make its mark in French academic circles, convening high
Members of the Society receive a free subscription to the Virginia Woolf
quality international conferences every two years and publishing a selection of
Miscellany, updates from the IVWS Newsletter and have access online to an
the proceedings in peer-reviewed journals, as well as organising more informal
annual Bibliography of Woolf Scholarship and an updated list of members in
annual gatherings and workshops.
a password-protected PDF format—the password is provided in the IVWS
newsletter. The electronic IVWS distribution list provides early notification Since the foundation of the SEW in 1996, international conferences have
of special events, including information about the Annual Conferences on focused on:
Woolf and MLA calls for papers as well as access to electronic balloting, and • “Métamorphose et récit dans l’œuvre de Woolf” (1997)
electronic versions of newsletters. “Metamorphosis and narrative in Woolf’s works”
• “Things in Woolf’s works” (1999)
• “Le pur et l’impur” (2001)
“The pure and the impure”
• “Conversation in Woolf’s works” (2003)
• “Woolf lectrice / Woolf critique” (2006 / 2008)
“Woolf as a reader / Woolf as a critic”
• “Contemporary Woolf” (2010)
Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain Membership
• “Woolf among the Philosophers” (2012)
<http://www.virginiawoolfsociety.co.uk/vw_membership.htm>
• “Outlanding Woolf” (2013)
Membership of the Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain entitles you to
• “Translating Woolf” (2015)
three free issues annually of the Virginia Woolf Bulletin, and the opportunity
to attend member-only events such as: Information concerning past and forthcoming conferences and publications is
available on our website: http://etudes-woolfiennes.org
Birthday Lecture*—AGM with guest speaker—Summer Study Day*
Reading Group meetings We would be very pleased to welcome new members. If you wish to join the
(*There is a charge for events marked with an asterisk.) SEW, please fill in the membership form available on our website (“adhérer”)
Subscriptions for the year ending 31 December 2014 are £18 UK, £23 Europe or send an email to [email protected] and marie.laniel@gmail.
and £26 outside of Europe; com, indicating your profession, address and research interests.
Five-year memberships (five years for the price of four) beginning in 2013 The annual subscription is 25€ (15€ for students).
are £72 UK, £92 Europe and £104 outside Europe. Cheques made out to SEW should be sent to:
We are always delighted to welcome new members. If you wish to join the Nicolas Boileau, 12 Traverse du Ricm, 13100 Aix-en-Provence, FRANCE
VWSGB and pay in pounds sterling (whether by cheque or via PayPal), If you wish to join the SEW’s mailing list, please send an email to marie.
please write to or email [email protected].
Stuart N. Clarke <[email protected]> for a membership form:
Membership Secretary
Fairhaven,
Charnleys Lane, Banks, THE IVWS & VWS ARCHIVE INFORMATION
SOUTHPORT PR9 8HJ, <http://library.vicu.utoronto.ca/special/F51ivwoolfsocietyfonds.htm>
UK <http://library.vicu.utoronto.ca/collections/special_collections/f51_intl_v_
For members paying in US dollars, please request a membership form by woolf_society/>
writing to or emailing
The archive of the VWS and the IVWS has a secure and permanent home at
Professor Lolly Ockerstrom
E. J. Pratt Library, Victoria University, University of Toronto.
<[email protected]>
Park University, Below is the finding aid for the IVWS archival materials:
8700 NW River Park Drive, <http://library.vicu.utoronto.ca/special/F51ivwoolfsocietyfilelist.htm>
English Department, Box 39
[As a lexical point of interest, professional archivists use the term “archival” to
Parkville, MO 64152, describe records that have been appraised as having enduring value or the storage
USA facility where they are preserved. For example, when we call a record “archival,”
If you are interested in details of student, five-year or life membership, please we generally refer to where it is housed; depending on context, the term may be
write (as above) or email the used to refer to the valuation (“enduring value”) of such a record.]
Membership Secretary, Stuart N. Clarke
With regard to such items as correspondence, memorabilia and photographs,
<[email protected]>
contact the current Archival Liaison,
Karen Levenback,
either at <[email protected]>
or by surface mail:
Karen Levenback, Archival Liaison/IVWS Archive,
304 Philadelphia Avenue, Takoma Park, MD 20912.

6
 Virginia Woolf Miscellany
GUIDELINES FOR SUBMISSIONS
AND EDITORIAL POLICIES

The Miscellany gladly considers very short contributions including scholarly articles, essays, poems, fiction,
notes and queries as well as line drawings and photographs.
The Miscellany considers work that has been previously published elsewhere; however, the editor(s) and
guest editor(s) must be notified at the time of submission that a similar or closely related work was published
originally elsewhere. The prior publication must also be explicitly cited in the newly published submission.
Any permissions to republish must be provided by the author.
CFPs
If you are responding to a call for papers for a themed issue, the submission should be sent directly to the
Guest Editor.
Miscellaneous Submissions
Even when individual issues are themed, the Miscellany accepts submissions unrelated to the theme. Such
submissions should be sent to the Managing Editor, Vara Neverow (rather than to the Guest Editor) at:
<[email protected]>
Guidelines for Submissions
Submissions should be no longer than 2500 words at maximum and shorter articles are strongly preferred.
Articles should be submitted electronically, in .doc or .docx MS Word format and in compliance with the style
of the 6th edition of the MLA Handbook (not the 7th edition published in 2009). For a copy of the current
Miscellany style guide, please contact Vara Neverow at <[email protected]>. Editorial note: While
previously published work may be submitted for consideration, the original publication must be acknowledged
at the time of submission (see above).
Editing Policies
The Editorial Board reserves the right to edit all submissions for length and to correct errors. If time permits,
contributors will be consulted about changes.
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Contributors are responsible for obtaining permissions related to copyrights and reproductions of materials.
Contributors must provide the Editorial Board with original written documentation authorizing the publication
of the materials.
Reimbursement for Permissions
The Editorial Board will assist contributors to the best of its ability with regard to permissions for publication,
including costs of up to $50 per item. However, the Editorial Board has the option to decline to publish items
or to pay for items. The Editorial Board will consider requests to publish more than one item per article or
more than five items per issue but will be responsible for funding items only at its own discretion.
Publication Policies
Submissions accepted for publication may be published in both print format and electronic format.
NOTE: The Editorial Board takes no responsibility for the views expressed in the contributions selected for
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The Miscellany retains all rights for future uses of work published herein. The contributor may, with the
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permission and does use the material elsewhere, the contributor must acknowledge prior publication in the
Miscellany.

j
7
 Virginia Woolf Miscellany
A Brief Overview of Resources for Woolfians q Special Topics and Calls for Papers q
The Virginia Woolf Miscellany is an independent publication, which has been
sponsored by Southern Connecticut State University since 2003. Founded in Are you interested in proposing a special topic for a future issue of the
1973 by J. J. Wilson, the publication was hosted by Sonoma State University Virginia Woolf Miscellany for the Editorial Board to consider?
for 30 years. The publication has always received financial support from the Please contact Vara Neverow <[email protected]>.
International Virginia Woolf Society. Issues from Spring 2003 (issue 63) to
the present are available in a PDF format at < http://www.home.southernct.
edu/~neverowv1/VWM_Online.html> (see also <http://www.home.
southernct.edu/~neverowv1/VWM_Online_Fall1973-Fall2002.html>.
CFP: Virginia Woolf Miscellany
The IVWS was founded in 1973 as the Virginia Woolf Society. The society Issue #89, Spring 2016 A Truly Miscellaneous Issue of the
has a direct relationship with the Modern Language Association and has for
Virginia Woolf Miscellany
many years had the privilege of organizing two sessions at the annual MLA
Convention. As of 2010, MLA has transitioned to a new format in which the Submissions due: 15 October 2015
IVWS will continue to have one guaranteed session. Editor: Diana Swanson
The IVWS website <http://www.utoronto.ca/IVWS/>is hosted by the Essays requested on any topic related to Virginia Woolf. All topics
University of Toronto. The website was founded by Melba Cuddy-Keane,
and approaches are welcome; however, we have particular interest
Past President of the International Virginia Woolf Society, who continues to
oversee the site. in essays on post-colonial, eco-critical, LGBT, and historical topics.
PLEASE NOTE that this CFP replaces the CFP for “The Woolfs and
The VWoolf Listserv is hosted by the University of Ohio. The current list
administrator is Elisa Kay Sparks. Anne Fernald oversaw the list for many
Africa;” however, papers on Africa are most welcome, including
years. The founder of the list is Morris Beja. To join the list, you need to send but not limited to the following topics: Virginia Woolf and African
a message to the following address: <[email protected]>. In writers; representations of Africa in Virginia’s fiction and/or essays;
the body of the email, you must write: subscribe VWOOLF Your firstname Leonard’s international politics/writing and Africa; imperialism,
Your last name. You will receive a welcome message with further information race, and Africa in the Woolfs’ lives and work; teaching Virginia
about the list. To unsubscribe, please send a message *from the exact account and/or Leonard Woolf in Africa; African perspectives on Virginia’s
that you originally subscribed with* to the same address: <[email protected]. feminism; African modernisms and Virginia Woolf; post-colonial
ohio-state.edu>. In the body of the email, write: unsubscribe VWOOLF.
African literature and Virginia Woolf.
Materials from most of the sources mentioned above are included in the
IVWS/VWS archive at the E. J. Pratt Library, Victoria University, University Please send queries and submissions to Diana L. Swanson
of Toronto even though they are entities separate from the Society itself. <[email protected]> .
Individuals who have materials that may be of archival significance should
consult Karen Levenback at <[email protected]>. Essays should be between 2,500 and 3,000 words and use MLA
The Annual Conference on Virginia Woolf is an independent entity. It was citation style. Submit files in Word or RTF format.
envisioned by Mark Hussey and launched in 1991 at Pace University. The
conference is overseen by a Steering Committee consisting of all previous
conference organizers. Permission to host a Woolf conference is authorized
by Mark Hussey, who chairs the Steering Committee. Those interested in
hosting the conference should contact Mark Hussey at <mhussey@pace.
CFP: Virginia Woolf Miscellany
edu>. Each annual conference is organized by one or more individuals Issue #90, Fall 2016
associated with the host institution. The host institution finances the event Special Topic: Woolf and Illness
and uses the registration fees of attendees to offset the costs of the event. The Submissions Due: 31 March 2016
Annual Conference has no formal association with the International Virginia Guest Editor: Cheryl Hindrichs
Woolf Society or the Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain or any other
Woolf society. For information about the history of the Annual Conference Virginia Woolf’s 1926 essay “On Being Ill” questions why illness
on Virginia Woolf, go to <http://www.home.southernct.edu/~neverowv1/ has failed to feature as a prime theme of literature, alongside love,
annual_conference_on_virginia_woolf.html> battle, and jealousy. This issue of VWM seeks contributions on
The Selected Papers from the Annual Conference on Virginia Woolf Woolf’s exploration of illness in her life and work, as a paradigm
2001-present (excluding 2004) are published by Clemson University Press for reexamining modernist literature and art, and its influence on
(formerly Clemson University Digital Press) under the auspices of Wayne subsequent writers. Topics might include questions such as: How
Chapman. The editors of the publication vary from year to year. The electronic does the literature of illness challenge or enhance theories of trauma,
version of the Selected Works from the 2002 and 2004 Woolf conferences narrative ethics, and disability studies? How does Woolf’s focus on
are available to view at the Woolf Center at Southern Connecticut State the politics and aesthetics of the ill body inform our understanding
University: <http://woolf-center.southernct.edu>. . of the period, including in relation to Victorian values, in relation to
the 1918-19 flu pandemic, and in relation to mechanized modernity’s
The Selected Papers from the Annual Conference on Virginia Woolf 1991-
drive toward professionalization and specialization? How has
2000, launched by Mark Hussey in conjunction with the conference, were
the contemporary literary landscape changed to contribute to the
published by Pace University Press under his auspices. While early volumes
popularity of Woolf’s focus—from the success of the medical
of the papers are out of print, a number of the more recent ones are still
humanities to the proliferation of autopathographies? What might be
available from the press (see <http://www.pace.edu/press>).
inspiring or potentially problematic in Woolf’s theory of illness as a
site for creative rebellion?
Send submissions of no more than 2500 words by 31 March 2016 to:
Cheryl Hindrichs <[email protected]>

8
 Latham, Monica. A Poetics of Postmodernism and Neomodernism:
CFP: Virginia Woolf Miscellany
Rewriting Mrs. Dalloway. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.
Issue #91, Spring 2017
Licence, Amy. Living in Squares, Loving in Triangles: The Lives
Special Topic: Virginia Woolf, Bloomsbury, and the War
and Loves of Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group. Stroud,
to End War
Gloucestershire: Amberley, 2015
Submissions Due: 1 August 2016
Lounsberry, Barbara. Becoming Virginia Woolf: Her Early Diaries and
Guest Editor: Karen Levenback
the Diaries She Read. Gainesville: UP of Florida, 2014. (Reviewed in
This issue commemorates the advent of the Great War and its Issue 87)
representation by Virginia Woolf and her friends and colleagues Lowe, Alice. Virginia Woolf as Memoirist: “I am Made and Remade
in Bloomsbury and beyond (even H.G. Wells, who wrote a 1914 Continually.” Bloomsbury Heritage series No. 74. London: Cecil
pamphlet called The War that Will End War)—noncombatants, Woolf Publishers, 2015.
combatants, and conscientious objectors; writers of prose, poetry, Makiko Minow-Pinkney. Virginia Woolf and December 1910: Studies in
and drama; fiction and memoirs; criticism, reviews, and social Rhetoric and Context. Grosmont: Illuminati, 2014.
commentary; journalists, historians, philosophers, and humanists. Marcus, Laura. Virginia Woolf and the Art of the Novel. London: Virginia
Contributions need not necessarily involve work done during the Woolf Society of Great Britain, 2015.
war, but gauge the war’s ongoing effect on a wide range of topics Mills, Jean. Virginia Woolf, Jane Ellen Harrison, and the Spirit of
and perspectives: cultural, socio-economic, modernist, feminist, to Modernist Classicism. Columbus: The Ohio State UP, 2014.
name the most obvious. How did war-consciousness, for example, Neverow, Vara S. Septimus Smith, Modernist and War Poet: a Closer
affect views of mass culture and consumerism? Articles on other Reading. Bloomsbury Heritage series No. 76. London: Cecil Woolf
topics (e.g., constructions of self and identity in wartime, and post- Publishers, 2015.
war aesthetics) are also welcome. Newman, Hilary. “Eternally in yr Debt”: the Personal and Professional
Relationship Between Virginia Woolf & Elizabeth Robins.
Send enquiries and submissions of not more than 2500 words by 1 Bloomsbury Heritage series No. 72. London: Cecil Woolf Publishers,
August 2016 to: Karen Levenback <[email protected]> 2015.
Sandberg, Eric. Virginia Woolf: Experiments in Character. Amherst,
New York: Cambria P, 2015.
Scott, Bonnie Kime. Natural Connections: Virginia Woolf and Katherine
Mansfield. Bloomsbury Heritage series No. 71. London: Cecil Woolf
Publishers, 2015.
Son, Youngjoo Here and Now: The Politics of Social Space in D. H.
Recent Woolf-Related Lawrence and Virginia Woolf. London: Routledge, 2014.
Spalding, Frances. Virginia Woolf: Art, Life and Vision. National Portrait
Publications, Gallery, London: National Portrait Gallery Publications, 2014.
(Reviewed in Issue 86)
Scholarly and Otherwise Stengers, Isabelle and Vinciane Despret, eds. Women Who Make a Fuss:
The Unfaithful Daughters of Virginia Woolf. Translated by April
Alkayat, Zena. Virginia Woolf. Illustrations by Nina Cosford. London: Knutson. Minneapolis, MN: Univocal Publishing, 2014.
Frances Lincoln, 2015. Sutton, Emma. Virginia Woolf and Classical Music: Politics, Aesthetics,
Artuso, Kathryn Stelmach. Virginia Woolf and Twentieth Century Women Form. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2015.
Writers. Amenia, NY: Grey House Publishing, 2014. Varga, Adriana ed. Virginia Woolf and Music. Bloomington: Indiana UP,
Avery, Todd. Saxon Sydney-Turner: the Ghost of Bloomsbury. 2014.
Bloomsbury Heritage series No. 73. London: Cecil Woolf Publishers, Vincent, Norah. Adeline: A Novel of Virginia Woolf. Boston: Houghton
2015. Mifflin Harcourt, 2015.
Balossi, Giuseppina. A Corpus Linguistic Approach to Literary Whitworth, Michael H. Virginia Woolf–Mrs. Dalloway. New York:
Language and Characterization: Virginia Woolf’s The Waves. Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.
Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2014. Whybrow, Marion. Virginia Woolf & Vanessa Bell: A Childhood in St.
Bradshaw, David and Stuart N. Clark, eds. A Room of One’s Own. Ives. Wellington, Somerset: Halstar, 2014.
Hoboken: John Wiley and Sons, 2015.
Audiobooks
Bradshaw, David. The Waves. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2015.
Bening, Annette, perf. Mrs. Dalloway. By Virginia Woolf. Audiobook on
Canani, Marco and Sara Sullam, eds. Parallaxes: Virginia Woolf Meets
CD. Grand Haven, MI: Brilliance Audio, 2014.
James Joyce. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2014.
Kidman, Nicole, perf. To the Lighthouse. By Virginia Woolf. Audiobook
Caughie, Pamela L. and Diana L Swanson, eds. Virginia Woolf
on CD. Grand Haven, MI: Brilliance Audio, 2012.
Writing the World: Selected Papers from the Twenty-fourth Annual
Stevenson, Juliet, perf. Jacob’s room. By Virginia Woolf. Audiobook on
International Conference on Virginia Woolf. Clemson, SC: Clemson
CD. Franklin, TN: Naxos AudioBooks, 2014.
UP, 2015.
Stevenson, Juliet, perf. Night and Day. By Virginia Woolf. Audiobook on
Cox, Suellen. Mistress of the Brush and Madonna of Bloomsbury, The
CD. Franklin, TN: Naxos of America, 2014.
Art of Vanessa Bell: A Biographical Sketch and Comprehensive
Annotated Bibliography of Writings on Vanessa Bell. Bloomsbury
Heritage series No. 75. London: Cecil Woolf Publishers, 2015.
Forrester, Viviane. Virginia Woolf: A Portrait. Translated by Jody
Gladding. New York: Columbia UP 2015.
Horowitz, Sarah. Lepidoptera: The Death of the Moth. Essay by
<<<<
Virginia Woolf. Custom paper by Katie MacGregor. Printing by
Arthur Larson. Vellum binding by Claudia Cohen. Portland, OR:
Wiesedruck, 2014. http://www.sarahhorowitzartist.com/index.php?/
project/moths/; http://mcbaprize.org/horowitz/

9
 In Memoriam
Tributes to
Jane Marcus and Shari Benstock
Woolfian Resources Online
Virginia Woolf Miscellany:
l
Issues of the Virginia Woolf Miscellany from Spring 2003 (issue 63) to the
present are available in a PDF format at: <http://www.home.southernct.
edu/~neverowv1/VWM_Online.html>.
A project to scan and post all earlier issues of the Miscellany is underway. A Tribute to Shari Benstock
The site (still in progress) is at:
<http://www.home.southernct.edu/~neverowv1/VWM_Online_Fall1973- Shari Benstock (Shari Gabrielson Goodman) (1944-2015)
Fall2002.html> (These issues are available to view through EBSCOhost as
well.) We regret to report the passing of Shari Benstock, after a long illness.
The Annual Conference on Virginia Woolf Shari was an important and innovative scholar of feminism, Woolf, and
Information about the history of the Annual Conference on Virginia Woolf Joyce.
is available at: <http://www.home.southernct.edu/~neverowv1/annual_
Perhaps her most well-known monograph was her extremely influential
conference_on_virginia_woolf.html>
Women on the Left Bank; Paris, 1900-1940 (1986), but other important
The Three Guineas Reading Notebooks Online: works included The Private Self: Theory and Practice of Women’s
<http://woolf-center.southernct.edu>
Autobiographical Writings (1988), Textualizing the Feminine: On
Contact Vara Neverow <[email protected]>
for more information about the site. the Limits of Genre (1991), and No Gifts from Chance: A Biography
of Edith Wharton (1994); she was the co-author of A Handbook of
Facebook:
Literary Feminisms (2002). Among her edited or co-edited books were
The International Virginia Woolf Society is on Facebook! You can become
a fan—and you can friend other Woolfians. The Virginia Woolf Society of
Feminist Issues in Literary Scholarship (1987), On Fashion (1994), and
Great Britain also now has a Facebook page. Footnotes: On Shoes (2001).
And Virginia Woolf has other multiple Facebook pages that are not related to Shari was also very active in Joyce studies. With her husband Bernard
specific societies. Benstock, she published Who’s He When He’s at Home: A James
Blogs: Joyce Directory (1980). She also co-edited Coping with Joyce (1988).
Visit Paula Maggio’s “Blogging Woolf” at <bloggingwoolf.wordpress.com/> Her various essays on the narrative bases of, especially, Ulysses and
for a broad range of valuable information such as key Woolfian resources, Finnegans Wake attracted a great deal of admiring attention—and,
current and upcoming events, and an archive of Woolfian doings now past. sometimes, controversy.
Anne Fernald says she is “writing from a kitchen table of my own on the Shari was a memorable presence at a number of Virginia Woolf
Jersey side of the Hudson.” Contact information: fernham [at] gmail [dot] conferences as well as International James Joyce Symposia (co-directing
com. The blog is located at <fernham.blogspot.com/>. the academic program for the Symposium in Copenhagen, in 1986), and
Scholarly Resources was a long-time member of the Board of Trustees of the International
Woolf Online: An Electronic Edition and Commentary of Virginia James Joyce Foundation. She also served on the editorial boards of
Woolf’s “Time Passes” at <http://www.woolfonline.com/> is a beautifully the James Joyce Quarterly, the James Joyce Literary Supplement, and
crafted website dedicated entirely to the middle chapter of Woolf’s To the
the Joyce Studies Annual, as well as Modern Fiction Studies and the
Lighthouse. Access to the site is free. The material is excellent for scholars
but is also highly teachable. One hopes this type of website will be the future Journal of Modern Literature, and as editor of Tulsa Studies in Women’s
of Woolfian texts online. As the website notes, “The initial idea and overall Literature.
organization of this project was the work of Julia Briggs (1943-2007), in After her graduate work at Kent State U. (she was named a
whose memory the project has been completed.” Distinguished Alumna in 2001), she served on the staff of the U. of
E-books Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and as a faculty member at the U. of
The majority of Virginia Woolf’s novels as well as many of her short stories Tulsa and then the U. of Miami. She served as Chair of the Department
and the complete texts of A Room of One’s Own and Three Guineas can be from 1996 to 2000 and as Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs from 2000
read online at <http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/w/woolf/virginia/>.
to 2003.
Woolfian Google Alerts
Have you signed up for Google Alerts? Did you know you could be totally After Berni’s death, those who knew Shari were extraordinarily happy
up-to-date on the latest developments in the Woolfian and Bloomsburian for her when she subsequently married Thomas A. Goodman, also a
world with just a few keystrokes? Check it out! It’s simple, fast and very member of the faculty at Miami. Tom and she were a wonderful couple.
rewarding. In her difficult last years, no one could have been a more loving and
VWListserv caring companion than Tom has been.
To join the VWlistserv, please go to the IVWS home page a <http://www.
utoronto.ca/IVWS> and click on the VWlistserv link in the left column. Morris Beja
Then, follow the instructions. The Ohio State University

c f

10
 Remembering seminar about her recent trip to Europe, in order to show us who had
fought in the War, and what they had lost. Several of us had signed up
Jane Marcus for the course knowing nothing about the Spanish Civil War, perhaps
~ without any real interest in the topic, but we were there because she
was teaching. Her story of her trip that summer was such a perfect way
1938-2015 to draw us all in. She had gone to find evidence of barbed wire, poking
out from a sandy beach—she had heard that Spanish refugees had been
treated horrifically by the French. She wanted proof that the experience
had been closer to a concentration camp than a refugee camp, and her
trek through the countryside implied that she would simply have to
see it for herself. The refugees had lost their homes and crossed over
mountains, on foot, making shoes out of woven straw as they went. Why
should bad knees and advancing age keep her from visiting the place
where they arrived, to honor their memories and see the truth for herself?
We were all emotionally involved with the Spanish Civil War by the end
of that story.
Most of the stories Jane shared with us have almost no context in my
Tributes to Jane Marcus memory. I can’t place the time or even which classroom we were in, but
I can clearly hear her explain that, a very long time ago, she had stopped
Jane was there from the beginning, encouraging us all. We are all supporting the local chapter of the Black Panthers because “someone
indebted to her in ways that are too numerous to count. A very sad day. pulled out a gun. I was far too pregnant for that, so I just walked out.”
On another occasion, she gave a group of female students advice on
Brenda Silver
childbearing in a short elevator trip to the Grad Center lobby. “Have your
Dartmouth College
babies in grad school! You can write around their schedule, and they’ll
h
be in school by the time you need to get tenure.” With that, Jane bid us
My interaction with Jane was extremely brief, but meaningful and good-night. (Now that I have a baby of my own, I am a bit skeptical
generous to someone who was still finding her professional footing in about the wisdom of this plan, but she seemed to remember those early
the mid-late 90s, just as I was earning tenure. She had called (I believe it days of scholarship and babies so fondly!)
was at a Woolf conference in 1996 or ’97) Woolf a ‘public intellectual’ Jane was reluctant to tell us about a controversy at City College, but we
at a moment in the academy when that concept had gained currency but did draw the story out of her, bit by bit. She had clashed with someone
was almost entirely limited to male thinkers. Taking her lead, I asked if who held an important position over the appropriate attire for a young
she would participate in an MLA session if I proposed and organized it, female professor. One of my favorite memories is the glee that sparkled
to which she generously agreed. Happily, the session was accepted by in her eyes when she told us, “He thought that because I’m as old as he
the IVWS for 1997. Unfortunately, Jane became ill and could not attend is, I would be on his side! He called me in to back him up!” I do wonder
the Toronto MLA, yet she still sent me her paper to be read by a friend how it was possible that anyone who had had a conversation with Jane
at the convention session. I was thrilled to have that brief connection would assume that she would object to the length of a colleague’s skirt.
to someone who had, however contentiously, shaped my own reading I saw that defiant spark again when she informed students who were
of Woolf, and ideas about feminist literary scholarship, in graduate daydreaming of overseas conferences and Bloomsbury haunts that
school. Even when I disagreed with her, I appreciated her willingness “The English don’t like me, but you’ll get along much better, I’m sure.”
to engage in critical dialogic sparring and willingness to disturb the She seemed proud of the idea that an entire nation might Page 2 of 4
ground of modernist scholarship. When Anna Snaith invited me to write disapprove of her, so we asked her to tell us how this could possibly
the “postcolonial approaches” chapter of Palgrave Advances in Virginia be true. She answered with a breezy comment along the lines of, “Oh,
Woolf Studies, Jane Marcus’s work (particularly on The Waves) loomed I made Quentin Bell angry.” When I did a quick Internet search for the
large as a turning point. Her courage in publicly re-examining her own two names, the first line of text I saw was actually from Bell, and it read,
approach to Woolf, race and imperialism was pioneering and inspiring. “Jane Marcus objects to my having called her a ‘personage’.” That first
Several generations of scholars are indebted to Jane Marcus, including glimpse into their public disagreement was rather perfect, I thought.
me. Jane would most certainly have hated an implied insult, wrapped in a
Jeanette E. McVicker euphemism. She always insisted on direct, straightforward speech and
SUNY—Fredonia writing from us, especially when she disagreed with our conclusions.
{ Patience is not the first quality that comes to mind, when I think about
Jane Marcus, but she was patient with me, when she saw me falter in
I have been trying to find a way to say good-bye to Jane Marcus for work, health, and life in general. She never pitied me. Her faith that I
five years, ever since I abandoned graduate school. She was away that would find a way to carry a heavy burden gave me strength, and I expect
semester, and we did not connect again, despite close contact during that I am one of many students who found strength in Jane’s support. I
my studies. I never earned a Ph.D. and still believe that I am better chuckle every time I remember her reply to an email about my wedding
suited to life outside the academy, but even when my student loan bill registry, after I accidentally sent it to everyone in my contacts list (I
arrives, I feel grateful that my early connection with Jane helped form remain mortified over that error). “I wish only for the paper that you
my character. I carry more passion, more integrity, more tenacity, and promised me.”
more faith in myself, because she showed me these things. Jane Marcus
insisted that these were traits I had or needed, and she certainly was Jane, I am sorry that I never wrote that paper for you, and I deeply regret
persuasive. She never let me off the hook for anything, so I will try to that I never found a way to say good-bye in person. Perhaps I simply
complete this farewell as best I can. wanted us to remember each other flipping through pages, quoting
passages from Mrs. Dalloway at each other, in our ongoing argument
Relating the personal stories that Jane told seems to be the best way about whether there was any hope to read in its ending.
I’ve found to share what it was like to be her student. On my first day
of graduate school, she told the students in her Spanish Civil War Anne-Marie [Tonyan] Lindsey
11
 Remembrances of Jane Marcus and Shari Benstock subject and encouraged me to follow the trajectory of Harrison’s own
June 4, 2015 research, which took me to archives and ancient Greek vase collections
Woolf and Her Female Contemporaries, in Athens, Berlin, London, and Sicily. As we all know, research and
the Twenty-Fifth Annual Conference writing can often be lonely work. It’s solitary, and one must navigate the
on Virginia Woolf held at Bloomsburg University eternal conflict between not wanting to be interrupted, and desperately
A Tribute to Jane Marcus wanting someone to walk through that door. A reality, which leads me
to another personal memory about Jane involving food. On my way
Most of my personal memories of Jane Marcus revolve around food. back from Athens via Palermo, Jane and Michael, Mike, Big Mike,
A year ago, during Spring semester, while I was teaching four classes insisted I meet them for dinner. “Oh my goodness, we’re going to be
in a row at John Jay College-CUNY, the last two in a building which in Sicily the same time you are. Let’s meet for dinner!” I had had a bit
can only be described as decrepit—windowless, airless, no faculty of a rough time in Athens, a woman, traveling alone… many of those
lounge, furniture nailed to the floor—Jane and her beloved husband challenges are alive and well in that city, and I suppose alas in cities
Michael, Mike, Big Mike, insisted I come up to their apartment each throughout the world. And believe it or not, smoking a pipe on the
Tuesday and Thursday evening in between class 3 and 4, for dinner. I steps of the Parthenon is still frowned upon! (that’s a little shout out
had a 50- minute break in between. I’m like, ohhhh, mannnn, I don’t to Jane Harrison). In any case, I was thrilled at the prospect of being
know if I have enough time. But Jane insisted. She said, “you need interrupted. It turned out we were staying at the same hotel, which I
SUSTENANCE!” vaguely remember as being right next door to an Opera House, which
is pretty much how Jane and Michael rolled, (they loved the opera), and
So every Tuesday and Thursday night, I’d jump on the bus or hop in
we met and had the most delicious dinner which lasted, as dinners do in
a cab at 59th and 10th and ride up to their apartment on 73rd Street for
Sicily, long into the night. And there was Jane, providing me again with
dinner.
SUSTENANCE.
Well, it wasn’t just a quick bite. It was grilled salmon and asparagus one
Whether we knew her personally, or, as Carolyn Heilbrun once wrote,
night; brisket another; salad greens and vegetables from their garden;
as an “unmet friend” across the landscape of her body of work, Jane’s
duck confit (I didn’t even know what duck confit was… it turns out it’s
devotion and generosity to her students will inspire and encourage
delicious); followed by dessert, usually ice cream drizzled with preserves
countless new ideas and ways of thinking about Virginia Woolf, about
she had canned over the summer; and, yes, a glass (or two) of wine. I’d
feminism, and all of the inter-disciplinary fields with which we engage,
walk back in to class with 30 seconds to spare, fed and renewed by our
and her work, her rich, thought-provoking body of work, will endure as
conversation, and teach with an energy I had found lacking in Class
generative, meaningful and bold. Thank you so much for giving me the
number 3.
opportunity to honor her in this way.
Because Jane was right. I needed sustenance. For, “one cannot think
Jean Mills
well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well” (AROO 18). We
John Jay College of Criminal Justice
need sustenance “so that,” as Virginia Woolf writes in A Room of One’s
Own, we are “able to draw up to the fire and repair some of the damages GH
of the day’s living” (AROO 19).
Knowing Jane Marcus
Jane Marcus gave me, and so many of the scholars in this room,
personal, intellectual, and professional sustenance. As one of her I think it must have been through Louise DeSalvo that I first met Jane
students, Rowena Kennnedy Epstein, posted on social media, “It is Marcus. Once, in the early 1980s I participated as an adjunct in a faculty
such a unique relationship to mourn—through it one becomes part of development seminar at Pace University on “class in literature”. Jane
a community, is someone else’s legacy, gets a job, is given permission, was the invited speaker, and at one point during the discussion, she
makes another network of legacies, moves somewhere, publishes, leaned across and quietly enlightened me that I was being sized up
thinks, writes, gains authority. It’s profound when it is nurturing,” for a full-time position. At that time I was one of “you people” in the
and she nurtured all of us in this way. She created a space for feminist department—you people with your political readings, etc. I felt Jane’s
scholarship, gave us the confidence of our own voices and interpretations support, a kind of unspoken “I’ve got your back.”
of the work, insisted we do the work, follow through and check the
The last time I saw Jane was at the 2013 meeting of the Rebecca
archive against the public record. She taught us how to read, and as
West Society in New York, where she was a warm and witty presence
another of her students, Lauren Elkin, wrote “how to be fierce.”
throughout the weekend. At one point, with all of us sitting around
Her scholarship was pioneering, foundational. Intellectually, she was a square of tables having lunch, Jane pulled out several manuscripts
a firebrand, provocative, passionate, audacious. In her work, Art and and said she would like to auction them for the benefit of the Society.
Anger: Reading Like a Woman, Virginia Woolf and the Languages of They were typescripts of West’s essays and stories that Dame Rebecca
Patriarchy, New Feminist Essays on Virginia Woolf, Hearts of Darkness: had given to Jane when she interviewed her in London in the early
White Women Write Race, and in countless other essays on Woolf and 1980s, inviting Jane to look through boxes and take what she wanted!
other more obscure writers she introduced us to, she asked the important The auction happened right there and then as, one by one, avid West
questions. She refused to keep silent about Woolf’s feminism and lesbian scholars bid on and won these amazing artifacts. It was a moment that
identity, about her socialism and pacifism. Elisa Kay Sparks is correct to crystallized Jane Marcus: generous, surprising, and with a voluminous
point out, citing Jane’s groundbreaking essay, “Storming the Toolshed,” knowledge of twentieth-century modernist and feminist culture that she
that “the degree to which those two subjects [her feminism and was herself so deeply a part of. Even a short conversation with Jane
socialism] now provide the cornerstones of international Virginia Woolf could suggest all kinds of unexplored territories, give leads for research
Studies is largely due to Jane Marcus’s long, hard years of struggle to to be followed up, enrich one’s understanding of what had seemed
document the full political and social context of Woolf’s writing.” minutes before already to be quite well-known. She was, indeed, a force
of nature.
For me, she is indeed a giant upon whose shoulders we all stand, a
dedication attributed long ago to another great woman professional Mark Hussey
scholar, whom she adored, Jane Ellen Harrison, the Great J— H— of A Pace University
Room of One’s Own. She introduced me to Jane Harrison, my research n

12
Memorial Tribute for Jane Marcus I witnessed Jane do battle on behalf of others. She fought for a graduate
student who was told she could not do a Toni Morrison dissertation
I’d first like to express my appreciation to Julie Vandivere, Kristin because Morrison was not a major author (the following year Morrison
Czarnecki, Erica Delsandro and Vara Neverow for making the space won the Nobel Prize). Jane almost lost her Distinguished Professorship
for this tribute. Jane Marcus died just one week ago, on May 28, while when she came to the defense of a female colleague who was being
vacationing with her husband in the South Pacific. I was asked to speak denied promotion.
about what Jane Marcus meant to Woolf scholarship. I am going to be
a bit disobedient, but I think Jane would approve. What Jane Marcus Especially in recent years her presentations were major productions.
meant to Woolf scholarship is abundantly evident in this room. Here She never seemed to have the right glasses, but then declared it didn’t
we are, continuing scholarship on Virginia Woolf, and at this year’s matter since she hadn’t finished her paper. And it didn’t matter if she
conference, the study of women writers. Jane Marcus made our work hadn’t finished her paper, because invariably she would mostly set her
possible; she was doing feminist scholarship before it was acceptable to papers aside and talk. And how Jane could talk. She had so much to say.
do so; she laid the groundwork for Woolf studies. It was that way, too, when she read drafts of student work – she’d read a
sentence or two and then would be flooded with suggestions and ideas to
Jane broke ground not just in Woolf scholarship but in so many areas. share and then half an hour would pass and she’d return to the paper and
My work on Jean Rhys, Claude McKay, Djuna Barnes, have all been ask, “Where are we?”—um, second paragraph. She always had so much
enabled by Jane. “Laughing at Leviticus” changed the way many of to say, so much to offer.
us read Nightwood. Her work on the suffragists, Elizabeth Robins, the
Spanish Civil War, the Negro Anthology, and of course Rebecca West The most recent conference I was at with Jane was Louisville in 2013,
and Nancy Cunard—all vital, all cutting edge. where two panels on Adrienne Rich, who had died the year before, were
organized and presented in honor of Jane. And this conference gels for
The legacy of Jane’s scholarship will live on. Her books are (mostly) me the two points I want to make. It was wonderful being her student
in print and much of her work is easily accessed. Even those Woolf because she so valued her students. She spoke to me that weekend about
scholars who never met her, or even read her (god forbid!), walk through how conflicted she was about her pending retirement. She needed to
the doors Jane Marcus opened--or more appropriately, crashed though-- retire because she was simply exhausted; she was juggling many health
in areas of scholarship previously undiscovered, unchartered, silenced. issues, tired of battling the university bureaucracy, and she needed to get
more of her own writing done. But she kept saying how she would miss
However, besides acknowledging Jane’s foundational role at this 25th
her students.
Annual Conference on Virginia Woolf, I want to say a few words about
my personal experience as a student of Jane. In her Louisville keynote Jane spoke about Adrienne Rich. I hadn’t
realized that Jane corresponded with Rich in the 1970s, but of course
I have known Jane Marcus since 1995. She was my academic mentor,
it all makes sense. In the decade that witnessed the birth of women’s
my dissertation director, and a dear friend. She was one of the most
studies, this major lesbian essayist-poet and Jane Marcus corresponded
important people in my life.
about, among other things, Virginia Woolf. Pages of correspondence
As someone who was her student and knew her fairly well, there are two were projected on screens and Jane had so much to say, filled as she
key things I would like to contribute to the comments here today, for was with reminiscences, documents, analysis, and insight into this key
those of you who did not have the privilege of knowing her or being her moment in the history of feminist scholarship. In one letter Rich wrote,
student. But first I should perhaps offer my condolences to you—you “I draw on Woolf constantly, but I can’t write on her.” They discussed
don’t know what you missed. Woolf’s stifled lesbianism, her conflicts with the men of Bloomsbury.
These letters (and so much more) are, as far as I know, still in Jane’s
Jane Marcus was fierce and frightening, difficult and demanding, but files, as is so much else.
she had the warmest embrace and the most extraordinary generosity.
After spending time with Jane you’d come away with a list of must Besides the very personal, selfish loss I feel (and sorrow for her husband,
reads, dozens of ideas, books she pulled off her shelves, archival papers Michael, her children Lisa, Ben, and Jason, and her grandchildren), there
she gathered but decided you could make use of, and probably a jar of is also the loss of her voice, her beautiful, bold, husky voice, and all that
pickles from her garden cucumbers and a homemade peach tart. She is still unsaid, unwritten.
was an amazing cook. To be her student meant that you might get short
During her life she had so much to say, and she said it, unafraid and
quirky emails with messages such as, “You should think about the toilets
unabashed.
in Good Morning, Midnight,” or a comment about the Pope’s footwear,
or a photo of Emma Goldman in Spain. I don’t work on Goldman or the She had so much still to say, and so much more to write.
Spanish Civil War, but it was always good to hear from Jane.
She had so much and she gave so much.
To be Jane’s student meant that you probably also got to know other
of her students, many of whom would become lifelong friends due to I will be forever grateful.
similar commitments to scholarship and politics. I know Jean and Ashley
would agree that Jane’s students share a bond; we share a love of Jane Linda Camarasana
and an awareness about what a treasure we had. Jane encouraged our SUNY College at Westbury
community; treasured meetings with Jane always included news about l
what her other students, present or former, were up to—publications,
To Jane, Thank you. With Love, From Ashley
awards, yes, but also news of travel, marriages, and babies. We know
are in a special group. Jane attracted the feminists, the queers, the leftist How does one speak about a great mentor, to whom you owe an entire
activists, the working class, and some (present company excluded) with career of intellectual, emotional, and energetic debts? How does one
the most amazing fashion sense. begin to write about a deep and intensely personal relationship, to share
the numbing throb of grief, in unclichéd terms, and leave oneself open
I first heard Jane Marcus give a public lecture at the CUNY Graduate and vulnerable to the pain of memory? Since becoming Distinguished
Center in 1995. She was to give a talk that would become “The Proper Professor Jane Marcus’s graduate student in 2007, I would note things
Upkeep of Names: Virginia Woolf and Cambridge.” But it began with a to myself to share with Jane later, to process and discuss. In London,
very Woolfian scene. There was an audience; there was a podium; my emails to Jane from the archives were like my travel logs. This
13
year at the International Virginia Woolf Society Conference, I found histories, pacifist histories, the histories of those who are relegated to
myself cataloguing the conference for her as I always would, taking any “outsider” status, those histories overwritten by the metanarratives
notes on things she would have liked. Normally, I would return from the of our fields, those histories lost and buried in the archives, waiting to be
conference and she would say, “tell me everything.” “There was an art, resuscitated and brought life. In changing our stores of the past and the
exhibition, Jane, inspired by Woolf’s ‘Mark on the Wall’ that you would present, Jane taught, we change the world.
have loved, especially this piece called ‘Body Dots (For Claude Cahun)
by Maxene White,’” I would have said, and she would have had some Jane’s words were one of the places where her great personal power
amazing piece of information, or some wonderful story about Claude manifested most acutely. I sit and read Jane’s work half in awe, half
Cahun. ready to jump up and cheer at any moment. Her ability to construct
a sentence, to turn a phrase that hits one with full impact, defines her
The world has suffered a great loss with the passing of Jane Marcus. It scholarship. (Also, more impressive, she spoke the way she wrote.)
is in recognition of her singularity of existence, the substantial way in “Britannia Rules The Waves,” an essay that reads The Waves as
which she contributed to so many discourses, communities, and students, trenchant critique of imperialism, is full of these elegant sentences that
the expansive and inspiring way that she transformed my own life, that I are simultaneously poetic and a forceful attack on oppressive cultural
feel a deep sadness, a gaping abyss of loneliness, but I also feel profound cycles. This is one of my favorite examples, where Jane writes: “The
gratitude. I feel incredible gratitude for having been her student, for origin of the ‘story’ for which Bernard [the “white Western male author”,
having known her, and for having had the opportunity to love her. I feel “Byronic man, the romantic artist-hero,” as Jane calls him] and his
grateful to both Jane and her husband Michael Marcus for adopting me friends search is in the burbling of blood from a cut throat, the wars
as a stray graduate student, hosting me in their warm and lovely home and imperialist adventures on which their power was built.”1 I love this
(Jane said to me once, “I have the best apartment in New York” – and sentence because it exhibits not only her mastery, but also how Jane’s
she does. It is a converted Masonic Lodge), and for giving me an image criticism unveils the ways in which Virginia Woolf struggled to work
of a united, influential, mutually supportive academic couple who both through the reciprocal relationship between writing, culture, and war
pursued ambitious and successful careers. I thank them for including throughout her career, a struggle that now falls to us to continue.
me vicariously in their family, for sharing stories and pictures of their
children and grandchildren. I feel very privileged to have had these Il faut2—the must, the necessity of writing. Jane’s passing is
experiences with both of them, and it is a great honor to be asked to metaphysically accompanied by the il faut. We have now been
speak and write on her behalf. cosmically charged with the privilege, obligation, and responsibility
to keep Jane’s writings and teachings alive and present, to allow her to
I wish I could capture Jane’s energy for you today, to paint a picture of continue to communicate with us, and our students, through her words.
her sheer, impressive command as an individual. At my dissertation Jane has given us our assignments. She writes, upon the turning of the
defense, almost exactly a year before her death, and directly following millennium, “In a new century the questions still before me concern the
major heart surgery, Jane held court. She spoke so inspiringly and responsibility for writing those once vilified texts into classic status in a
passionately, even my other committee members, established professors new social imaginary. If it was once the critic’s role to argue the case for
in their own right, started taking notes off of what she was saying. canonizing such works, perhaps it is now her role to question their status
Dressed in steel grey, with cropped, short white hair, it was a sight and explore their limits.”3 At the end of her Coda to Hearts of Darkness:
to behold. This power and piercing brilliance was wrapped up in an White Women Write Race, Jane maintains the need to continue to
enthusiasm for life and beautiful things—Jane loved her garden in the diversity and more fully expand “modernism,” to include a comparative
Hamptons, fussed over all the little plants, sported big 1930’s inspired reading of “its margins” (which is also the name of a class she taught).
jewelry, enjoyed a nice table setting, and with Michael, generously She argues that, “in about April 1934, human character changed,”4
constructed the most beautiful meals. which was “the moment when Bloomsbury met the young radicals of
the colonies, when some white hearts struggled out of darkness, when
Those of us who knew and loved Jane Marcus are now charged with the women and people of color became public intellectuals without the
task of holding the space that she created in this world, this incredible anxiety that hounds the self-appointed guru Bernard, of The Waves. The
space of ethics, creativity, of dynamic, electric, intellectual labor, of listener, collared by Bernard on a ship out to Africa, has returned to
community cohesion and absolute, acute brilliance. Jane was a powerful England. He speaks. Then she speaks.”5 Jane Marcus has spoken. Now
individual. Her power was of the best kind, for it empowered others it is up to us to listen, and to write back through our mothers6 in response
and infected those around her. Her magnetic presence filled a room and to her call.
made her one of the most exceptional, inspiring teachers of our age.
Jane inspired love—love for her, love for the subject, love for the work Jane, I am holding you now, as forever, in the light.
yet to be done. Her classes operated like a frenzied storm building to
a finely controlled chaos, where every student arrived ready to present Ashley Foster
every meeting, clamored to share books, art, articles, ideas, clamored Haverford College
to share what they had put together in honor of her. And she conducted 1
Jane Marcus. “Britannia Rules The Waves.” Hearts of Darkness: White Women
this energy of a humming orchestra magnificently, at times letting us
Write Race. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 2004: 79.
strike modernist dissonant cords, then pulling us into harmony, and then
2
deciding when to perform the most articulate, stunningly beautiful solos. See Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe for the formulation of the il faut. “Il faut.” Hei-
Jane created a community for her students, passing on her socialist, degger and the Politics of Poetry. Trans. by Jeff Ford. Urbana and Chicago: U of
feminist ethos to all of us. In a collaborative spirit, she taught us to share Illinois P, 2007: 38-59.
our work and ideas with each other, forging an ongoing and powerful 3
Jane Marcus. “The Empire is Written.” Hearts of Darkness: White Women Write
scholarly conversation amongst her students. Jean Mills has called Race. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 2004: 23.
Jane our intellectual mother, which makes us all inspired by her work
intellectual siblings.
4
 Jane Marcus. “Coda.” Hearts of Darkness: White Women Write Race. New
Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 2004: 179.
From Jane, I learned that Virginia Woolf’s pacifism was not passive— 5
 Jane Marcus. “Coda”: 182.
that Woolf was an engaged, active, public intellectual who shouldered 6
This is a paraphrase of Virginia Woolf’s famous observation, “For we think
the great responsibility of writing in an attempt to change the back through our mother’s if we are women” (75). See A Room of One’s Own.
consciousness of an age bent on war. I learned the scholarly obligation Annotated with an Introduction by Susan Gubar. Gen.ed. Mark Hussey. Orlando:
to recuperate underrepresented and repressed histories—feminist Harcourt, 2005.
14
 e to publish a truly impressive range of feminist texts, including Women
of the Left Bank: Paris, 1900-1940; Textualizing the Feminine: On
Remembering Jane Marcus and Shari Benstock the Limits of Genre; and No Gifts from Chance: A Biography of Edith
I cannot remember when I first met Jane Marcus, though I surely Wharton. Her edited work The Private Self was a pivotal collection in
encountered her at Woolf conferences and MLA conventions from the feminist autobiographical studies that strongly influenced many of us
very beginning of my own career in academia. Jane always served as an engaged in the criticism of women’s life-writing. Our careers crossed
abiding tutelary spirit of the Woolf community, infusing it with a unique and intersected over the years, but what remains foremost in my memory
sense of passionate commitment, social activism, brilliant analysis, of Shari are her wit, astonishing energy, dazzling intellectual verve, and
and generous scholarly camaraderie. In my early days at SUNY- sheer kindness and sisterly support. She, too, will be sorely missed by
Binghamton, Jane phoned to ask if I could possibly provide an article all those in Joyce studies and women’s studies who sincerely mourn her
on Mrs. Dalloway for a feminist collection due at the publishers in a passing.
month’s time. I took on the precipitous project following Jane’s cryptic Suzette Henke
instructions to visit the Berg Collection at the New York Public Library University of Louisville
and find Woolf’s “little black book.” To my amazement and relief, the
mysterious notebook rose to the surface of the Berg’s extensive holdings,
replete with Woolf’s holograph notes for The Hours. Prior to Helen
Wussow’s transcription, these notes proved an invaluable treasure for

h
the early archival scholarship that informed Jane’s groundbreaking
collection, New Feminist Essays on Virginia Woolf.

When I organized a small modernist studies colloquium at Binghamton,

Jane generously agreed to take the Greyhound Bus from New York City
and cheerfully camped out on my fold-out couch in an attic bedroom of
the tiny bungalow I inhabited. Years later, she enjoyed more salubrious
accommodations at the Seelbach Hotel when she came to Louisville to
deliver a keynote address on Woolf and Bloomsbury at the University
of Louisville Twentieth-Century Literature Conference. The name of
this event had morphed into the Louisville Conference on Literature
and Culture since 1900 by the time Jane joined us in February 2013 to
h
serve on a special panel offering a poignant tribute to Adrienne Rich.
Characteristic of Jane’s enthusiasm and good will, she accepted a dinner
invitation to address my Bloomsbury seminar on Woolf, Three Guineas,
and the Spanish Civil War. Needless to say, she held the graduate
h
students enthralled with political interpretations of patriarchy, poverty,
and bellicosity in the historical milieu that shaped Woolf’s radical
politics. Jane always maintained that Woolf cherished a radical, socialist
h
perspective that grew stronger and was less heavily censored as she aged
into the development of more chutzpah, despite a technical disclaimer in
Three Guineas of the traditional “feminist” label.

Jane and I discussed the possibility of our mutual retirements with

a sense of wanhope. She talked about future plans for a cruise
circumnavigating the globe in celebration of a long and productive
career in the academy. In March 2015, she kindly sent her condolences
after learning of my husband, James Francis Rooney’s, recent death.
From our communal dinner in Louisville, she remembered that “he was
charming and intelligent and I am sure you’re going to miss him very
much.” As we will miss you, Jane, the “mother of us all,” to echo Laura
Hinton.

Our beloved Shari Benstock held similar prominence in the world of

James Joyce scholarship, and I can only begin to express my gratitude
and admiration for this exceptional feminist scholar, biographer,
and incredibly gifted writer. In what Joyce would call the “dawn
of protohistory,” when we were “jung and easily freudened,” it felt
thoroughly intimidating to enter a seemingly male-dominated world
of Joyce studies. In the 1980s. Bonnie Scott and I got together to
inaugurate a Joyce Foundation women’s caucus, in a gesture of
political activism that would not have been possible without the
ongoing support of people like Shari and many others, both male and
female. Shari was already prominent in the Joyce establishment and
exceptional insofar as she deftly incorporated contemporary feminist,
narrative, and post-structuralist theory into a dazzling series of literary
analyses. When I invited Shari to contribute to Women in Joyce, the
first collection of feminist essays on his canon, she agreed to write on
the “Psychodynamics of Issy” in Finnegans Wake in a provocative
and scintillating piece that has since become a classic. Shari went on

15
 Table of Contents
To the Readers: Erica Delsandro 1 Un-visioning the Visionary Annette Oxindine 33
1930s Woolf in Woolf’s The Years
Big Deal: Sandra Inskeep-Fox 36
Events, Cfps and Information: Virginia Woolf & Ernie come to Terms
Panels and Papers and Dinner Plans for MLA 2016 Austin, TX 3 (poem)
Thanking the IVWS for Supporting the VWM 3 Truly Miscellaneous
Virginia Woolf Miscellany Editorial Board 3 Did Virginia Woolf Hilary Newman 36
Issues of the VWM Online and the VWM Index 3 Attempt Suicide in 1904?
Paula Maggio’s “Blogging Woolf” 3 A Woolf Abroad: Dale Hall 37
The Novels of Virginia Woolf and
Information about the History of the Annual Conference 3
Their Sales Overseas
on Virginia Woolf
An Echo from Hamlet Hilary Newman 39
CFP for the 26th Annual Conference on 4
Virginia Woolf (Leeds Trinity University, Leeds, UK) Praeterita and Mrs. Dalloway: Toru Sasaki 39
A Hypothetical Note
CFP for the 27 Annual Conference on 5
th

Virginia Woolf (University of Reading, Reading, UK) Making Woolf Work: Katherine Horgan 41
Woolf Works at the Royal Ballet
CFP 3rd Korea-Japan Virginia Woolf Conference 5
A Bloomsbury Miscellany Hana Leaper 43
Leonard Woolf Society Meetings 5
from the Charleston Attic
How to Join the International Virginia Woolf Society 6
Theater Review: Austin Riede 45
How to Join the Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain 6 Septimus and Clarissa
How to Join the Société d’Études Woolfians 6
Book Reviews
Information about the IVWS Archive 6 Call for Reviewers & 46
VWM Guidelines for Submissions 7 How to Contact the Book Review Editor
and Editorial Policies REVIEW: Gill Lowe 46
A Brief Overview of Resources for Woolfians 8 Becoming Virginia Woolf:
Her Early Diaries & the Diaries She Read
CFPs for Issues 89, 90 and 91 of the Miscellany 8 by Barbara Lounsberry
Recent Woolf-Related Publications 9 REVIEW: Jean Mills 48
Virginia Woolf’s Late Cultural Criticism:
Woolfian Resources Online 10 The Genesis of The Years, Three Guineas,
In Memoriam and Between the Acts
by Alice Wood
Shari Benstock 10
REVIEW: Adolphe Haberer 49
Jane Marcus 11 Contemporary Woolf.
Woolf Contemporaine
Table of Contents 16 ed. by Claire Davison-Pegon &
Special Issue:1930s Woolf Anne-Marie Smith-Di Biaso
Guest Editor: Erica Delsandro REVIEW: Roberta Rubinstein 50
Translation as Collaboration:
Virginia Woolf and Edward Upward Peter Stansky 17 Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield,
“miserably devaluated currency”: Alice Keane 18 and S. S.Koteliansky

Language, Economy, and Fascism in by Claire Davison.

Christopher Isherwood’s The Berlin Stories REVIEW: Todd Avery & Gigi Thibodeau 52
and Virginia Woolf’s The Years The Bloomsbury Cookbook:
Recipes for Life, Love and Art
Virginia Woolf, Victoria Ocampo Matthew Beeber 21
by Jans Ondaatje Rolls
and the National/Transnational Dialectic in
Three Guineas REVIEW: Elizabeth Hirsh 53
The House of Fiction as the House of Life:
Dorothy L. Sayers Rosemary Erickson Johnsen 23 Representations of the House from
and Virginia Woolf: Richardson to Woolf
Perspectives on the ed. by Francesca Saggini &
Woman Intellectual Anna Enrichetta Soccio
in the Late 1930s REVIEW: Brandon Truett 54
Imagined “Ineffable Space”: Sarah E. Cornish 26 Modernist Fiction and News:
Woolf’s Architectural Release in Representing Experience
in the Early Twentieth Century
“America, Which I Have Never Seen
by David Rando
Flush, Courtship, and Suffering Jennifer Mitchell 28
Officers of the International Virginia Woolf Society 55
Illustrating the Uncanny: Leslie Kathleen Hankins 30
Picturing Virginia Woolf’s IVWS: Kristin Czarnecki 56
“This is the House of Commons” The Society Column
in the 1930s British Good Housekeeping
[
16
 any political party” (Lehmann, New Writing n. p.). The volume contained

Special Issue: among its contents the first of Isherwood’s Berlin stories, “The Nowaks,”
poetry by Stephen Spender and Boris Pasternak, and the first chapter
of Upward’s novel, still known as The Border-Line. A second excerpt
from Upward’s novel appeared in the third New Writing. In this manner,

1930s Woolf
Lehmann was a bridge linking Upward and the Woolfs.

But it was actually Isherwood who persuaded the Woolfs to publish

Upward. In November 1938, Upward signed a contract with the Hogarth
Press for his novel with an advance of £20. It was then that the title was

Edited by changed as it was discovered that there was another Border-Line that had
been published by Heinemann. Journey to the Border appeared on March
10, 1938 with a jacket by Vanessa Bell for which she was paid £3. The
Erica Delsandro Press also tried, without success, to find an American publisher, being
in touch with Knopf and W. W. Norton among others. (Donald Brace of
Harcourt Brace liked it but felt it wouldn’t have enough of an audience
in the United States.) By the standards of the time, the publication was

??? a limited success. It was recommended by the Book Society. The very
well-known photographer Howard Coster did a portrait of Upward for
publicity purposes. The novel received, on the whole, good reviews.
Virginia Woolf and Edward Upward 1,400 copies were printed at the price of 7/6 and 438 copies were sold in
the first year.1 Isherwood had written to John Lehmann:
Edward Upward (1903-2009) recorded in his notebook on September
6th 1937: “Twenty minutes to twelve. Have finished The Border-Line” Edward’s book is being published by the Hogarth in early spring.
(British Library Add MS 89002). He had been working on this first novel This after a terrific putsch on my part. There was a wonderful
for some years. Now the problem was to have it published. (It would be dinner party given by the Woolfs to the Upwards, a great success.
published the next year, 1938, with the title Journey to the Border.) For Virginia is really the nicest woman I know: she was so nice to
this Leonard and Virginia Woolf became crucial figures. Emily Kopley, Mrs U. Elizabeth Bowen came in afterwards, so Edward got a real
in her splendid publication, Virginia Woolf and the Thirties Poets (2011), glimpse of Bloomsbury, and quite enjoyed it in his chilly way.
has written about how Virginia Woolf came to know and publish the (Lehmann, Christopher Isherwood 39)
canonical 1930s writers: W. H. Auden, Cecil Day Lewis, John Lehmann,
Stephen Spender, Louis MacNeice, and Christopher Isherwood and her Edward did enjoy himself, remembering vividly that Virginia smoked a
both supportive and competitive relationship with them. She may well cheroot. Isherwood’s characterization of his old friend as “chilly” seems
have heard of Upward as Isherwood’s great friend and influence upon a little harsh as others depicted him as more genial and friendly—but of
him, his contemporary both at Repton, their public school, and then at course Isherwood knew him extremely well.
Cambridge. She also might have known that he saw a lot of Auden in the
first half of the decade. Upward was the most politically committed of The other connection between Upward and Woolf is her well-known
the group, becoming a devoted member of the Communist Party in 1934. essay, “The Leaning Tower,” a talk that she gave to the Workers’
He had published two stories in New Country, issued by the Hogarth Educational Association in Brighton in April 1940. Along with her
Press in 1933. Now he had completed his first novel, which turned on the “Letter to a Young Poet” of 1932 addressed to John Lehmann, it was
question of the future of its central character, an unnamed tutor. Would part of her debate with the writers of Upward’s generation. In her essay
he go mad or would he come up to the border and join the workers’ she argues that peace and prosperity shaped the British writers of the
cause? By publishing the book, the Hogarth Press made a significant nineteenth century, that they looked at a world from secure towers built
contribution to the shaping of the literary 1930s. That and the debate upon class, educational, and gender privilege: “They had leisure, they
over her 1940 essay, “The Leaning Tower,” were the two significant had security” (264). Except for Dickens and Lawrence, they were,
connections between Edward Upward and Virginia Woolf. she argued, on towers of stucco—their middle-class birth—and of
gold—their education. This lasted until 1914. Then, after the war, the
Another crucial figure in the story was John Lehmann. At Cambridge, situation changed. She identifies the writers that she has in mind as the
Lehmann was a very close friend of Julian Bell and, through Bell, met new generation—Upward’s circle—although she does not mention him;
his aunt Virginia; this connection led to his working for the Hogarth rather, she mentions Auden, Day Lewis, MacNeice, Isherwood, and
Press. He also published with the Press, not only in New Signatures and Spender. They came from the middle class and had the same private
New Country but two books of his own poetry, their titles suggesting the education: “They are tower dwellers like their predecessors, the sons of
transition to left-wing politics that was taking place in the 1930s: The well-to-do parents, who could afford to send them to public schools and
Garden Revisited in 1931 and The Noise of History in 1934. Lehmann universities” (267). Yet the view from the tower was so different as the
was central to Woolf’s simultaneously confrontational and co-operative towers themselves were now leaning. They were no longer anchored
relationship with the young writers of the 1930s. Lehmann introduced in the securities of the nineteenth century. She argues that being on a
many of the canonical 1930s writers to the Woolfs who were happy tower leaning to the left makes these writers much more self-conscious
to publish them despite their aesthetic differences. In 1936 Lehmann of their class and hence it is harder for them to create characters. Also,
launched the first issue of the semi-annual, New Writing, in effect a she suggests that the angle of vision made them angry at their society.
continuation of New Country. “New” was such a characteristic term Much as they might wish to, they cannot divest themselves of their class
of the time, yet it also hearkened back to Ezra Pound’s modernist cry, formation: “And thus, trapped by their education, pinned down by their
“Make It New.” The first volume was not published by the Woolfs at the capital, they remained on top of their leaning tower, and their state of
Hogarth Press but rather by John Lane at the Bodley Head as Lehmann mind as we see it reflected in their poems and plays and novels is full
had at that time left the Hogarth Press (although he would return) in part, of discord and bitterness, full of confusion and of compromise” (Woolf
he explained, because working for Leonard Woolf was so difficult. The 269). They would like to come off their tower and join the mass of
Manifesto for New Writing announced that “NEW WRITING is first and
foremost interested in literature, and though it does not intend to open its 1
 Details about publication from the Hogarth Press file 507 Special Collections,
pages to writers of reactionary or Fascist sentiments, it is independent of University of Reading
17
humankind. She feels that these writers lack the creative power to write mean that they would have had to spend all their time in committee
about others but they could, in her view, write creatively and truthfully meetings or door-to-door canvassing or in composing propaganda
about themselves. She is hopeful about the literature that might exist in leaflets. They could have taken part in ordinary political work and
the world without towers, without class, but that world did not yet exist. they could have written poems and novels as well. Their inherited
The essay ends with a suggestion to her readers and her listeners to read money gave them—or those of them who possessed inherited
freely from books taken from the library, which she seems to imagine money—the time and the freedom for political work and for
will help to eliminate the world of class. She published her essay in the imaginative writing. (28)
Folios of New Writing in the Autumn 1940 issue.
Upward’s explanation reminds one of the “golden islands” of E. M.
Then, in the Spring 1941 issue of Folios of New Writing, there were Forster’s Howards End. In fact, although very solidly from the middle
four brief replies to her essay, three by those whom she had criticized class, the Auden group on the whole did not actually have private
with the addition of B. L. Coombes, who was in fact a working-class incomes. Upward ends his brief essay by stating that indeed the tower
writer. There were pieces by Louis MacNeice, who was in her sights will fall and that those who are socialists and writers will be even
particularly, as well as John Lehmann, the recipient of her “Letter to a better writers after the tower, the capitalist economic system, has been
Young Poet” of 1932, and Upward. The replies, of course, were rather destroyed. In his concluding lines he defends the writers of the Auden
overshadowed by her suicide in March of 1941. “The Leaning Tower” circle: “There is much in the poetry of Auden and of Spender which is fit
was almost the last piece she wrote, being followed in publication before to stand beside the great poetry of the past. The ‘leaning tower’ writers
her death by one short essay on Ellen Terry, the actress, and a review of a are abler and more serious than most of their detractors. No better work
book on Mrs. Thrale, the friend of Dr. Johnson. than theirs appeared in England in the ‘thirties. They may produce their
best work in the ‘forties” (29).
Coombes, in “Below the Tower,” makes the case for the capabilities of
the working-class writer and urges the middle-class, “leaning tower” The relationship between Virginia Woolf and Edward Upward reveals
writers to climb down to the working-class writer’s level before the her as both skeptical and encouraging of these young writers of the
tower collapses and gives them no choice. Moreover, Coombes suggests 1930s.
that the “leaning tower” writers teach the working class writers what
they need to know. Louis MacNeice wrote the next response. He was Peter Stansky
the writer most specifically attacked in her essay with quite a few Stanford University
quotations from his Autumn Journal—“feeble as poetry, but interesting
Works Cited
as autobiography”—included in Woolf’s critique (269). He is on
British Library Add MS 89002/1/6 November 1936-February 1938.
the leaning tower and can’t get off, which explains, she asserts, the
Coombes, B. L. “Below the Tower.” Folios of New Writing 3.1 (Spring
destructiveness and emptiness of his writings. MacNeice disputes her
1941): 30-36.
conception that the writers of the nineteenth century accepted the status
Kopley, Emily. Virginia Woolf and the Thirties Poets. London: Cecil
quo and also her claim that the discontent with the status quo among
Woolf, 2011.
members of MacNeice’s generation restricts their ability to be successful
Lehmann, John. “A Postscript.” Folios of New Writing 3.1 (Spring
writers. He does see flaws in the writings of those in his circle, disliking
1941): 42-46.
the polemical poetry of Rex Warner, the social satires of Day Lewis,
---. ed. New Writing. 1 (Spring 1936) London: Bodley Head, 1936.
and Auden and Isherwood’s On the Frontier. He remarks that Edward
—. Christopher Isherwood: A Personal Memoir. New York, Holt 1987.
Upward “ruined his novel, Journey to the Border, with his use of the
MacNeice, Louis. “The Tower that Once.” Folios of New Writing 3.1
Deus ex Machina—i.e. ‘the Workers’—at the end” (40). But whatever
(Spring 1941): 37-41.
their faults, MacNeice perceives these writers, particularly Auden and
Upward, Edward. “The Falling Tower.” Folios of New Writing 3.1
Spender, as bringing new hope and new spirit to English writing. He
(Spring 1941): 24-29.
doesn’t respond to Woolf’s particular criticisms of his poetry but he
—. Journey to the Border. London: The Hogarth Press, 1938.
concludes his essay with the assertion that “we were right to advocate
Woolf, Virginia. “The Leaning Tower.” The Essays of Virginia Woolf,
social reconstruction and we were even right—in our more lyrical
1933 to 1941, Vol. 6. Ed. Stuart N. Clarke. London: The Hogarth
work—to give personal expression to our feelings of anxiety, horror
Press, 2011. 259-83.
and despair” (41). John Lehmann writes as the editor who published the
—. “The Leaning Tower.” Folios of New Writing 2.2 (Autumn 1940):
original essay but also the person who knew Woolf best. He argues that
11-33.
she was more sympathetic to the writings of these young writers of the
1930s than might appear. As he points out, she was a socialist but was
also intensely self-conscious about not belonging to the working class.
q
He ends his very brief “A Postscript” stating how interested and anxious
she was to publish new young authors and to encourage their work.

Upward’s reply, “The Falling Tower,” was the first of the group and
he argued strongly on the necessity to be a Marxist as he had pointed
out in his essay, “A Marxist Interpretation of Literature,” published in
The Mind in Chains in 1937. He states that the writers of his group are
right to attack the bourgeois world, even though that world has given “miserably devaluated currency”: Language, Economy, and Fascism
them some economic security. Indeed, he sees such a point of view as a in Christopher Isherwood’s The Berlin Stories and Virginia Woolf’s
necessity in order to be a significant writer. But he does accept that the The Years
“leaning tower” writers are not great and that their work “was filled with Introducing the anti-hero of The Last of Mr. Norris,1 narrator William
confusion and compromise” (26). He does not feel that the writer needs Bradshaw describes the con artist’s gestures: “For all they conveyed,
to throw away bourgeois advantages in order to be a proper socialist, as he might equally have been going to undress, to draw a revolver, or
he thinks Woolf is arguing. As he points out, Marx, Engels, nor Lenin
did not do so. Upward explains: 1
 Mr Norris Changes Trains (1935), published by the Woolfs’ Hogarth Press, is
the earliest of The Berlin Stories. It was published in the United States as The Last
It is true that in order to write like socialists they would have had of Mr. Norris (1935). The Hogarth Press subsequently published Sally Bowles
to be socialists and to work with other socialists, but this does not (1937) and Goodbye to Berlin (1939).
18
merely to make sure that I hadn’t stolen his money” (Berlin Stories 4). continually about wealth, fame, huge contracts for Sally, record-breaking
In Weimar Berlin, with Arthur Norris’s metonymic gestures writ large, sales for the novels I should one day write” (Berlin Stories 249). When
the scarcity of money is a powerful motivating force for two other Sally obtains an offer to contribute an article on “the English Girl”
possibilities—commodified sex and political violence. Isherwood’s (266) for a modernist magazine—“most terribly highbrow and artistic,
narrator makes this linkage among economy, language and the with lots of marvelous modern photographs, ink-pots and girls’ heads
bankruptcy of the “private escape” explicit: upside down” (265)—Chris agrees to draft a piece to run under her
byline. But after Sally insists on something more “snappy…the kind of
The murder reporters and the jazz-writers had inflated the German thing this man wants” (266), he balks, which marks the decline of their
language beyond recall. […] The word Liebe, soaring from the friendship. She turns to a new friend, the market-savvy Kurt Rosenthal,
Goethe standard, was no longer worth a whore’s kiss. Spring, who is “terribly ambitious and […] works the whole time; and […] can
moonlight, youth, roses, girl, darlings, heart, May: such was the write anything—anything you like: scenarios, novels, plays, poetry,
miserably devaluated currency dealt in by the authors of all those advertisements…” (267).
tangoes, waltzes, and fox-trots which advocated the private escape.
Find a dear little sweetheart, they advised, and forget the slump, When Isherwood’s narrators draw these lines of resistance, they—like
ignore the unemployed. (93) Isherwood himself—inhabit a “place” in Weimar that is geographically
identical to, but economically distinct from, the locus of Berlin’s
The consequences are devastating. As the Reichstag burns (191), café demimonde.4 The Isherwood personae’s limited but insistent refusals to
crowds in Berlin, their newspapers close at hand, “smiled approvingly at yield to commodification unfold against an economic and sociocultural
these youngsters in their big, swaggering boots who were going to upset backdrop in Weimar where, as historian Detlev Peukert observes, “over
the Treaty of Versailles” (192). and beyond their immediate material plight, intellectuals were in a
fundamentally new situation now that they were having to work within a
Economic motifs are also pervasive in Virginia Woolf’s 1930s “novel
market society and a mass culture” (167). The pre-Weimar equivalent of
of fact,” The Years, and Three Guineas, its sister progeny from the “one
Woolf’s prescribed five hundred pounds a year in A Room of One’s Own
book” that was, in draft, The Pargiters. In The Years, the violence of
had vanished for many writers and artists in the German hyperinflation,
war and the violence of economic crisis are linked. Woolf’s treatment
and The Berlin Stories register the impact of economic change and
of these harsh realities does not suggest conclusive or unduly optimistic
precarity in Weimar as a pervasive theme.
answers. Critics have often emphasized differences between Bloomsbury
and the “Auden Generation,” but this viewpoint has not been universal.2 Woolf, too, portrays unsettling economic circumstances and the related
I would argue that, in their prose of the late 1930s, despite diverging prospect of sociocultural and political change in her oeuvre of the
sympathies concerning liberalism, feminism, and Communism, late 1930s. For example, in The Years, Sara Pargiter elects to live in
Isherwood and Woolf both experiment with narrative realism, repetition, a squalid boardinghouse room on considerably less than £500 a year.
and variation around questions of modern economies as they struggle Woolf depicts Sara and her friend Nicholas as generating a private
to locate possibilities of resistance to the commercially and politically “outsider’s society” à deux in The Years, using language in a way that
driven “devaluation” of language.3 both reinforces the partners’ connection and discomfits their fellow
participants in mainstream social discourse. Sara is a saboteur, as it
Arthur Norris spins fictitious scenarios for a living, while none-
were, who blurts out unexpected information but who is also capable
too-successfully proffering them as truth. We might draw parallels
of cutting off information flows if and when it suits her. Despite having
between the cons that are inherent in Norris’s storytelling and the con
only a small private income, she lives in marginal circumstances rather
of unreliable narration itself in The Berlin Stories. Diarist Isherwood
than accept a job in a newspaper office.5 Sara’s artistic and economic
morphs his observations into fiction that is narrated by British expatriates
model in The Years, resembling the Outsiders’ extreme iteration in Three
“William Bradshaw” (Isherwood’s middle names) and “Christopher
Guineas—one that Woolf herself approached at times in the last decade
Isherwood” (sometimes “Chris” or “Christoph”), both characters who
of her life but never quite wholly followed—opens up possibility and
are non-identical variations upon Isherwood himself. But there is an
risk, recognizing that literary labor might have to be done without less
important distinction between Norris and the Isherwood personae.
of a material basis than Room had urged and in an atmosphere of even
To obtain money, Norris will do anything with words, regardless of
more radical experimentation. Sara’s poverty embodies resistance, as
the personal or political cost to others. Bradshaw, who participates in
she disrupts the usual, compromised flows of economic and linguistic
Norris’s intrigue not for his own economic gain but to save his friend,
exchange.6 But it also bespeaks desperation: Sara, like Isherwood’s
shocks Norris, who is afraid that Bradshaw will turn him in to the
Sally Bowles, as they respectively resist and embrace commodification,
German police: “‘My God, Arthur!’ I literally gasped. ‘What exactly, do
ultimately fails to win a comprehending public audience.
you take me for?’” (173). Norris, baffled, replies: “‘There might be quite
a large reward, you see…’” (173). Isherwood’s narrators rent lodgings among “houses like shabby
monumental safes crammed with the tarnished valuables and secondhand
Even as Bradshaw refuses to betray Norris for money, “Chris” in
furniture of a bankrupt middle class” (Berlin Stories 207). A place
Goodbye to Berlin resists his theatrical friend Sally Bowles’s pressures
even worse than these rooms, the Nowaks’ drafty, overcrowded flat
to rewrite a ghostwritten article in order to improve its marketability.
in Hallesches Tor, seems to prove Woolf’s assertion in Room that “[i]
Both Sally and Chris fantasize about financial success: “We talked
ntellectual freedom depends upon material things” (100). Isherwood
2
 For example, reading Isherwood’s 1932 novel, The Memorial, in the context of 4 
Isherwood’s biographer Peter Parker notes: “Some people felt that during the
Woolf’s To the Lighthouse and Jacob’s Room, Erica Gene Delsandro has argued 1930s Isherwood liked to give the impression that he was constantly short of
recently for “lines of affiliation” between the two writers’ representations of money when in fact there was always a readily available source back in England
World War I and its consequences, consistent with Woolf’s call for “common if things got really difficult” (252).
ground” in “The Leaning Tower.”
3 
Woolf’s Diaries often record a difficult and sacrificial aspect attendant upon
5
 Evelyn T. Chan analyzes Sara’s refusal to “prostitute” her literary talent by
working professionally as a journalist; both The Years and Three Guineas, Chan
her late 1930s change in style. Moreover, in his July 1954 Preface for the New finds, foreground Woolf’s “conflicting feelings” about women vis à vis the profes-
Directions combined edition of The Berlin Stories, Isherwood acknowledges, in sions (593).
retrospect, that the cost of his narratives was often borne by others: “Hadn’t there
been something youthfully heartless in my enjoyment of the spectacle of Berlin in 6
 John Whittier-Ferguson, who argues for a connection between Woolf’s late
the early thirties, with its poverty, its political hatred and its despair?” (xviii). style and the imminent repetition of world war, characterizes Sara as “the spirit of
repetition incarnate” (235).
19
tells Frau Nowak that his move to her flat is motivated in part because Eleanor’s succession of insights at the close of The Years are a far cry
of the decline of the British pound (Berlin Stories 307). Still, when it from the hopeful and momentarily confident narrator of A Room of One’s
proves impossible for him to write his novel “about a family who lived Own, reflecting on her aunt’s legacy: “No force in the world can take
in a large country house on unearned incomes and were very unhappy” from me my five hundred pounds. Food, house and clothing are mine for
(326)—that is, the Vernons of The Memorial —in the miserable ever. Therefore not merely do effort and labour cease, but also hatred and
conditions that surround him (326), Isherwood has no difficulty in bitterness” (38). Rather, some of Colonel Pargiter’s children are perhaps
moving on from the Nowaks’ to a “comfortable bed-sitting-room in the beginning to learn from direct experience, including their observation of
West End” (333).7 these less privileged children, that macroeconomic forces—and their po-
tential political consequences—do not necessarily work this way. As The
Alison Light has posited that Woolf’s insight into the injustices of class Years concludes, the Pargiters cannot hold onto the present, and what
remains flawed and so “the figure of the servant and of the working will happen next is uncertain. The “rules,” both political and linguistic,
woman haunts Woolf’s experiments in literary modernism” (xviii). are shifting. But recognition of that fact—for Eleanor as listener, and for
We might argue the same about Isherwood’s depictions of his Berlin Woolf’s readers—becomes not only essential but potentially transforma-
landladies and their economically desperate sons. But both Woolf tional.
and Isherwood sometimes partially recognize, and represent in their
fiction, their own limitations in this regard. Visiting the Communist “I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not think-
leader Ludwig Bayer, Isherwood’s alter ego Bradshaw admits his own ing,” claims Isherwood’s narrator in “A Berlin Diary, Autumn 1930,” the
ineffectuality in helping the cause: “He asked about the living conditions first story in Goodbye to Berlin 207). “Thinking is my fighting,” states
in the East End of London and I tried to eke out the little knowledge I Woolf in her 1940 essay, “Thoughts on Peace in an Air Raid.” But Isher-
had collected in the course of a few days’ slumming, three years before” wood the fiction writer, if not always his eponymous narrators, “thinks,”
(71). too, about the power of language as a political instrument. “That the
artist is interested in politics needs no saying,” Woolf acknowledges, in
Impressed by Norris’s charismatic speech to a working class gathering, 1936, in “The Artist and Politics” (230). Under conditions of imminent
Bradshaw also realizes: “They were listening to their own collective peril, that interest must extend to overt involvement; the artist “is forced
voice. At intervals they applauded it, with sudden, spontaneous violence” to take part in politics” (232). Seen from this viewpoint, both Woolf’s
(53). Bradshaw recognizes that some kind of change is imminent; what and Isherwood’s late 1930s texts embody an innovative, politically
kind of change it will be is not yet certain. Similarly, in the final reunion responsive aesthetic. Adopting a comparatively understated style, in
scene of The Years, Eleanor Pargiter, if only for a moment, grasps a contrast to the “hyperinflated” prose of Weimar journalism and political
vague but genuine insight as she “shut[s] her hands on the coins she was speeches, and employing a kind of iterative, cross-generic repetition that
holding” (426). But she cannot communicate it to others as she touches implicitly acknowledges uncertainty, both writers respond presciently
these ostensibly “solid objects,” commonplace representations of value and courageously to appalling historical circumstance.
that now might conceivably melt into air. Her sister Delia tries to be
welcoming to the caretaker’s children as they make a sudden appearance, Alice Keane
but she is as ineffectually generous with her cake as Eleanor had been University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
with her quasi-charitable cottage visits to London’s poor. Commanded
by Martin Pargiter to “sing a song for sixpence” (429), the children Works Cited
twist their compliance into nonsense syllables that are compelling Chan, Evelyn T. “Professions, Freedom and Form: Reassessing Woolf’s
and ominous, but also perhaps strangely “Beautiful?” (431). Woolf The Years and Three Guineas.” The Review of English Studies ns
catalogues the impact of their song for Martin: it is “distorted” (429); 61.251 (2010): 591-613.
“with one impulse they attacked the next verse” (429), and the second Delsandro, Erica Gene. “Modernism, Memorials, and Masculinity:
“more fiercely than the first” (430), so that “the unintelligible words ran Virginia Woolf and Christopher Isherwood.” 24th Annual
themselves together almost into a shriek” (430). The caretaker’s children International Conference on Virginia Woolf: Writing the World.
sing and move in concert, always as a collective “they,” promising Chicago, IL. 7 June 2014.
something new and perhaps generative. But, marshaling emotion without Eksteins, Modris. Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the
rational language, they also strike a note of warning: a generation who Modern Age. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1989.
might in a decade or two become soldiers or rioters themselves, caught Isherwood, Christopher. The Berlin Stories. New York: New Directions,
up in the collective emotions of Fascist or revolutionary violence. 1963.
—. The Memorial. Norfolk, CT: New Directions, 1946.
Modris Eksteins has explored a pre-World War One “fascination with Light, Alison. Mrs Woolf and the Servants. London: Penguin Books
primitivism” (84) in Germany; after the war, he finds that language “was 2008.
gradually robbed of its social meaning and became a highly personal Parker, Peter. Isherwood: A Life Revealed. New York: Random House,
and poetic instrument” (219). Although the continental linkage of artistic 2004.
primitivism and mass political violence that Eksteins establishes was not Peukert, Detlev. The Weimar Republic: The Crisis of Classical
replicated in Britain, in this scene, Woolf seems to cast it as a possibil- Modernity. Trans. Richard Deveson. New York: Hill and Wang, 1993.
ity. The children’s response, fracturing assumptions too long held within Whittier-Ferguson, John. “Repetition, Remembering, Repetition:
the walls of an abruptly defamiliarized room, imprecisely yet meaning- Virginia Woolf’s Late Fiction and the Return of War.” Modern
fully communicates that perhaps the Pargiters will be made to “pay” Fiction Studies, 57.2 (Summer 2011): 230-53.
more in the future than cake and sixpence to those whom their class has Woolf, Virginia. “The Artist and Politics.” The Moment and Other
exploited. Essays. New York: Harcourt, 1948.
—. The Diary of Virginia Woolf. Ed. Anne Olivier Bell, vols. 2-5 assisted
by Andrew McNeillie. 5 vols. New York: Harcourt, 1977-1984.
7  —. “The Leaning Tower.” The Essays of Virginia Woolf, Vol. VI: 1933-
Parker notes that the devaluation of the pound in 1931 led Isherwood toward
1941. Ed. Stuart N. Clarke. London: The Hogarth Press, 2011.
some journalistic compromises: “[A]lthough he described the contents of the first
issue of Action, the New Party’s magazine, as ‘the rankest John Bull stuff,’ he —. The Pargiters: The Novel-Essay Portion of “The Years.” Ed.
wrote to its editor, Harold Nicolson, offering him the occasional ‘Berlin Letter’ Mitchell A. Leaska. New York: New York Public Library and Readex
and asking whether he might review books. The New Party had been founded Books, 1977.
earlier in the year by Oswald Mosley, and was swiftly (and presciently) anathema- —. A Room of One’s Own. New York: Harcourt, 1929.
tized by the communist Daily Worker as ‘fascist’” (201).
20
—. Three Guineas. New York: Harcourt, 1938. and, formally, it is distinct from earlier works of “high” modernism,
—. “Thoughts on Peace In an Air Raid.” The Essays of Virginia Woolf, written in a straightforward, almost journalistic style that allows for it to
Vol. VI: 1933-1941. Ed. Stuart N. Clarke. London: Hogarth, 2011. be easily translated.
—. The Years. New York: Harcourt, 1939.
However, Three Guinea’s cosmopolitanism is complicated by a tendency
towards the very kind of national identification that the text warns
against. In a rhetorical turn that has received much scholarly debate,

c
Woolf does not attack Fascism in Spain directly, instead focusing on
the tyranny of the patriarchy in England. The substitution is executed
deftly, in mid-paragraph, when Woolf finds in three variously misogynist
quotations by Englishmen “something which, if it spreads, may poison
both sexes equally. There, in those quotations, is the egg of the very
same worm that we know under other names in other countries” (65).
Virginia Woolf, Victoria Ocampo, and the National/Transnational It is the egg of Fascism in England, not in Spain or in Germany, which
Dialectic in Three Guineas Three Guineas directly critiques. Woolf addresses this rationale in
The relationship between Virginia Woolf and the Argentine writer and a passage from her “Reminiscences of Julian,” claiming that were
publisher Victoria Ocampo has been well documented. Ocampo was she to join the international “cause” against Fascism in Spain she
Woolf’s “primary Hispanic interlocutor, translator, and publisher,” “should evolve some plan for fighting English tyranny” (258-59). The
who released Spanish-language versions of many of Woolf’s works substitution of the international by the national is evident also in the
from her press, Sur, in Buenos Aires (Rogers 126). Ocampo was not absence of the photographs of “dead bodies” and “ruined houses” which
only a collaborator with Woolf, but a public figure in her own right, are sent to her “with patient pertinacity about twice a week” by the
whose many works in Spanish, French, and English range from literary Republican Spanish government and the inclusion instead of photos
criticism to biography to the public epistle and whose literary review of the British patriarchy (Three Guineas 14).1 Walkowitz adds to her
and publishing house not only helped shape the literary landscape argument that Three Guineas “promotes a transnational appreciation
of the thirties but remained a significant cultural force late into the of culture” yet simultaneously “affirms the boundaries of country and
twentieth century. Ocampo has been seen as an embodiment of the metonymies of the nation” (40), and, as Susan Stanford Friedman notes,
cosmopolitan feminist outsider which Woolf conceptualizes in Three “Three Guineas also contains an emotional attachment to England,
Guineas, and her work, most notably her public “Letter to Virginia even as it attacks nationalist patriotism, a combination that anticipates
Woolf,” has been likened to Three Guineas in both its form and content [Kwame Anthony] Appiah’s notion of the cosmopolitan patriot” (30).2
(Rogers 127). What has received less attention are the key cultural I agree with these critics and others that Woolf’s Three Guineas can be
incommensurabilities between Woolf, working from the metropolitan seen as “rooted” in its Englishness and suggest that this element of the
center, and Ocampo, writing from the formerly colonized (semi) text exists in dialectical tension with its cosmopolitanism. In contrast to
periphery. In this paper I trace the effects of this disconnect through Ocampo’s work, as I will show, Three Guineas displays the tendency
an interrogation into their often uneven personal and professional of British modernists in the thirties to shift their focus inward to the
relationship as well as through a comparison of their differing forms reification of national boundaries. This transition in focus during the
of cosmopolitanism as seen in Ocampo’s “Letter to Virginia Woolf” thirties is addressed directly by Esty, who claims that “the attempt on the
(1935) and Woolf’s Three Guineas (1939). Three Guineas, I argue, is a part of English writers to reinscribe universal status into the particularist
text in which nationalist and cosmopolitan forces exist dialectically and language of home anthropology defines the transition from imperial
in which we can trace what Jed Esty calls the “anthropological turn,” to postimperial Englishness” (15). Thus the “anthropological turn” by
wherein Anglo modernists in the thirties “translated the end of empire modernist writers during the thirties is seen as concomitant with the
into a resurgent concept of national culture” (2). Ocampo’s work, on the sputtering and imminent decline of Britain’s empire. In reference to
other hand, though similarly working towards a cosmopolitan feminism, postcolonial critic Homi Bhabha, Esty writes that “in Bhabha’s model,
is informed by an almost inverse project. Influenced by her mentor, the the nation, when it is no longer defined against its ‘Other or Outside,’
Spanish intellectual Jose Ortega y Gasset, her career is defined (often finds itself foundering on its own internal contradictions, since there
by her more nationalistic detractors) by her attempts to (re)connect to can be no effective, positive, or final signification of the people” (15).
world cultural centers—to Europeanize Latin American and Hispanic Without the colonies against which to define themselves, Anglo-
culture. In an argument informed by Pascale Casanova’s influential study modernists took to writing themselves. This shift is evident in Three
of the often uneven distribution of cultural capital in The World Republic Guineas, a work which espouses cosmopolitan values both in form and
of Letters, I suggest a comparison of Woolf and Ocampo’s work which content and yet does so in a “language of home anthropology” (Esty 15).
acknowledges and critically addresses the gap between center and The photos of the English patriarchy, the facts and figures all regarding
periphery which divides their work, and, in doing so, highlights the the state of affairs in England, of English educational institutions and
particularly “rooted” cosmopolitanism of Woolf’s Three Guineas. of women’s employment—all of these elements do work to “affirm the
In search of a concise summation of Woolf’s controversial cosmopolitan boundaries of country” (Walkowitz 40), an affirmation which exists
feminism, one has to go no further than her oft-quoted declaration in dialectically with the work’s cosmopolitanism in constant, at times
Three Guineas that “as a woman I have no country. As a woman I want uncomfortable, tension.
no country. As woman my country is the whole world” (129). Woolf This tension between the national and the transnational in Three Guineas
considers a woman’s national identity an “unreal loyalty,” and calls for is mirrored by tensions in Woolf’s relationship with Ocampo. On one
women to cast off such loyalties, writing that “by freedom from unreal
loyalties is meant that you must rid yourself of pride of nationality 1
The discussion of the inclusion of photographs of British patriarchal subjects
in the first place; also of religious pride, college pride, school pride, in place of the war photography mentioned in the text of Three Guineas has been
family pride, sex pride and those unreal loyalties that spring from them” well developed. Jane Marcus writes that “[t]he subversive role played by the pho-
(97). This critical refusal of the nation (along with other exclusionary tographs cannot be exaggerated” (lxiii). See also Maggie Humm, Jessica Berman,
groups), aligns roughly with the Kantian enlightenment project of Brandon Truett, and Alice Staveley.
cosmopolitanism in which, as Christine Froula has shown, many of the 2
Appiah, as Friedman suggests, advocates a “rooted cosmopolitanism,” which he
Bloomsbury circle were invested. Rebecca Walkowitz argues that Three likens to the philosophy of Gertrude Stein, who claimed, “America is my country
Guineas is cosmopolitan in that it engages in transnational comparison; and Paris is my hometown.”
21
hand, their collaboration truly does embody the cosmopolitan feminism national reintrenchment, for Ocampo it is an adoption of the language
of Three Guinea’s proposed Society of Outsiders. On the other hand, of the cultural center. The circumstances of the center/peripheral
their relationship displayed unevenness indicative of their differing divide between Woolf and Ocampo cannot help but give shape to
positions in relation to the metropolitan center. Meeting for the first time the relationship between their works. Although Woolf may “have no
in late 1934 at an exhibit of Man Ray’s photography, their friendship country,” and Ocampo may join the efforts of women “throughout the
developed quickly. Woolf wrote twelve letters to Ocampo within the world,” their positions towards cosmopolitanism itself are shaped by the
first years of their meeting, much of which correspondence regards the socio-historical implications of their respective national identities.
Spanish editions of Woolf’s work, which Ocampo was translating and
publishing through Sur. On 19 December 1934 Woolf writes to Vita A disparity between the two women can be seen, too, in their personal
Sackville-West, “I am in love with Victoria Okampo [sic]” (Letters relationship, which was in many ways uneven. This is in part due to
5 355). Ocampo goes on to write several pieces on Virginia Woolf, Woolf’s international fame in the 1930s. Ocampo’s attitude towards
starting with the open letter “Carta a Virginia Woolf” (“Letter to Virginia Woolf was often one of idolization, and Doris Meyer writes that “it
Woolf”), written in Madrid in the months following their first meeting seemed to Victoria [Ocampo] that her tendency toward hero-worship
and published as the opening essay in Ocampo’s book, Testimonios.3 had even marred their last meeting in 1939” (128).6 More important, as
The essay at times seems to presage Three Guineas and puts Ocampo Meyer and Elizabeth Horan write, is Woolf’s seeming inability to “get
firmly in Woolf’s camp of outsiders: Ocampo writes that “by defending past her own invention of Ocampo as a creature from the ‘land of great
your causes,...Virginia,...I defend my own too” (qtd. in Rogers 8). In butterflies’” (13), an allusion to Woolf’s often exoticized imaginings of
September 1946 Vogue (US) published “Memories of Virginia Woolf,”4 Ocampo’s home country. As Rogers points out, Woolf’s descriptions of
in which Ocampo writes of Woolf’s fiction, political activism, and also both Spain and Latin America are problematic, and “as Ocampo herself
of her physical beauty. noted, Woolf’s ideas of South America, which were derived from her
notions of Spain and Hispanicity, did not change much between The
Ocampo’s essay does converge, as Gayle Rogers suggests, with Three Voyage Out (1915) and her meeting Ocampo in 1934” (128). Many of
Guineas, both formally and topically (Rogers 127). As a public epistle Woolf’s letters to Ocampo reference a disparity in their correspondence
(and as a political piece), it is an intrusion into the male-dominated itself; it is implied that Ocampo’s letters were routinely longer and sent
public sphere, a lifting of the metaphorical “veil of St. Paul” which with greater frequency than Woolf’s. We can trace this unevenness too in
divides the public and private spheres.5 The letter calls for a specific the unidirectional movements of cultural material. Ocampo was an avid
mode of female expression, a kind of expression which “today has not reader of Woolf’s works in English and, in addition, imported, translated,
found an atmosphere conducive to its flourishing” (Testimonios 14). and published many of Woolf’s novels and essays in Spanish. Woolf read
Ocampo’s use of the concept of atmosphere (temperatura, alternately only one short piece of Ocampo’s writing that Ocampo had sent her in
translated as “climate”) is comparable to Woolf’s use of that term in English.
Three Guineas in which Woolf ironically attributes women’s abject
position in the professions to the “atmosphere” of the times (64). The differing socio-historical points of origin of Three Guineas
Ocampo’s letter is a pledge of solidarity to Woolf’s feminist vision, with and “Letter to Virginia Woolf” inform their different versions of
much of it focused on Woolf’s argument in A Room of One’s Own. It is cosmopolitanism. Both use transnational comparison as a way of
most forthright in its cosmopolitanism in the final line, in which Ocampo defining national identity, yet Woolf is attempting to define Englishness
offers, “may my efforts join with others by all women, unknown or in the face of a contracting empire, whereas Ocampo, writing from a
famous, working throughout the world” (14). post-colonial periphery, is working to forge a Latin American identity
through a connection with the culture of the metropolitan center. Woolf’s
Yet we must situate Ocampo’s work with an understanding of her work in particular displays a dialectical tension between the national
larger project of Europeanization and with an acknowledgement of and the transnational, and this tension is mirrored in her relationship
her position as a citizen of the colonial periphery. In taking this into with Ocampo. Their relationship was a productive meeting of the
account it becomes clear that her “Letter to Virginia Woolf” and Woolf’s minds between two of the twentieth century’s most prominent women
Three Guineas are in fact advancing different cosmopolitanisms, each intellectuals, an instance of transnational modernist networking, an
informed by their respective points of origin along the center/periphery embodiment of the society of outsiders that Woolf envisions, but it
divide and in what Casanova has coined the “world republic of letters.” also displays incommensurability between the metropolitan center
Where Woolf employs “the language of home anthropology,” attacking and the (formerly) colonized periphery, an unevenness in those very
Fascism abroad by critiquing the patriarchy at home, Ocampo is cosmopolitan networks. It is of course productive to interrogate the
reaching outwards to the metropolitan center. When reading Ocampo’s networks “that tie modernist texts to one another, linking Joyce or Proust
“Letter to Virginia Woolf” alongside Three Guineas, one profound to Woolf and (more recently) Ocampo, much as the gossamer webs
difference appears at first to be a similarity; both focus almost entirely link characters across London in Mrs. Dalloway” (Berman 9), but we
on Englishness. Ocampo writes of Woolf and of A Room of One’s Own, must too acknowledge the three-dimensional quality of these ties, their
of Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte. She references Shakespeare, tensions and inequalities, in order that we may better understand the
and, more importantly, Shakespeare’s sister. But, whereas Woolf’s manifestation of these tensions as they appear in Woolf’s works of the
Anglo-centrism (although in the service of a transnational critique thirties.
of Fascism) is for her a contraction, a reinscribing of Englishness or
Matthew Beeber
3
Woolf indicates in her letters that Ocampo sent her at least a few pages in Eng- Northwestern University
lish (“I mean the pages you sent to me. I don’t usually like appearing as a private
person in print, but on this occasion I can find no fault”), but when Ocampo sends Works Cited
her the finished book Woolf is unable to read it (“How tempting it is—I cant [sic] Appiah, Kwame Anthony. “Cosmopolitan Patriots.” For Love of
read a word of it, and yet every other word is almost one I know”) (Letters V 365, Country. Ed. Martha Nussbaum. Boston: Beacon, 1996.
372).
4
Much of this article is a translation of an earlier, longer piece of criticism, 6
Virginia Woolf, Orlando y Cia., which itself is an adaptation of a lecture given by It was at this meeting when Ocampo “all but forced herself into the writer’s
Ocampo to the “Amigos del Arte” del Buenos Aires on 7 July 1937. house, accompanied by the photographer Gisele Freund, and coaxed an angry
Woolf to sit for some portraits” (Rogers 161). Meyer also mentions this meeting,
5
Woolf writes that St. Paul “lays it down that women, when praying in public, but notes that Woolf’s annoyance notwithstanding, the next day she “permitted
should be veiled” (145). The veil of St. Paul is mentioned throughout Three Guin- Freund to come for a two-hour session of photographs, and according to Freund,
eas (22, 76, 142, 145, 153). she appeared to enjoy it” (Meyer 12).
22
Berman, Jessica. Modernist Commitments: Ethics, Politics, and David Trotter’s recent study, Literature in the First Media Age: Britain
Transnational Modernism. New York: Columbia UP, 2011. Between the Wars (Harvard, 2013) offers a welcome approach to the
Casanova, Pascale. The World Republic of Letters. Cambridge: Harvard period. In looking at communication technology, Trotter sharpens the
UP, 2007. focus on some embodiments of Woolf’s feminism while linking her
Esty, Jed. A Shrinking Island. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2004. work naturally with other writers not part of the same conventional
Freidman, Susan Stanford. “Wartime Cosmopolitanism: groupings, as when he refers to “Woolf’s representation of telephony in
Cosmopolitanism in Virginia Woolf’s Three Guineas and Marjane The Years” as a way “to tie its interest in the clan of outsiders back into
Satrapi’s Persepolis.” Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature 32:1 the erotics of connection imagined by Hamilton, Isherwood, Lehmann,
(2013): 23-52. and others” (82). Of interest to Woolf scholars and other scholars of
Froula, Christine. Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Avant-Garde. New the 1930s is the way Trotter’s response to the most recent generation of
York: Columbia UP, 2005. work on the inter-war period—such as books by Jed Esty and Rebecca L.
Humm, Maggie. “Memory, Photography and Modernism: The ‘dead Walkowitz—uses his communication lens to re-materialize feminism. He
bodies and ruined houses’ of Virginia Woolf’s Three Guineas.” Signs argues, for example, that the telephone “did provide, especially where
28:2 (2003): 645-63. young independent women were concerned, the basis for a viable and
Marcus, Jane. Introduction. Three Guineas. By Virginia Woolf. appealing existence. By 1930, Britain was no mere shrinking island. The
Annotated with an Introduction by Jane Marcus. Gen. ed. Mark interest Bowen, Woolf, and others took in such developments amounted
Hussey. San Diego: Harcourt, 2006. xxxv-lxxi. to a good deal more than the adoption of a ‘cosmopolitan style’” (27).
Meyer, Doris. Victoria Ocampo: Against the Wind and the Tide. New Woolf’s and Sayers’s 1930s fiction makes appearances in Trotter’s study
York: George Braziller, 1979. (although not together), and one direction of his analysis, as I have tried
Mistral, Gabriela and Victoria Ocampo. This America of Ours. Ed. to illustrate briefly, is sympathetic to my proposed means of bringing
Elizabeth Horan and Doris Meyer. Austin: U of Texas P, 2003. them together through the focal point of the role of the woman intellec-
Ocampo, Victoria. “Carta a Virginia Woolf.” Testimonios: primera serie. tual under the pressure of the late 1930s. This was a time when Woolf’s
Buenos Aires: Ediciones Fundacion Sur, 1981. 7-14. argument in Three Guineas about the centrality of women’s rights to any
Ocampo, Victoria. “Memories of Virginia Woolf.” Vogue (US). discussion of supposedly larger political or economic issues could be met
September 1946. 202, 250-56. by embarrassment, resistance, or silence. Uncomprehending responses
Ocampo, Victoria. “Virginia Woolf, Orlando y cia.” Testimonios: are well-documented into the following generation: Quentin Bell was not
segunda serie. Buenos Aires: Sur, 1941. 13-86. alone in finding Fascism a “far more agonizing and immediate question”
Rogers, Gayle. Modernism and the New Spain. New York: Oxford UP, than women’s rights (Lee 680), and Julia Briggs traces its reception simi-
2012. larly, from the silence of Woolf’s friends and the Queenie Leavis attacks
Stavely, Alice. “Name That Face.” Virginia Woolf Miscellany 51 (Spring to “second generation” hostility (332-37). If women’s rights in general
1998): 4-5. seemed less valid as a subject of concern in the latter half of the 1930s,
Truett, Brandon. “Materializing the Fascist Aesthetics in Three even more invalid would be specific questions concerning the woman
Guineas.” Virginia Woolf Miscellany 85 (Spring 2014): 25-28. scholar, the women’s colleges, and the role of women intellectuals. And
Walkowitz, Rebecca. “For Translation: Virginia Woolf, J.M. Coetzee yet both Sayers and Woolf held their course in the middle of the 1930s.
and Transnational Comparison.” The Legacies of Modernism:
Historicizing Postwar and Contemporary Fiction. Ed. David James. How might we proceed to bring Woolf and Sayers together in this
Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2012. 243-63. particular context? Following Woolf’s own practice, we turn first to
Woolf, Virginia. “Reminiscences of Julian.” In Quentin Bell, Virginia biography. While the different life patterns of the two writers are evident,
Woolf: A Biography. London: The Hogarth Press, 1972. 258-59. Woolf scholars are well aware of the overlapping social and intellectual
—. Letters of Virginia Woolf, Vol. V, 1932-1935. Ed. Nigel Nicolson and circles of the period in which nearly everyone turns out to be connected
Joanne Trautmann. Mariner Books, 1982. to everyone else, and Woolf and Sayers are both educated men’s daugh-
—. Three Guineas. Annotated with an Introduction by Jane Marcus. Gen. ters of a similar generation (born in 1882 and 1893, respectively). Given
ed. Mark Hussey. San Diego: Harcourt, 2006. the voluminous documentation provided by Woolf’s published diaries,
letters, and subsequent biographies, it seems not unreasonable to turn
confidently to the indices of those volumes. Finding them surprisingly
silent, lacking any reference to Sayers, we turn then to the multiple biog-
y raphies of Sayers, calculating that perhaps the popular writer noticed her
more literary sister even if the reverse did not happen. Again, nothing. A
passing trace is found in Carolyn Heilbrun’s biographical essay on Say-
ers: “While Woolf and Sayers had little enough in common, they shared
the dubious honor of being chosen by Q. D. and F. R. Leavis for pas-
Dorothy L. Sayers and Virginia Woolf:
sionate attack” (10). Even this glancing Leavis connection peters out, as
Perspectives on the Woman Intellectual in the late 1930s
they attack Woolf and Sayers as embodiments of quite different types of
Widely-accepted versions of 1930s literary history that emphasize affronts to Leavisite values, and Heilbrun’s essay is apparently alone in
documentary and leftist politics make outliers of both Virginia Woolf drawing any kind of parallels between the two writers.1 Indicative of the
and Dorothy L. Sayers, and they do so in ways that keep them far apart. ships passing in the night quality of their biographies is the curious fact
Woolf’s acknowledged position in Modernism and Sayers’ in “golden that both lived in Mecklenburgh Square at different times. Sayers had a
age” detective fiction would seem to offer little opportunity for placing flat at 44 Mecklenburgh Square in 1921, and it is here that she came up
them in dialogue. And yet I would like to suggest a focus that brings with the concept for the Wimsey detective novels; she gives this address
them closer together and contributes to a more accurate picture of the to Harriet Vane in Gaudy Night in 1935, and it is from this flat that Vane
1930s literature and culture: I propose that Dorothy L. Sayers’ tenth Pe- launches her expedition to Oxford in Gaudy Night. Woolf moved into
ter Wimsey detective novel, Gaudy Night (1935) might be read as a sus- 1
tained examination of questions pertinent to those engaged by Virginia Sean Latham’s “Am I a Snob? Modernism and the Novel. which takes its
title from Woolf and includes chapters on both Woolf and Sayers, also suggests
Woolf in Three Guineas (1938). Sayers and Woolf do not need documen-
parallels rather than connections. Where the strands are brought together in the
tary or formal political allegiances; rather, in terms of our understanding conclusion, he tends to preface Sayers’s name by the word “even,” marking her
of the period, they are our correspondents, reporting on the situation of out as different from Joyce and Woolf: “for writers such as Woolf, Joyce, and
the woman intellectual under pressure in the latter half of the 1930s. even Sayers” (215); “even Dorothy Sayers” (216; 219).
23
37 Mecklenburgh Square in a period of late-career reflection during she explored roles both actual and potential, those realizable and those
the somber summer of 1939, with the unappreciative response to Three prohibited, and she did so in essays, reviews, and fiction. In the later
Guineas relatively fresh and a world war imminent (and the bombs 1920s, she had called upon the young university women addressed in
would fall on Mecklenburgh Square soon enough). These trajectories are A Room of One’s Own to work diligently, to “write books of travel and
evocative, perhaps, of the continuities and discontinuities between the adventure, and research and scholarship, and history and biography, and
two writers and their careers. criticism and philosophy and science. By so doing you will certainly
profit the art of fiction” (142). By the time of Three Guineas, the picture
What kind of biographical cross-pollination can we create ourselves out is darker. As Woolf notes sardonically, educated, voting women had
of their separate biographical records? The Oxford-educated Sayers was not transformed the politics of Great Britain, and the Spanish Civil War
the only child of a Church of England vicar; after achieving a First in presaged a larger European conflict. And yet among the many things
French at Somerville, she found work in advertising, joy in motorcycles she asks women not to do in that polemic, she does not ask them to stop
and fast cars, and sexual adventures that led to a child out of wedlock. In writing. Her list of the types of research and writing women should do,
contrast, Woolf’s lack of an Oxbridge education is a well-known part of and the claim that it will benefit fiction, stands. Woolf projects a portrait
her engagement with women’s intellectual life, and her family experienc- of contemporary women’s fiction, however incomplete its achievement
es could hardly be more different. And yet both women were determined may be, when she concocts Life’s Adventure for A Room of One’s Own.
that they would do their own work, valuing it highly, and both were in Woolf seems to say this is not the kind of novel she herself will write,
long-standing marriages with partners who acknowledged its importance but it invites us to probe Gaudy Night, published in the decade after
and provided support for their wives’ intellectual endeavors.2 Their A Room of One’s Own, for signs of progress. Two features that Woolf
engagement with official recognition and honors is pertinent here. What highlights in her representational novel are that Chloe likes Olivia, and
claims should women make to education, degrees, and honors? Woolf’s that they share a laboratory. Gaudy Night’s cast of women academics
exploration of these questions in Three Guineas leads to the austere posi- offers a valuable counterpart to Chloe’s and Olivia’s shared intellectual
tion that women should take no part, should offer only their refusal and enterprise and friendship. Over the course of the novel, readers are given
form instead a Society of Outsiders. Such a position is not sour grapes information about the research of the dons, whose specializations range
but one that Woolf adhered to for herself, turning down prestigious across humanities, social science, and science fields. Their female com-
invitations such as the Clark lectures at Cambridge in 1932, an honor- munity, functioning through respect and loyalty, is emphasized by Peter
ary Doctor of Letters from Manchester in 1933, and the Companion of Wimsey:
Honor in 1935 (Lee 613, 633, 653). Sayers’s relation to such recognition
is complex. The recent US reissues of the Wimsey series promote Sayers The one thing which frustrated the whole attack from first to last
as “one of the first women to be awarded a degree by Oxford University” was the remarkable solidarity and public spirit displayed by your
which is true, but perhaps slightly misleading. Sayers went up to Oxford college as a body. I think that was the last obstacle that X expected
in the autumn of 1912, taking her exams in the spring of 1915. Her third to encounter in a community of women. Nothing but the very great
year was much different than the first two, with Somerville College com- loyalty of the Senior Common Room to the College and the respect
mandeered by the War Office and Oxford filled with Belgian refugees. of the students for the Senior Common Room stood between you and
When Oxford began granting women the degrees they earned, Sayers a most unpleasant publicity. (495-96)
decided to attend the first ceremony on October 14, 1920, because she
thought the first “‘will be so much more amusing’” (qtd. in Reynolds Such solidarity among women scholars is something we can still learn
98). In 1943, the Archbishop of Canterbury wanted to honor her with from. Gaudy Night is a novel that is at once popular genre fiction and
a Doctor of Divinity, but she turned him down; seven years later, she a serious literary exploration of women as intellectuals and scholars. It
accepted an honorary Doctor of Letters from Durham University and is also a hands-on approach to questions of “how?” and “at what cost?”
enjoyed using the D.Litt designation (Reynolds 328-29; 359-61). women scholars should function rather than the principled refusal Woolf
would advocate a few years later in Three Guineas.
Turning to the published work and public appearances, again we find
no direct connections, but parallels in Woolf’s and Sayers’s ideas about If crime fiction often begins with the main fact accomplished—the
women and terms of engagement suggest a similar interrogation of murder—and proceeds with a retrospective bent, this is not the case in
1930s culture. In 1938, for example, Sayers gave a talk to a woman’s Gaudy Night.4 Although the initial occasion is a reunion, its focus is in
society entitled “Are Women Human?” in which she begins with an ex- the present, and it is a detective novel without a murder. The novel, the
tended discussion of how feminism is past its usefulness and we should, tenth of eleven Wimsey novels, is also a high water mark in the series,
instead, talk about “sex-equality” (21).3 In “Are Women Human?” and a view corroborated by Heilbrun’s observation that “In writing Gaudy
“The Human-Not-Quite-Human,” Sayers’s chosen examples include Night, the novel she had prepared herself all her life to write, Sayers
several that are intriguingly close to Woolf’s in Three Guineas. Sayers had completed her task of transforming the detective story and embody-
speaks in a very different voice, striking her own notes, and, however ing her vision of intellectual integrity” (10). Sayers would publish only
close she comes to Woolf’s arguments, Woolf is never mentioned among one more Wimsey novel, Busman’s Honeymoon (1937), and it reads
the many, varied references. Woolf’s voluminous citations in Three as something of an epilogue to the series; after that, Sayers’s primary
Guineas are similarly devoid of reference to Sayers.
4
The novel takes its title from the traditional “gaudy” of the Oxbridge colleges;
So we must pick up the clues provided by the work itself. Woolf’s ongo- these events are alumni reunions. At the beginning of the novel, crime-writer
ing interest in the agency of educated men’s daughters took many forms; Harriet Vane is returning to her alma mater for the first time since she had “broken
2
Unlike Woolf, who took Leonard’s surname, Sayers continued to use her own all her old ties and half the commandments” (3-4) after being tried for the murder
name professionally, even as her son was formally adopted by his stepfather, the of her live-in lover. Shrewsbury College has been experiencing pranks and
Scots journalist Oswold “Mac” Fleming, and began to use his surname. Sayers vandalism; Harriet is asked to stay on after the gaudy to investigate these. As she
was never married to the biological father of her son, John Anthony, who was investigates the increasingly serious attacks, Harriet becomes part of the life of
born in 1924, two years before her marriage to Fleming. Although legally John the college, pursues her own writing and research, and negotiates her personal
Anthony Sayers, the child was called by the last name of his biological father relationship with the famous detective Peter Wimsey whom she met when he
(White), and raised by Sayers’s cousin Ivy Shrimpton. The adoption was arranged found the evidence for her acquittal. At the novel’s end, the perpetrator is exposed
in 1934, and in September of 1935 John Anthony was told of the adoption as and rather than an arrest, “the problem is being medically dealt with” (520). The
prelude to beginning his school life as John Anthony Fleming. motive for the crime is hatred of women academics, centering on one woman who
exposed a man’s academic dishonesty, and the criminal activities are intended
3
This talk, along with another essay and an introduction by Mary McDermott to punish women who do not devote themselves to families and to damage the
Shideler, was later published by Eerdmans Publishing. women’s colleges “where you teach women to take men’s jobs” (511).
24
focus became her Christian humanism and her translation of Dante’s The 329; my emphasis). In the second half of the 1930s, both Sayers and
Divine Comedy, which was published in Penguin Classics in the post- Woolf wrote the books they wanted to write, although they knew those
war period and is still in print. Sayers herself was well aware of Gaudy works might be met by incomprehension and disdain, because of their
Night’s significance, as revealed in her letter to Victor Gollancz5 upon its belief that women must find the work they are meant to do and do it.
completion: Sayers’s Harriet Vane has made herself an outsider through her scandal-
ous post-Oxford life, but she still has the membership card: “They can’t
It is the only book I’ve written embodying any kind of a “moral” and take this away, at any rate. Whatever I may have done since, this re-
I do feel rather passionately about this business of the integrity of the mains. Scholar; Master of Arts; Domina; Senior Member of this Univer-
mind—but I realise that to make a “detective story” the vehicle for sity” (9). From this insider/outsider vantage point, Sayers can use Harriet
that kind of thing is (as Miss de Vine says of the Peter-Harriet mar- to examine the education of women and the role of women intellectuals.
riage) “reckless to the point of insanity.” But there it is—it’s the book The criminal activity of the novel, driven by hatred of female scholars,
I wanted to write and I’ve written it—and it is now my privilege to allows Sayers to show the high costs paid by intellectual women; it also
leave you with the baby! Whether you advertise it as a love-story or allows her to argue that women are entitled to pursue intellectual work
as educational propaganda, or as a lunatic freak, I leave to you. (qtd. about which they are passionate. While Woolf was a visitor to Oxford
in Reynolds 261) and Cambridge, always conscious of how her brothers had received the
education she was denied, Sayers was a participant and graduate. Per-
Sayers’ comments here show the consciousness of the genre blending
haps Woolf would have deprecated Sayers’ participation in these dramas
that her commitment to her “moral” about intellectual integrity pro-
of certification, given what Hermione Lee calls her “settled dislike . . . of
duced. It is not unlike Woolf’s original concept for the Pargiters that
universities” (635), but I like to think she would have enjoyed Sayers’s
she later split into The Years and Three Guineas, work which taxed her
“monstrous impertinence” in locating her fictional Shrewsbury College
energy and consumed a great deal of time. Sayers, like Woolf, knew that
in the exact location of the real-world emblem of male privilege, Balliol
she risked incomprehension or worse from readers who had definite ge-
College’s “spacious and sacred cricket-ground” (Author’s Note to Gaudy
neric expectations for her work. While The Years was highly successful,
Night xii).
the planned factual “interchapters” that Woolf spun off to become the
foundation of Three Guineas were read less receptively, partly because Rosemary Erickson Johnsen
of readers’ expectations of Woolf. What Woolf separated, Sayers kept Governors State University
together; both strategies have value, and both carry risks, as Woolf and www.rosemaryj.com
Sayers were well aware.6 Works Cited
Briggs, Julia. Virginia Woolf: An Inner Life. London: Allen Lane, 2005.
Crime fiction scholar Heta Pyrhönen notes that “Sayers’ Gaudy Night
Collini, Stefan. Absent Minds: Intellectuals in Britain. Oxford: Oxford
(1935) is frequently cited as the first overtly feminist detective novel in
UP, 2006.
its concern for female character and female development in a male domi-
Esty, Jed. A Shrinking Island: Modernism and National Culture in Eng-
nated world” (108-09). Thinking of the novel alongside Three Guin-
land. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2004.
eas, with its sustained emphasis on women’s social, professional, and
Heilbrun, Carolyn G. “Dorothy L. Sayers: Biography Between the
financial independence, adds 1930s resonance to that status; it is a novel
Lines.” Dorothy L. Sayers: The Centenary Celebration. Ed. Alzina
specifically about women’s intellectual labor and its costs. The novel
Stone Dale. NY: Walker, 1993. 1-13.
enacts its own themes: the plot brings to life the social and institutional
Latham, Sean. “Am I a Snob? Modernism and the Novel. Ithaca: Cornell
contexts of women’s intellectual activity, and its events demonstrate the
UP, 2003.
personal costs paid by women intellectuals. Contextualizing Harriet Vane
Lee, Hermione. Virginia Woolf. NY: Knopf, 1997.
and Peter Wimsey’s search for an intimate relationship that enables truly
Pyrhönen, Heta. Murder from an Academic Angle: An Introduction to
equal partnership within an examination of the intellectual life in an Ox-
the Study of the Detective Narrative. Columbia, SC: Camden House,
bridge women’s college creates a blended form that incorporates themes
1994.
and strategies often associated with Woolf.
Reynolds, Barbara. Dorothy L. Sayers: The Life and Soul. NY: St. Mar-
My exploration of common elements in Woolf’s and Sayers’s work life, tins, 1993.
public integrity, and perdurability, however lacking in direct connection Sayers, Dorothy L. Are Women Human? Astute and Witty Essays on the
these two important figures were in their own time, claims Woolf and Role of Women in Society. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005.
Sayers as sister intellectuals in the late 1930s. Why bother? Because we —. Gaudy Night. 1935. NY: Harper Collins, 2012.
must locate and record these connections ourselves when, for example, Trotter, David. Literature in the First Media Age: Britain Between the
Stefan Collini’s 500+ page study of intellectuals in twentieth-century Wars. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2013.
Britain creates a strong impression that there were no women intellectu- Walkowitz, Rebecca L. Cosmopolitan Style: Modernism Beyond the Na-
als at all.7 When Sayers turned down the Doctor of Divinity offered her tion. NY: Columbia UP, 2006.
by the Archbishop of Canterbury, her main reason for doing so was an Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own and Three Guineas. Ed. Morag
intellectual one: acknowledging the great honor he offers, she tells him Shiach. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1992.
that “I should feel better about it if I were a more convincing kind of —. The Years. Ed. Hermione Lee. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1992.
Christian. I am never quite sure whether I really am one, or whether I
have only fallen in love with an intellectual pattern” (qtd. in Reynolds

5
Although he is best known to scholars of the 1930s for his role in founding the
Left Book Club, Victor Gollancz also published important contemporary fiction
throughout the inter-war period.
n
6
With Gaudy Night, “her most literary novel” (173), Sean Latham situates Sayers
“at the perilous intersection of two increasingly divergent literary cultures…the
highbrow critics and creators of modernism [and] Sayers’ own dedicated reader-
ship” (198).
7
Of the mere handful of women cited in Collini’s book, only Virginia Woolf and
Iris Murdoch receive more than two references in the index and, although he has a
chapter entitled “Outsider Studies,” Three Guineas is not mentioned.
25
 While, to my knowledge, there isn’t direct evidence that Woolf read Le
Corbusier’s architectural writings, they both contributed to British Vogue
during the mid-1920s, a publication aimed at giving new intellectuals,
artists, and culture makers initial exposure while conferring “taste” onto
GH GH GH its readers. In fact, Vogue was the first publication in England to publish
photographs of Le Corbusier’s buildings (Cohen 249). Woolf would
likely have seen these photographs, and her essay, “America, Which
Imagined “Ineffable Space”: Woolf’s Architectural Release in I Have Never Seen,” embraces the architectural zeitgeist of which Le
“America, Which I Have Never Seen” Corbusier is representative. Writing about Le Corbusier’s vision as it
developed through the interwar years, Anthony Vidler notes that the
In the 1914 section of The Years (1937), we come upon Martin having architect’s goal was to take a natural setting and rework it, rendering
a somatic moment as he approaches St. Paul’s Cathedral before an a perfect balance between buildings and space—nothing too closed,
impromptu lunch with Sara Pargiter. As the sounds of the clock fade into nothing too open. To achieve such was to create ineffable space, which
the air, a peculiar sensation affects him: Le Corbusier described as transcendent space “as high as the sky, as
deep as the clearest lake, and stretched on all sides to the horizon”
He crossed over and stood with his back against a shop window
(Vidler 38).3 Ineffable space was to be a corrective to what the modern
looking up at the great dome. All the weights in his body seemed to
architects saw as confined, tight, claustrophobic, dark canyons or
shift. He had a curious sense of something moving in his body in
trenches of the nineteenth century metropolis—closures which promoted
harmony with the building; it righted itself: it came to a full stop. It
vice and mental disturbance. To heal anxieties about the uncontrolled
was exciting—this change of proportion. He wished he had been an
and un-policed, modern spaces would allow therapeutic light and air
architect. (TY 215)
necessary for healthy bodies and minds into urban centers. It might even
Martin’s harmonious moment with St. Paul’s resonates with what the bring the natural world back into a symbiotic relationship with the city.
Swiss-born architect Le Corbusier1 terms l’espace indicible, or “ineffable The feeling of being in ineffable space is described by Le Corbusier as
space,” an architectural principle he developed after reflecting on the an experience in which one’s perspective encompasses all, but is also
bodily sensations he experienced while standing at the edge of a cliff encompassed by the space; therefore, one is simultaneously within
overlooking the Acropolis in 1933 (Vidler 38). Le Corbusier’s life’s the body and outside the body. Time becomes irrelevant, highlighting
work on architectural proportion and bodily sensation began with his a troublesome goal of early twentieth century architecture—to erase
early focus on the Golden Ratio, which yielded influential challenge history and destroy the past. By the 1930s, Le Corbusier’s ideology
to and transformation of building practices initiated during the 1930s celebrated the erasure of class stratifications within urban planning, and
that emphasized architecture’s potential to be harmonious with the in his book La Ville Radieuse (The Radiant City, 1935), he offers his
body; ineffable space is produced when proportions are harmonious.2 solution to what he saw as the clutter and mess of class by “cleaning
With scenes like the one above featuring Martin in harmony with the and purging” the city to create a “calm and powerful architecture” (qtd.
cathedral, Woolf also challenges meanings, dominant narratives, and in Dalrymple). In modernist designs of the 1930s, buildings are often
patriarchal ideologies found in the built environment, contributing to her transparent and crystalline, clean and without ornamentation, a gesture
well-documented interest in the relationship between a gendered body toward using materials of the future, but also reflective of an ideological
and the city. Here, I explore how a reading of that relationship shifts by shift toward and desire for a transparent and classless society.
putting Woolf’s spatial constructions into conversation with architectural
In the above passage from The Years, Woolf describes Martin as
language of the time, specifically with Le Corbusier’s emerging theories.
intrinsically understanding that the only way to express the sensation
I suggest that Woolf engages ineffable space, in Martin’s moment with
he is feeling is through the language of architecture—a language that
the cathedral, and in her short essay “America, Which I Have Never
depends on futuristic vision and the multiple narratives of the cathedral’s
Seen” (1938) in which she creates a liberated, feminist space that is
past. Yet, not being an architect, he lacks that language. Despite this,
wiped clean of history and attachments. Like Le Corbusier’s sensational
his body is in perfect harmony with the space. Past, present, and future
moment on the edge of a cliff, Woolf’s narrator too, is unbound and
merge within his flesh in this singular moment to make meaning for him
disengaged from the confines of the body.
that runs deep beyond the language at his disposal. Woolf plays with that
1
Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris was a Swiss-French architect, urban planner, same architectural sense in “America, Which I Have Never Seen”; in this
and writer who is credited for much of modern architecture’s design aesthetic.
essay, the built environment and surrounding landscapes are unfamiliar,
In 1920, Jeanneret-Gris unveiled his pseudonym, Le Corbusier, in a journal
he founded called L’Esprit nouveau. A great proponent of using reinforced thus she can conveniently ignore their pasts while escaping the very real
concrete, steel, and plate glass, Le Corbusier’s urban planning of the 1930s violence brewing in Europe. The piece imaginatively paints a picture
emphasized abandoning the class-based stratification that appeared in his earlier of a wild, primeval, and yet futuristic America where everything moves
work (Towards a New Architecture [1923] and The City of To-Morrow and its extraordinarily quickly, there is no class distinction, and history has yet
Planning [1925]) and focusing entirely on creating buildings that suited families to be written.
regardless of economic status. He published his designs and philosophy for his
classless architectural vision in La Ville Radieuse (The Radiant City) in 1935. For Ostensibly a slapdash response to a question Hearst’s International/
a definitive biography, see Weber. Cosmopolitan Magazine put to a series of writers, “What interests
2
 The Golden Ratio is a Euclidean mathematics principle in which two quantities you most in this cosmopolitan world of today?” (“America” 56),
are “golden” if their ratio is the same as the ratio of their sum to the larger the essay reads like a playful writing exercise. It was housed in the
quantity with a numerical value of 1.618033 . . . Le Corbusier began using Berg Collection at the New York Public Library as part of Woolf’s
the golden ratio in practice in 1927 beginning with the Villa Stein in Garches papers until reprinted in the Dublin Review in 2001. There is no trace
(Le Modulor 35). In Le Modulor (1948) and Modulor 2 (1955) Le Corbusier
of an invitation from Hearst’s International/Cosmopolitan to write
published analysis and sketches of the way in which the Golden Ratio informs
his use of bodily proportions to achieve harmony in architectural design. Based
it, no mention of it in Woolf’s diaries, notebooks, or letters, nor any
on the height of a man with his arm raised (6 ft/1.83 m), Le Corbusier’s modulor
system served as a bridge between to incompatible systems of measurement: the 3 
Le Corbusier writes, “Proportion is an ineffable thing. I am the inventor of the
“foot-and-inch system of the Anglo-Saxon world, and the metric system on the expression: ‘ineffable space,’ which is a reality I have discovered in the course of
other side” (Le Modulor 17). Pertinent to this feminist reading of ineffable space my work. When a building achieves its maximum of intensity, of proportion, of
in Woolf’s essay, it should be noted that the system has been sharply criticized for quality of execution, of perfection, there occurs a phenomenon of ineffable space
not considering the female body, typically shorter in stature, as proportional and [...] which does not depend on dimensions but on the quality of perfection. That is
harmonious. the domain of the ineffable” (qtd. in Weber 733).
26
evidence of her developing the idea beyond this short text (56). Andrew [her] island” (56). A guiding principle in Le Corbusier’s Radiant City is
McNeillie’s introductory headnote describes the magazine version of the that the removal of barriers from the plane of vision, walls for example,
piece illustrated with “a graphic montage-style view of Manhattan: its will result in the dissolution of political upheaval; the urban plan
cocktail bars, its skyscrapers, its traffic, the Statue of Liberty” (56). The itself governs individuals, not politicians or regulations. Imagination’s
magazine article, thus, used graphics to visually capitalize on the myth reportage suggests Americans have found something similar by living
that America is New York City and that the city’s atmosphere serves up in glass houses that offer transcendence from modernist anxieties about
the elixir that makes it possible to ignore what is going on in the rest urban and natural space.5
of the world. But Woolf’s essay is far more complex than the graphics
surrounding it would suggest. Imagination flies over the vast landscape to effectively position Woolf’s
voice as the creator of a utopian America riven and liberated from the
Woolf’s feeling of being suspended between a British literary legacy heavy violence of the Spanish Civil War and growing Fascism. Through
and her own marginality as a woman writer has been the focus of the constant movement of people and objects, America resists the destructive
critical approaches to “America, Which I have Never Seen,” but I violence developing across the Atlantic and embraces, rather, a violence
want to distance the piece from her political project about America, its of creation. Imagination reports, “‘Look how they battle and punch,
literature, and its relationship to British nationalism and writing. Rather, hack and hew; tunnel through mountains; erect skyscrapers; are ruined
by contextualizing it with Le Corbusier’s principle of ineffable space, I one moment, millionaires the next’” (60). The Americans have their
suggest that she invents a space that liberates her body, frees her from own power to self-annihilate, to return to primeval roots, and don’t need
gender, and suspends her nationality.4 She creates a particularly feminist the rest of the world to help. Americans have achieved a state of new
sort of ineffable space. America provides the only landscape upon barbarism. Imagination tells us:
which she can impose this creation because, of course, she has never
seen it, and it offers limitless possibilities for myth-making. Through [W]hether it is that the mountains are so high and may at any moment
her narrator, the birdlike “Imagination,” Woolf escapes a restrictive, belch out fire and decimate a town, or that the rivers are so huge and
classed, and imperialistic Britain and Fascist Europe. While the narrator may at any moment roll out their long liquid tongues and swallow up
sits on the rocky shores of Cornwall looking west, her back turned a city, or that the air is decidedly alcoholic so that everyone is always
away from the continent and its unrest, Imagination flies across the a little tipsy, the Americans are much freer, wilder, more generous,
Atlantic to America and reports back. In this way, Woolf inhabits two more adventurous, more spontaneous than we are. (60)
perspectives: that of her narrator’s own still, seated body on the shore
The spatial qualities of this passage indicate a playful attitude toward
looking out across the sea, and that of her in-flight Imagination whose
a landscape that contains more topographies than Woolf has ever
perspective is vast and uninhibited; Woolf inhabits both inner and outer
seen. Enormous mountains and wide rivers that have the capacity to
bodies in relation to space. Thus, through her composition of the essay,
eradicate human existence also have the power to remind those living
Woolf becomes an agent of ineffable space and, through her embrace
in such landscapes that they are simply not essential to the movement
of the imagined America from New York City to the West Coast, has
and continuation of the world. Here, Woolf gestures ironically that the
control over it. Through her description, Woolf symbolically throws
wars that erupt from human beings’ violent conquest of each other are
a rope around the entire imagined space marking her own boundaries
unnecessary to a definition of the self or one’s place within a national
and positioning objects within them to achieve balance. (Architectural
context. The open spaces of America are unlike those of Europe; she
renderings exhibit a similar practice.) While Martin in The Years is on
calls them “primeval” (58) because they do not allow human history to
the verge of understanding this same sensation, he is also aware of the
be permanently stamped upon them. Even though Imagination notices
historically saturated significance of the buildings and environment
traces of human activity left in the woods—a “heap of rusty tins; that
surrounding him. Martin’s awareness reminds us of Walter Benjamin,
deserted shed of corrugated iron; that skeleton of an old motorcar”
who throughout The Arcades Project, floats the term “new barbarism”
(58)—none of these things tell a singular, homogenous narrative. They
to describe architecture that releases us from the storms of modernity’s
are not tied to any particular individual or group. They have no historical
past and returns us to our primeval roots. New barbarism dissolves the
context. As Imagination observes, “They [the Americans] never settled
historical continuum and revolutionizes the present moment. It appeals
down and lived and died and were buried in the same spot” (58). It is
to the person driving quickly by in his or her car, or the bird flying high
this “primeval” essence that serves as the key to a sense of release in
over top, not the historian or archivist who would contemplate it in
the piece; time is manipulated, disordered, and compressed. At one
stillness (Heynan 107). To truly inhabit ineffable space, in her essay,
point, a “giant man, standing as if he were carved in stone” who “makes
Woolf rearranges historical saturation, rewrites it, and embraces a “new
one nervous […] about one’s scalp” takes aim at a “prehistoric extinct
barbarism.”
monster” (58). Within one image we are in a speeding car, see a Native
New York City appears to Imagination “scraped and scrubbed only the American wielding a tomahawk, and spot a woolly mammoth. Some
night before” (“America” 57), a gleaming glass city that recalls 1930s critics have noted that the anachronisms suggest Woolf’s scathing and
architectural models and drawings of fantastical crystalline cities made stereotyping attitude about Americans, but I am inclined, rather, to see
of materials easy to keep clean and bright and that both reflected and her putting into practice the dissolution of a chronological continuum.
openly displayed the bodies within urban space. Imagination reports Woolf’s use of anachronism works towards forging the new barbarism
of the houses in which people live, “‘There is no privacy’ […] [.] ‘The that would allow for a fresh start from the traumas of modernity.
houses stand open to the road. No walls divide them; […] There are no
Briefly, a return to Le Corbusier’s principle to deepen this connection.
curtains on the windows. You can see right in. The rooms are large and
As Vidler explains, Le Corbusier believed that “Objects, if possible free-
airy’” (57). Woolf’s vision of America imagines ineffable space in its
standing, generated force-fields, took possession of space, orchestrated
sweeping, clean, modern aspects and her voice expresses a celebratory
it and made it sing or cry out with harmony or pain” (Vidler 38). Le
release from the claustrophobia of being, as she puts it, “marooned on
Corbusier stated that it was the discovery of the “fourth dimension,”
4
 Those who have written about the essay, in particular Andrew McNeillie (whose which was a “moment of limitless escape” (qtd. in Vidler 39), but, in
essay introduces “America, Which I Have Never Seen” in the Dublin Review), true Le Corbusian fashion, ineffable space would reveal itself only to
Cheryl Mares, and Thaine Stearns, have read it as illustrating the culmination those worthy of deserving it. For Le Corbusier, this would have meant
of Woolf’s lifelong development of an attitude about American writing that is at
powerful men. In Le Corbusier’s estimation, ineffable space is naturally
odds with her literary ideals yet with which she feels some community; she is
marginalized as a woman writer and Americans know something about being on 5
  For analysis of the lineage beginning with Simmel and Freud of urban space and
the periphery and because she has an overseas market there—Americans buy her its effects on one’s mental state, especially in relation to anxiety disorders like
books. claustrophobia and agoraphobia, see Vidler.
27
a masculine concept, and the ability to feel it is a distinctly masculine Vidler, Anthony. “Bodies in Space/Subjects in the City;
one. Like an intensified imperial map-making, wherein conquering Psychopathologies of Modern Urbanism.” Differences 5.3 (1993):
space becomes even more dangerous than lines drawn on paper to 31-51.
assign borders, it’s an aerial attack that subsumes all four dimensions Weber, Nicholas Fox. Le Corbusier: A Life. New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
gathering them up for the beholder to manipulate and control. (The 2008.
language of architecture often hedges on egotistical madness.) But just Woolf, Virginia. “America, Which I Have Never Seen.” Dublin Review 5
like the literature and arts that came before it, modernist architecture (Winter 2001-02): 56-60.
fought to “make it new” and work against prevailing ideologies. Le —. The Years. Annotationed and with an Introduction by Eleanor
Corbusier had a deep distrust of and anxiety about everything that came McNees. Gen. ed. Mark Hussey. New York: Harcourt, 2008.
before —history, stories, clutter, messiness—in other words, the layers
of human experience and the things that charge the places we live with
meaning that resonates generation after generation. Woolf’s Imagination

bbb
is gathering up the terrain in much the same way, but with a celebratory
encompassing of all its details, at once container and contained.

Near the end of the piece, Imagination finds herself in a car speeding
through a valley where “time has dropped and stands clear and still”
(59). Past, present, and future converge. Imagination spots villagers Flush, Courtship, and Suffering
dancing around a Maypole, “the England of Charles the First,” and
Virginia Woolf’s 1933 biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s cocker
the “red man” with his tomahawk aimed at a bison (59). Imagination
spaniel, Flush, occupies a peculiar place in the Woolf canon. As Pamela
observes that, “in her broad plains and deep valleys America has room
L. Caughie points out, “if few critics took Flush seriously at the time
for all ages, for all civilizations” (59). The inclusivity of the space lends
of its publication, still fewer consider it worth their time today” (47).
to its ineffable quality where light and air contribute to healthy bodies
Regularly overlooked as a serious text, Flush is notably absent from
and minds. The car crests a hill and emerges into a city of the future,
much scholarship about Virginia Woolf, modernism, women writers, and
built of concrete, heavily populated, noisy, stylish, and efficient (59).
British literary history. Still, there has been a recent reclamation of Flush
The essay’s focus shifts at this moment to describe not the environment,
within animal studies as a means for Woolf to “challenge empiricist
but the people within it. Americans, it seems, are “the most interesting
epistemology and revitalize literary aesthetics” (Hovanec 246). This
people in the world” because “they face the future, not the past” (60).
vantage point has allowed critics to address issues of social propriety,
Martin’s transcendent moment with St. Paul’s is firmly of the present, gender identity, class distinctions, and, perhaps most obviously, animal
and, over the span of a lunch, is lost to the past. Reminded that he subjectivity. While critics admit that “to some degree, Flush must be
is saddled with duty and nation and went into the army rather than anthropomorphized” (Johnson 35), those same critics are often unwilling
becoming an architect, Martin loses contact with the transcendent to entertain the depth of human experience, with its explicit roots in
feeling of looking at St. Paul’s. This small moment in The Years about animal behaviors, ascribed to the titular dog. Given the surge in theories
the immensely gratifying, yet utterly fleeting, feeling of harmony a of courtship, sexuality, and identity during the previous decades, I
building can give a person, coupled with the sweeping, inventive, read Flush as an experiment in masochistic subjectivity. Indeed, the
ineffable spatiality in “America, Which I Have Never Seen,” suggests emotional capacity ascribed to Flush, and its ensuing struggles, echo
resonance between the architectural ideologies of the 1930s and Woolf’s contemporaneous sexological tracts such as those by Richard von
own commitment to the liberating possibilities of making a new kind of Krafft-Ebing and Havelock Ellis that uncover and explore the direct
space. relationship between love and suffering.1

Sarah E. Cornish A product of the early 1930s, Flush is, in many ways, much more than
University of Northern Colorado what Woolf initially conceived as “a joke” (Briggs 300) or what critics
read as “light-hearted” (Whitworth 26). The novel can be understood
Works Cited as an acknowledgement of the necessarily masochistic elements within
Benjamin, Walter. The Arcades Project. Trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin the rituals of courtship. Unlike the “masochistic aesthetic that depends
McLaughlin. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2002. on a dynamics of suffering and compensation […] in which creativity
Cohen, Lisa. All We Know: Three Lives. New York: Farrar, Strauss and and self-destruction are linked in inextricable and productive ways”
Giroux, 2012. (Sorum 25-26), Flush experiments more with the ways in which
Dalrymple, Theodore. “The Architect as Totalitarian: Le Corbusier’s masochism becomes a means of expression for those in love. Because
Baleful Influence” City Journal 19.4 (Autumn 2009). Woolf presents such masochistic tendencies through Flush’s experience
Heynan, Hilde. Architecture and Modernity: A Critique. Cambridge: of them, she locates them in all types of affectionate relationships. In
MIT P, 1999. particular, Woolf uses Flush to reveal the porous borders between human
Mares, Cheryl. “The Making of Virginia Woolf’s America.” Woolf society and the animal kingdom. Writing in a post-Darwinian period in
and the Art of Exploration: Selected Papers from the Fifteenth which nature is seen as the analog of human behavior, Woolf applies
International Conference on Virginia Woolf. Ed. Helen Southworth the same emotional experiences to dog and human alike, encouraging
and Elisa Kay Sparks. Clemson: Clemson U Digital P, 2006. 131-19. readers to consider them in tandem.
McNeillie, Andrew. “Virginia Woolf’s America.” Dublin Review 5
(Winter 2001-02): 41-55. With the circulation of sexological works by Krafft-Ebing and
Stearns, Thaine. “‘Others Wanted to Travel’: Woolf and ‘America Ellis, discussions of sex and deviance became a regular feature of
Herself.’” Literature Compass 4.2 (2007): 488-93. public discourse in the early twentieth-century. Indeed, critics have
Le Corbusier. The City of To-morrow and Its Planning. Trans. Frederick acknowledged Ellis’s direct influence on Woolf and her approach to
Etchells. New York: Dover, 1987.
—. The Modulor and Modulor 2. 2 Vols. Trans. Peter de Francia and
Anna Bostok. Basel: Birkhäuser, 2004. 1
As Carol Siegel points out, “The modernist normalization of sadistic and
—. The Radiant City. New York: Orion P, 1967. masochistic desires also implicitly supports as natural the sexually charged social
—. Towards a New Architecture. Trans. Frederick Etchells. New York: hierarchies” (30). The relationship between a dog and his mistress is, of course, a
Dover, 1986. type of social hierarchy.
28
androgyny.2 His particular contributions to the understanding of gender When Mr. Browning enters Miss Barrett’s life, he violently disrupts
roles and courtship, though, invite a reading of Flush himself as a Flush’s routine, and, as such, Flush internalizes the pain of his exclusion
traditional, heteronormative suitor courting his mistress.3 Revealing the from the life of his mistress: “Once he had felt that he and Miss Barrett
latent masochistic tendencies engendered by desire, Ellis asks, “Why is were together, in a firelit cave. Now the cave was no longer firelit; it
it that love inflicts, and even seeks to inflict, pain? Why is it that love was dark and damp; […] [e]verything had changed” (56). Flush blames
suffers pain, and even seeks to suffer pain?” (87). Ellis’s understanding the newfound darkness of his life entirely upon Mr. Browning, though
of love as intimately tied to suffering explains how Flush is “[r]avaged it is contingent upon an explicit change in Miss Barrett’s displays of
by the alternate rages of lust and greed” (Woolf 36) in his desire to “win affection. Prior to the entrance of his rival, Flush’s affection and loyalty
the female” (Ellis 88). The narrator makes clear that it is for Elizabeth are validated by Miss Barrett’s attentions. As she develops feelings for
Barrett Browning—and for her alone—that Flush’s existence is Mr. Browning, however, she recasts her love for Flush into her love
measured: “it was for her that he had sacrificed his courage, as it was for for this new suitor, leaving Flush “ignored” (56) and relegated to the
her that he had sacrificed the sun and the air” (Woolf 48). Flush chooses background. Perhaps more tragic, Miss Barrett’s indifference—“She no
a life with Miss Barrett, “a life of complete seclusion in her bedroom” longer remembered his existence” (56)—turns to cruelty, undercutting
at the expense of his “natural instincts” (33); as such, his love for Miss all that Flush has previously cultivated to endear himself to her: “She
Barrett is consistently measured in terms of the pain of sacrifice. treated his advances more brusquely; she cut short his endearments
laughingly; she made him feel that there was something petty, silly,
Throughout the novel, Flush’s most intense experiences of love are affected, in his old affectionate ways” (62). All of Flush’s quirky
framed in terms of his own suffering. His pain is intimately tied to characteristics, which once endeared him to his mistress, have become
his feelings of duty and questions of his own worth. The “bond, an disdainful and worthy of mockery; accordingly, Flush, now secondary to
uncomfortable yet thrilling tightness” (35) that unites Flush with Miss Mr. Browning, is miserable.
Barrett is based upon Flush’s realization that “if his pleasure was her
pain, then his pleasure was […] three parts pain” (35). Like a good The degradation that Flush feels chronicles the process by which
suitor, Flush’s satisfaction is dependent entirely on that of his beloved. romantic rivals are necessarily pitted against one another: “there
The juxtaposition of “uncomfortable” and “thrilling” iterates Ellis’s is always a possibility of actual combat […] of real violence, of
suggestion that even the most playful courtship rituals “are verging on undisguised cruelty, which the male inflicts on his rival” (Ellis 90).
pain” (88). For Flush, a single suitor within what Ellis conceives of Flush, to assert his claim on Miss Barrett and, by proxy, to prove his
as a broader spectrum of courtship rituals, pleasure is pain and pain is dominance, imagines himself “sharply” (61) biting Mr. Browning.
pleasure. In order to be the triumphant male, Flush has to prove that he is “the
bravest and strongest” (Ellis 89). As a result, his fantasy of physical
In this sense, pain is more multidimensional than simply the negation assault intensifies with real violence becoming inevitable: Flush
of pleasure. Ellis explains, “the emotional value of pain is equally great “savagely” (63) bites Mr. Browning. Yet, contrary to Ellis’s belief that
whether the pain is inflicted, suffered, witnessed, or merely exists as the female in question would “delight in the prowess of the successful
a mental imagination, and there is no reason why it should not coexist claimant” (90), Flush, the more aggressive of the rival suitors, is
in all these forms in the same person” (215). Even Flush’s mistress harshly ignored: “Neither he nor Miss Barrett seemed to think the attack
measures his worth in terms of his sacrifice and suffering. When he worthy of attention. Completely foiled, worsted, without a shaft left
moans because he cannot sleep on her bed, or when he refuses to eat in his sheath, Flush sank back on his cushions panting with rage and
if she does not feed him, Miss Barrett “took the blame and bore the disappointment” (63). By ignoring Flush, his most treasured beloved and
inconvenience because, after all, Flush loved her. He had refused the air most despised rival validates his deepest fears that they are in cahoots
and the sun for her sake. ‘He is worth loving, is he not?’” (48-9). Flush against him. Miss Barrett, like Ellis’s notion of the female who discovers
sacrifices greatly, often counter to his most basic drives and desires. “on her part also the enjoyment of power in cruelty” (88), asserts her
Because he is willing to submit himself wholly to the whims and wishes own power by denying Flush any attention whatsoever.
of his mistress and because he celebrates the primacy of her desires over
his, he proves worthy of her affection. Flush, the wounded suitor, is desperate for acknowledgement of any kind
when the cruelty of being ignored becomes too much to bear. When Miss
Clearly, the “game” of courtship—“a mock-combat between males Barrett, though, “inflicted upon him the worst punishment he had ever
for the possession of the female which may at any time become a real known” (63), it is notably not the ensuing physical punishment of which
combat” (Ellis 88)—is afoot for Flush. Such play evolves into real he speaks: “First she slapped his ears—that was nothing; oddly enough
combat for Flush when Mr. Browning enters the narrative and directs the slap was rather to his liking; he would have welcomed another”
Miss Barrett’s attentions elsewhere. The novel ascribes a canine quality (63). The physical manifestation of Miss Barrett’s disappointment in
to Mr. Browning, emphasizing the rivalry between the poet and the Flush is welcome precisely because it acknowledges his value—he
pooch, as the man, notably not the dog, “barked out its sharp, harsh is, even at this moment, worthy of attention, however damning. Flush
clapper of laughter” (60). Although Rachel Blau DuPlessis explains that is the quintessential masochist, whose selfhood is avowed precisely
the novel “close[s] the issue of heterosexual love […] by describing when it is abused. “The worst punishment,” then, is the declaration that
the burning and yearning passions of a jealous pooch” (327), Flush’s follows: “she said in her sober, certain tones that she would never love
romantic desire is presented as wholly heterosexual. It follows, quite him again. That shaft went to his heart” (63). Previously, Miss Barrett’s
expressly, Ellis’s understanding of traditional human courtship rites and rejection of Flush is momentary and fleeting—a standard part of the
rituals as indebted to the “animal world of combat—of the fighting and “game” of courtship. Yet, this declaration leaves Flush completely
hunting impulses” (88). The development of Flush’s subjectivity in this heartbroken, as with “a detached, a mocking, a critical expression […]
regard highlights the interconnectedness—even interchangeability—of Miss Barrett, absorbed in her own emotions, misjudged him completely”
human and animal experience for Woolf. (65). Once part of the rituals that Flush envisions, Miss Barrett suddenly
2 
steps outside of them and the “uncomfortable yet thrilling tightness,”
See Barbara Fassler’s “Theories of Homosexuality as Sources of Bloomsbury’s mentioned above, that was once a testament to the intensity of their love,
Androgyny” and Michael Kramp’s “The Resistant Social/Sexuality Subjectivity
is severed. Even though Flush feels that in this instant “the chain of love
of Hall’s Ogilvy and Woolf’s Rhoda.”
was broken” (66), he just cannot give up his beloved or his persistent
3
  Earlier in the century, Freud, another notable influence on Woolf, distinguishes persecution of his rival.
sharply between “sacred and profane (or animal love)” (397) to understand the
attraction of debasement. Yet, Ellis’s positioning of love on a broader spectrum of It is through the rhetoric of the inevitable and interminable suffering
ritual and tradition is more apt when considering Flush.
29
that accompanies love that Flush’s multiple failed attempts to eliminate NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction 21.2/3 (1998): 323-30.
Mr. Browning are explained. Trying twice to destroy his foe, Flush is Briggs, Julia. Virginia Woolf: An Inner Life. London: Harcourt, 2005.
unsuccessful because “he loved Miss Barrett” and “must love her for Caughie, Pamela L. “Flush and the Literary Canon: Oh Where Oh Where
ever” (69). Defeated, he realizes that, “If he bit Mr. Browning, he bit her Has That Little Dog Gone?” Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature 10.1
too” (69). Doomed to follow his beloved practically to the ends of the (1991): 47-66.
earth, Flush becomes a philosopher, drawing apt conclusions about the Deleuze, Gilles. “Le Froid et le cruel.” Trans. Jean McNeil. 1967.
relationship between affection and disdain: “Hatred is not hatred; hatred Masochism: Coldness and Cruelty. New York: Zone Books, 1992.
is also love” (69).4 Indicative of the simultaneity with which love and Ellis, Havelock. Studies in the Psychology of Sex: Volume III. 1927.
pain are experienced according to Ellis, Flush’s declaration is wholly Charleston, SC: BiblioBazaar, 2006.
masochistic. More so, these philosophical musings are indicative of the Fassler, Barbara. “Theories of Homosexuality as Sources of
more primordial essence within human romantic relationships. Bloomsbury’s Androgyny.” Signs 5.2 (1979): 237-51.
Freud, Sigmund. “On the Universal Tendency to Debasement in the
Initially representative of the conventional courtship trajectory—with Sphere of Love.” 1912. The Freud Reader. Ed. Peter Gay. New York:
Flush’s gestures of aggression and virility, his symbols of sacrifice and W.W. Norton, 1989. 394-99.
devotion, and his beloved’s encompassing power—Flush and Miss Johnson, Jamie. “Virginia Woolf’s Flush: Decentering Human
Barrett ultimately evolve into the inverse. When Flush is stolen by a Subjectivity through the Nonhuman Animal Character.” Virginia
gang of petty criminals, his strength and agency is wholly undercut. His Woolf Miscellany 84 (2013): 34-36.
only hope for rescue is at the hands, and purse, of Miss Barrett. With Kramp, Michael. “The Resistant Social/Sexuality Subjectivity of Hall’s
Flush “helpless” and Miss Barrett with a “duty” (93) to rescue him, the Ogilvy and Woolf’s Rhoda.” Rocky Mountain Review of Language
traditional roles within courtship have been inverted. Unable to “fight,” and Literature 52.2 (1998): 29-63.
a suitor can no longer hope to “win” against his rival (Ellis 89); as such, Lawrence, D. H. “Love.” Sex, Literature and Censorship: Essays. Ed.
Flush no longer considers himself a threat to Mr. Browning. Precisely Harry T. Moore. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1953. Pagination
as Miss Barrett rescues Flush from the depravity of “horrible monsters” missing.
(84), so too Mr. Browning rescues Miss Barrett from a life “chained to Schaffner, Anna Katharina. Modernism and Perversion: Sexual Deviance
the sofa” (35). Formerly the aggressive suitor, Flush is relegated to a in Sexology and Literature, 1850-1930. New York: Palgrave
status akin to damsel in distress. The “mock-combat” of courtship, of Macmillan, 2011.
which Flush was once an active part, ends with Mr. Browning finally Siegel, Carol. Male Masochism: Modern Revisions of the Story of Love.
possessing Miss Barrett in marriage. After the two elope, they relocate to Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1995.
Florence, “escaping” (109). Freed from the “jealousy, anger and despair” Sorum, Eve. “Masochistic Modernisms: A Reading of Eliot and Woolf.”
(133) that stems from unrequited passions, Flush finally runs “free” in Journal of Modern Literature 28.3 (2005): 25-43.
Italy, more canine-like, developing less permanent affections for female Whitworth, Michael. Authors in Context: Virginia Woolf. Oxford: Oxford
dogs. Once he is replaced as suitor, Flush transcends the suffering that UP, 2005.
was once proof of his devotion to his mistress.5 Woolf, Virginia. Between the Acts. 1941. London and New York:
Harcourt, Inc., 1970.
In her diary entry from 16 August 1931, Woolf explains her interest in
—. The Diary of Virginia Woolf. Volume 4: 1931-1935. Ed. Anne Olivier
writing biographies “simply to express the general, the poetic” (40). The
Bell, vols. 2-5 assisted by Andrew McNeillie. London: Hogarth
masochistic subjectivity that surfaces in Flush is the bridge between the
Press, 1983.
general and the poetic. By experimenting with the rituals of courtship
—. Flush. 1933. London: Harcourt, 1983.
through the lens of an animal, Woolf locates the dynamic between
pleasure and pain in the most ordinary of relationships. Indeed, while
Eve Sorum explains that “modernist aesthetics depends on a dynamics of
suffering and compensation that can be described as masochism” (25),
the type of masochism at play in Flush is more subtle and nuanced than
the traditional images of humiliation and debasement. Further, whereas
“female masochism [is] deemed a ‘natural’ condition’” (Schaffner
17), Woolf disavows that connection by ascribing a perfectly “natural”
v
masochism to a canine subject. In the early 1930s, by presenting readers Illustrating the Uncanny: Picturing Virginia Woolf’s “This is the
with a progressive examination of masochism through the struggles House of Commons” in the 1930s British Good Housekeeping
of a loving, loyal, and complex dog, Woolf sets the stage for the type
From being the natural inheritor of civilisation, its statues, its
of radical activism she becomes known for throughout the remainder
government buildings, its triumphal arches, I had suddenly become an
of the decade. Indeed, Woolf’s reconfiguration of biography in Flush
alien, a critic: & <as if I had thought back through a different universe to
anticipates her incorporation of various forms of lifewriting, including
a woman in a tree; who had denied that this civilisation was any of her
her own notebooks and diaries, into much of her writing during the
doing>
1930s.
Virginia Woolf, Women & Fiction 143
Jennifer Mitchell
Union College Looks down, in company with the shades of bygone statesman, upon the
Westminster scene
Works Cited Editor, Good Housekeeping, 18
DuPlessis, Rachel Blau. “Feminist Narrative in Virginia Woolf.”
Beckoning on the horizon, those peripheral visions of research projects
4  that one never quite gets to—how tantalizing they are, playing hide and
Here, Woolf predates D. H. Lawrence’s posthumously published essay “Love” seek with our agendas. For me, such a mirage has been Virginia Woolf’s
(1936), wherein he poses a question that applies to Flush: “What worse bondage
series of six essays in the British edition of Good Housekeeping in the
can we conceive than the bond of love?” (34).
early 1930s and later published together as The London Scene; certainly I
5
The possibility of “outgrowing” masochism, so to speak, surfaces in Leopold read with delight the brilliant essays in various incarnations, but I always
von Sacher-Masoch’s foundational novel, Venus in Furs, and is tied to the ways in wondered what they were like in their original context, embedded within
which masochism is often critically connected to sadism. For alternative ways of the pages of that journal. After working with the posh British Vogues—
reading this trajectory, see Gilles Deleuze’s Coldness and Cruelty.
30
so high fashion and highbrow—in which Woolf published in the 1920s, one. The photographs of the abbeys and cathedrals for the article by that
I was very curious to see what it would be like to read her early 1930s name are inside shots, rather than the conventional outside views, so I
London Scene essays in the original context of the British issues of Good was not going to bet on one perspective or the other.
Housekeeping. Would her essays fit in or stand out? What would the
illustrations be like? What would the Good Housekeeping advertisements Imagine my surprise! I made a startled exclamation (in the rather sedate
be like? The fiction? What would the Table of Contents hold? Would setting of the Berg reading room, no less). Why? You may well ask. The
her essays and their context belong quintessentially to the 1930s? Such spread for the essay has the title and below that, VIRGINIA WOOLF
questions crossed my mind every decade or so, but that research project in capital letters, under which, in italics, is the editorial phrase “Looks
stayed on the back burner—until recently. down, in company with the shades of bygone statesman, upon the
Westminster scene” (18).
Reading inspiring scholarly and theoretical studies of Woolf’s Good
Housekeeping essays by Jeanette McVicker, with in-depth analyses
of the political work the essays do, I was reminded of my desire to
experience the Good Housekeeping issues myself. Visuals were what
I coveted the most. Alas, the British version of Good Housekeeping
proved very elusive for me; a librarian’s quick search suggested only
a few British archives had the originals, and, somehow, the texts were
never central enough to my research to justify a trip. So, imagine my
delight, when one late night cruising on AbeBooks I found one of those
tantalizing journals (or a significant chunk of one) for sale! I purchased
it in a happy click, eager to see whether it would be akin to the American
homemaker journal, and to see the illustrations. The edition I found
was the December 1932 issue containing “Portrait of a Londoner” with
illustrations Stuart N. Clarke describe as “tomato and grey” (Essays 5
597). I won’t tell you now my initial impressions of the journal; that
will all come in a later article, for here I wish to concentrate on the
serpentine process of my research, and on one small detail that finally
emerged. Sidetracked again for more than a decade by other projects,
years passed, until I came across Alice Wood’s groundbreaking study
of Woolf’s writings within the historical and cultural context of Good
Housekeeping. I was inspired: once again AbeBooks beckoned and I
found, lo! and behold!, four more of the coveted journals: December
1931 with “The Docks of London,” January 1932 with “Oxford Street
Tide,” March 1932 with “Great Men’s Houses,” and May 1932 with
“Abbeys & Cathedrals.” Gleefully, I pounced. Alas, you must await my
findings about these tomes, though hopefully not as long as I awaited the
originals.

Of course, what followed was that I began to obsess on the one

issue I could not find for sale: the ultra-elusive October 1932 issue
containing “This is the House of Commons.” Inter-Library Loan was
not forthcoming. Once I learned that the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg
Collection of English and American Literature at the New York Public Courtesy of Good Housekeeping, HEARST MAGAZINE UK
Library held Virginia Woolf’s drafts and proofs for the essay, along VIRGINIA WOOLF
with the illustrations for the articles pasted into the proofs, a visit was Looks down, in company with the shades of bygone statesman, upon the Westminster scene

required. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but who can resist the Berg? I was The illustration, which takes up the entire right hand page, was pasted
last there a few years back when Issac Gewirtz showed a few treasures to into Woolf’s proofs, proving she must have seen it before it was
a select audience of attendees of the 2009 Woolf and the City conference published as she had made some minor edits in the text (19). But, the
(hosted by Anne Fernald at Fordham University); he regaled us with image was what caught my eye: uncanny (in the Freudian sense) it struck
Dickens’ cat paw candle snuffer, Charlotte Bronte’s writing desk, and, me as both familiar and alien; it was an external view of the Houses
yes, the walking stick Virginia Woolf left by the river in March 1941. of Parliament, with the little people below rather like ants, and atop
And manuscripts! Of course. So here I was at the Berg Collection again, the building, a series of huge, looming statues of statesman somehow
filling out call slips with anticipation.1 superimposed or cut and pasted in. There was no artist’s signature, so I
have no idea who designed this bizarre montage, but it left me feeling
What did I expect to see? Judging by the other illustrations, which remarkably strange and discomforted—part hilarity, part befuddlement,
ranged from tasteful engravings for “The Docks of London” to that sense you have when an image reminds you of something you can’t
somewhat banal photographs for “Abbeys and Cathedrals” to the rather quite recall, which is disturbing. It took me quite a while to sort out these
conventional tomato and grey illustrations that were omnipresent in tangled perceptions. The dizzying height of the statues, so oddly poised
Good Housekeeping, to a smart modern set of drawings for “Oxford on the brink of the parapets of the Palace of Westminster, gave an odd
Street Tide,” I was not sure what to expect, though I assumed it likely sense of vertigo; Humpty Dumpty came to mind, of all incongruities, as
that I would find a typical photographic illustration of the House of the statues seemed precariously perched. Just slightly more transparent
Commons. Would it be a photograph of outside? Or inside? That was than the building, the statues gave the aura of ghostly presences. Yet,
the only real question I could muster, and that was hardly a compelling there was nothing wraithlike about these very solid statesmen. They
were familiar (historical figures, well known statues from the guidebooks
1
 I wish to express my gratitude to the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of in familiar poses) yet their inflated stature triggered the unheimlich—I
English and American Literature at the New York Public Library for their cour- could not help being reminded of Woolf’s scathing discussion of men
tesy, support and encouragement as the librarians gave me access to the original
materials for this study.
31
requiring women to reflect them back at twice their natural size, yet For Gladstone, for Pitt, or for Palmerston even, the transition was
multiplied here to an absurd cartoon: perfectly easy.

Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses Thus if statues are to be raised, they will become more and more
possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of monolithic, plain and featureless. They will be like granite plinths set
man at twice its natural size. Without that power probably the earth on the moors to mark battles. The days of single men and personal
would still be swamp and jungle. The glories of all our wars would power are over.
be unknown. We should still be scratching the outlines of deer on
the remains of mutton bones and bartering flints for sheepskins or Let us rebuild the world then as a splendid hall; let us give up making
whatever simple ornament took our unsophisticated taste. Supermen statues and inscribing them with impossible virtues. (“This is the
and Fingers of Destiny would never have existed. The Czar and House of Commons” 110-12)
the Kaiser would never have worn crowns or lost them (A Room of
But, just as we amble along agreeably in sync with her argument, Woolf
One’s Own [AROO] 35)
trips us up by reversing: “The mind, it seems, likes to perch, in its flight
These vast statues dwarfing the buildings made me laugh—but also through empty space, upon some remarkable nose, some trembling hand;
made me uneasy. I wondered if part of my amusement and sense of it loves the flashing eye, the arched brow, the abnormal, the particular,
disorientation came from my gender—or theirs? A telling phrase from the splendid human being” (112). The only hope she articulates for the
A Room of One’s Own leapt to my lips: “Again if one is a woman one future (and she hopes it does not come until she is gone) is “that by
is often surprised by a sudden splitting off of consciousness, say in some stupendous stroke of genius both will be combined, the vast hall
walking down Whitehall, when from being the natural inheritor of and the small, the particular, the individual human being” (Woolf, “This
that civilisation, she becomes, on the contrary, outside of it, alien and is the House of Commons” 112). Woolf thus choreographs her familiar
critical” (AROO 96). I reached for the holograph draft, wondering what counterpoint step in this essay, signaling the death of the individual
lay behind that marvelous phrase, and found this intriguing one: statue and yet also marking her nostalgic attachment to the individuality
it embodies.2
But what do I mean by the unity of the mind, I thought, remembering
my own statement that a woman thinks back as a writer through her The aesthetic and political role of the statue was clearly on her mind
mothers; remembering too, how, when I walked down Whitehall, during this creative phase; one might argue that this “stupendous stroke
<there had been> a distinct break in my consciousness; had From of genius” was in fact embodied in Woolf’s monumental work, The
being the natural inheritor of civilisation, its statues, its government Waves, in which she claimed to have at last put her statues against the
buildings, its triumphal arches, I had suddenly become an alien, a sky. One might also reflect on ways the illustration anticipates Three
critic: & <as if I had thought back through a different universe to a Guineas; in this montage we might recognize the forerunners of the
woman in a tree; who had denied that this civilisation was any of her photographs of the generals and bishops in that essay. Perhaps this
doing> (Women & Fiction 143). photomontage triggered an uncanny response in Woolf, and inspired
her endeavor to startle the reader of Three Guineas with photographs
Woolf’s sense of alienation not only from this particular civilization, but of patriarchs on parade. It is noteworthy that the Good Housekeeping
from civilization per se intrigued me. It occurred to me that “the woman illustration does not picture the narrator, though it does imply her point
in the tree,” outsider original, truly is “looking down.” That triggered a of view. Both the illustration and the editor’s introductory blurb to the
series of reflections. I have argued elsewhere that Woolf embodies the essay situate Woolf as a ‘high-up-sider’—a rather aerial outsider3—
“striding feminist,” a Benjaminian flaneur with a gender change to a on a level with the quirky shades of past statesmen hovering above
flaneuse, and, even more, a political change to feminist, in her critique Westminster, up with Big Ben, if not quite in the clouds, certainly
and reclaiming of the bourgeois exteriors of the London Squares, far from the antlike humans in the square far below. This placement
and through the trespassageways her striding feminist treks through somewhat anticipates her inauguration of the Outsiders’ Society, for the
the London streets (“Virginia Woolf and Walter Benjamin Selling narrator in this piece (despite the editor’s blurb that she is “in company
Out(Siders)” 15-22). Here I would like to expand that analysis to witness with the shades of bygone statesman”) definitely is outside and “looking
Woolf’s demolition of monumental spaces and politicians on pedestals down.” Yet, the narrator, dancing “its flight through empty space,” has no
and, yet, her mixed feelings about that demolition work. In “This is the intention of becoming a statue, reminding us of Woolf’s words in a diary
House of Commons,” with its evocative illustration, the narrator arises as entry of March 24, 1932, “I must not settle into a figure” (Diary 4 85).
not only a striding and trespassing feminist, but also as a levitating one,
disobeying gravity and rising (yet sans plinth) to the level of Big Ben What an adventure this long-deferred research foray took me on! And,
and the statesman shades. finally, I could not have imagined an illustration better suited to Woolf’s
mixed tones in this essay: mocking, nostalgic, monumentally-challenged,
Statues matter in this essay—and in Woolf’s aesthetics of this period. and provocatively uncanny.
The opening line, “Outside of the House of Commons stand the statues
of great statesmen,” (18) draws our attention to the focus on statues and Leslie Kathleen Hankins
their roles past and future, yet the line adds, with a somewhat mocking Cornell College
tone, “black and sleek and shiny as sea lions that have just risen from the Works Cited
water” (18). And inside the House of Commons, Woolf continues, “— Clarke, Stuart N., ed. The Essays of Virginia Woolf. By Virginia Woolf.
here, too, are statues—Gladstone, Granville, Lord John Russell—white Vol. 5. London: The Hogarth Press, 2009.
statues, gazing from white eyes at the old scenes of stir and bustle in Cuddy-Keane, Melba. Virginia Woolf, the Intellectual, and the
which, not so very long ago, they played their part” (18). Such statues, Public Sphere Cambridge UP, 2003.Delsandro, Erica. “Flights of
she argues, are obsolete in a democratic age: “the days of the small Imagination: Aerial Views, Narrative Perspectives, and Global
separate statue are over” (18). The undercutting of the statues, bringing Perceptions.” Virginia Woolf: Art, Education, and Internationalism:
them down to size, continues throughout the essay and the illustration
amplifies the mockery: 2
Melba Cuddy-Keane offers a thought-provoking reading of this essay and Vir-
ginia Woolf’s rhetorical turns and shifts. See 50-52.
But how, one asks, remembering Parliament Square, are any of these
3
competent, well-groomed gentlemen going to turn into statues? See Erica Delsandro’s article “Flights of Imagination: Aerial Views, Narra-
tive Perspectives, and Global Perceptions,” particularly the section IV. Feminist
Flights of Fancy.
32
 Selected Papers from the Seventeenth Annual Virginia Woolf Fascist rhetoric.2 Some recent critics, Judy Suh among them, “take
Conference. Ed. Diana Royer and Madelyn Detloff. Clemson: seriously” Woolf’s own assertion that The Years was “a deliberate
Clemson U Digital P, 2008, 117-124 failure” (100). Reading The Years as “a failure that embraces itself as
Hankins, Leslie Kathleen. “Virginia Woolf and Walter Benjamin Selling such” (205), Stephen Barber contends that the novel “aspires both to
Out(Siders)” Virginia Woolf in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. diagnose fascism and to fight against a totalizing or unifying political,
Ed Pamela L. Caughie. New York: Garland, 2000. 3-35. aesthetic, and moral system” (204); that is, any totalizing or unifying
Woolf, Virginia. The Diary of Virginia Woolf, Volume 4: 1931-1935. Ed. system, not just one associated with Fascism. Woolf’s “refusal to offer
Anne Olivier Bell, vols. 2-5 assisted by Andrew McNeillie. New models of heroic political virtue” in The Years allows her to expose “the
York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982. failure of British liberalism,” argues Suh, who links Woolf and Stephen
—. A Room of One’s Own. 1929. Orlando: Harcourt, 2005. Spender in their distrust of phrases such as “‘justice and liberty,’”
—. “This is the House of Commons.” Good Housekeeping (UK) October abundantly used in liberal anti-Fascist rhetoric (100-01).3 Although
1932: 18-19, 110-112. Woolf was famously distrustful of the political self-consciousness of
—. Women & Fiction: The Manuscript versions of A Room of One’s Auden’s generation, she found in Spender a careful reader of The Years.
Own. By Virginia Woolf. Transcribed and ed. S. P. Rosenbaum. In an April 1937 letter to Spender, Woolf expresses her pleasure at his
Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. 1992. “lik[ing] the Years better than the other books”; and she is “very glad
[he] saw that the tend of the book, its slope to one quarter of the compass
Works Consulted and not another, was different from the tend in [her] other books”
McVicker, Jeanette. “‘Six Essays on London Life’: A History of (122-23). It is this relation of Woolf’s other books to The Years that is
Dispersal Part I.” Woolf Studies Annual 9 (2003): 143-65. of particular interest, as we have yet to fully consider the implications
—. “‘Six Essays on London Life’: A History of Dispersal Part II.” Woolf of Hermione Lee’s tantalizing claim that “In a way The Years rewrote
Studies Annual 10 (2004): 141-72. [Woolf’s] earlier books” (637). To that end, I suggest that an analysis of
Squier, Susan Merrill. Virginia Woolf and London: The Sexual Politics of Woolf’s intratextual strategies for resisting or undermining the creation
the City. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1985. of a unified vision in The Years might help us to interrogate evocations
Wood, Alice. “Made to Measure: Virginia Woolf in Good Housekeeping of visionary wholeness present in Woolf’s earlier works and to consider
Magazine.” Prose Studies 32.1 (April 2010): 12-24. the ways in which Woolf in the 1930s might be “rewriting” some part of
Woolf, Virginia. “Abbeys and Cathedrals.” Good Housekeeping (UK) her 1920’s oeuvre.4
May 1932: 18-19, 102.
—. “The Docks of London.” Good Housekeeping (UK), December 1931: An early analysis of The Years by Victoria Middleton illustrates how
16-17, 114-17. Woolf’s various methods of repetition “undercut” the novel’s own
—. “Great Men’s Houses.” Good Housekeeping (UK) March 1932: 10- “visionary experience” (167). I propose that The Years’ echoing of
11, 102-03. visionary moments in Woolf’s previous works often unsettles those
—. The London Scene: Five Essays by Virginia Woolf. New York: earlier moments—opening up new strategies for reading Woolf’s
Random House, 1975. ongoing aesthetic and ethical negotiations with the epiphanic. In The
—. The London Scene: Six Essays on London Life. Intro. by Francine Years, replete with epiphanic- and ethical-sounding pronouncements
Prose. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2006. that are often exposed, by repetition and communal absorption, to be
—. “Oxford Street Tide.” Good Housekeeping (UK) January 1932: 18- both profound and platitudinous—such as “If we do not know ourselves,
19, 120. how can we know other people?” (293) —Woolf engages in what Melba
—. “Portrait of a Londoner.” Good Housekeeping (UK) December 1932: Cuddy-Keane identifies as the “ethics of interpolation”: a process in
28-29, 132. which The Years “is constructed as both provisional and contingent by
—. Ragtime to Wartime: The Best of Good Housekeeping 1922-1939. being inserted into a larger communal flow of thought” (“Inside and
Compiled by Brian Braithwaite, Noëlle Walsh and Glyn Davies. Ed. Outside” 178). Part of that “communal flow,” I contend, also occurs
Suzanne Webber. London: Leopard Books/Random House, 1986. within the larger body of Woolf’s work, which, as a result, also becomes
—. A Room of One’s Own. 1929. Orlando: Harcourt, 2005. retrospectively provisional. In The Years, it is “The Present” section—
with its unrealized epiphanies and rejected perorations, its unfinished
thoughts, conversations, and speeches—that most markedly recalls,

l
interrogates, and unsettles many of the visionary moments in Woolf’s
previous works written in the 1920s and early 30s. While this essay is
part of a larger project, I limit my focus here primarily to Mrs. Dalloway,
a novel also significantly informed by intersections of public and
private history and one that also culminates in a party. Reading Woolf’s
Un-visioning the Visionary in Woolf’s The Years depictions of several visionary moments in Mrs. Dalloway alongside
2
While many early critics who focused on the textual evolution of The Stephen Barber contends that The Years and Three Guineas are united by “the
Years concluded that Woolf “failed to harness [her] ‘vision’ to unify ethical consistence achieved by the hard-won, open-system aesthetic of the
the [novel]” (Snaith 94),1 The Years’ failure to present a unified vision novel” (204). Emphasizing Woolf’s aesthetic resistance to homogeneity, Rishona
Zimring reads The Year’s “cacophony” as “artful”—an “art of fragmentation and
is increasingly regarded as Woolf’s radical and formidable aesthetic
heterogeneity, not syntheses and unity” (130). More recently, Elizabeth Evans
resistance to homogeneity and didacticism—a resistance Woolf thought contends that in writing The Years, Woolf is “poised between” both “the rejection
to be ethically necessary as a response to the proliferation of 1930s of fascism in its many forms, and refusal to employ her fiction to propagandize
that rejection” (54).
1 
Anna Snaith’s scholarship on The Years’ engagement with “intertextual layering 3
Natania Rosenfeld helpfully reminds us that in Woolf’s essay “Craftsmanship,”
of sources and influences, private and public fictions and narratives, rather than broadcast on the BBC in 1937, Woolf is not just writing against Fascist language;
with categorization and separation” (111) has helped to reverse the trend of read- she is “writing against language used in the service of any cause” (163).
ing The Years as a text that cannot resolve tensions between fact and fiction—a
4
dichotomy, Snaith contends, that Woolf’s experimental feminist text rejects (110). In an essay that addresses the role of repetition in Woolf’s later novels, John
Alice Wood, in her recent book of feminist-historicist genetic readings of Woolf’s Whittier-Ferguson astutely asserts that “In The Years and Between the Acts,
late work, concludes that Woolf’s “fusion of fact and fiction” in The Years “distin- Woolf writes as though she were always looking over her shoulder,” and he
guishes Woolf’s late turn to cultural criticism and represents a linear progression concludes that her later works seem “less miraculous, less revelatory than their
from her earlier journalistic methods and aesthetic experimentalism” (53). predecessors” (236).
33
those that occur during the final party in The Years will illustrate, on a Wilde, leaves the gutter and heads straight for the stars, as the singer’s
small scale, what such intertextual engagement might yield. voice transcends her material conditions: “Cheerfully, almost gaily, the
invincible thread of sound wound up into the air like the smoke from a
One of The Years’ most enigmatic scenes, the singing of the caretaker’s cottage chimney, winding up clean beech trees and issuing a tuft of blue
children, seems to impersonate a visionary moment as much represent smoke among the topmost leaves” (81). The visionary tropes associated
one. Reading their song—which begins with the sounds “Etho passo with this old homeless woman place her outside the historical conditions
tanno hai” (The Years [Y] 407)—alongside its echoic counterpart of post-war London; her song’s origin as an “ancient spring” deep in the
in Mrs. Dalloway—the Tube station singer’s “ee um fah um so” earth (79) evokes Ur-history, while its skyward “invincibil[ity]” suggests
(79, 80)—prompts a reevaluation of the visionary force of the old a transcendence of history. In addition, the simile comparing her song to
woman’s song. The children’s song, Rishona Zimring emphasizes, is a “smoke from a cottage chimney” calls up a pastoral nostalgia, signaling
commodity the party guests pay for, and she praises Woolf for “in one that all is well in the woods of Arcadia. It is no wonder, then, that
ingenious move […] remind[ing] us that worlds continuously interact directly after this passage, homesick Rezia’s own unhappiness seems
in economic transactions as well as […] economic disparities” (152). I to her to have been just a “silly, silly dream” (81); she even thinks Sir
suggest the text makes another ingenious move: by foregrounding the William Bradshaw’s “name sounded nice” (81; my emphasis). In short,
children’s inscrutable song with the promise of sixpence, it encourages Peter pays for the song, but Rezia gets his money’s worth. In this scene,
a backward glance, one that sets its sight on the coin that rests in the as in other parts of Mrs. Dalloway, disruptive and discordant sounds are
Tube station singer’s hand in Mrs. Dalloway. Whatever visionary aura mitigated by soothing tropes, “invincible threads,” if you will; tracing
attaches to the old woman’s cryptic signing in a seeming Ur-language, those threads can help us to interrogate how our own desires to locate
we must also consider its value as a commodity. Her hand, as she sings, textual harmony might render us too complacent, like Rezia, to resist
is “exposed for coppers”; when Peter Walsh gives her a coin, “she what “sound[s] nice.” Woolf makes that complacency alarmingly less
smile[s], pocketing her shilling” (80). Considering her smile alongside available to us in The Years.
the grins of the caretaker’s children makes it seem more sardonic than
it might otherwise. Perhaps the old woman knows full well the allure Prior to the trophic transformation discussed above, Woolf describes the
of an ancient-sounding song in the modern urban market place, much ancient woman’s voice as “running […] [s]hrilly and with an absence all
as the “grinning” caretaker’s children, who “nudge” one other to sing human meaning” (MD 79). In The Years, Woolf uses similar language
their last verse, are aware of their performative value at a party whose to characterize the children’s song after its abrupt end in seeming mid-
hostess insists she wants to “mix people” and disregard “conventions” verse: “so shrill, so discordant, and so meaningless” (408). The addition
and who gives the children extra-large slices of cake to prove it (378). of the adjective “discordant” is telling, given that their song, unlike the
A more materialist reading of the Tube station singer necessarily shifts old woman’s, remains so. Eleanor’s response to the children’s voices,
focus away from well-established readings of her song as visionary unlike Rezia’s response to the old woman’s, maintains the singers’
resistance to the patriarchal symbolic order. However, it is not my alterity, their insistent otherness. Eleanor thinks, “it was impossible to
intent to negate the powerful pull of such readings, for it is the power find one word for the whole” (408). Her attempt to do so—the word
to be seduced by the visionary that The Years so expertly exposes and “Beautiful?”—is offered as a question; and although it seemingly is
compels us to examine. The ancient woman’s song, as several critics affirmed by Maggie’s reply—“Extraordinarily”—Eleanor resists the
have convincingly argued, represents feminist resistance to patriarchal co-optive assumption that her thoughts and Maggie’s are identical—
culture by harnessing the power of the semiotic (Minow-Pinkney she “was not sure they were thinking the same thing”—even though
73; Matson 177). A simultaneous consideration of the old woman’s doing so would replace possible disharmony with certain accord (409).
song as both commodified and visionary makes it possible to read her This scene, read alongside Clarissa’s uncanny and, as many have
as a “commodified authentic,” a term recently coined by Elizabeth noted, co-optive connection with Septimus—a connection central to
Outka in her book Consuming Traditions: Modernity, Modernism and the novel’s thematic vision—further suggests how The Years might
the Commodified Authentic. Although Outka does not address Mrs. intertextually disrupt other novels’ aesthetically unifying moments.
Dalloway or The Years, her brilliant reading of Lily Briscoe’s attempt to Clarissa, confronted with death at her party, reads Septimus’s suicide “as
paint Mrs. Ramsay as an authentic subject concludes with an interpretive an attempt to communicate”; finally she, too, reads his message as one
strategy that is useful for addressing the seeming contradictions of beauty: “He made her feel the beauty; made her feel the fun” (182).
contained in readings of the cryptic songs and their singers: “To Despite the critical consensus that both Mrs. Dalloway, the character
understand the commodified authentic,” Outka asserts, “we must and Mrs. Dalloway, the novel, create wholeness from fragmentation,
understand […] the powerful appeal of the authentic vision at the same Clarissa’s pronouncement causes many readers discomfort, lacking as
time that we resist it, at the same time we acknowledge its construction” it does, among other things, Eleanor’s interrogative note. An ethical
(171). reading, Molly Hite rightly insists, requires that we attend to Woolf’s
“conflicting tonal cues” and “return again and again to the complicated
In The Years, Eleanor’s musings about the possibility of a grand design scene of pleasure at another’s despair and death—for its empathy,
offer a resistance to visionary moments while simultaneously evoking callousness, identification, and inequality” (253, 269). I would add
their appeal. She wonders, “Does everything then come over again a that we should repeatedly return to the complicated scene of our own
little differently? […] If so, is there a pattern; a theme, recurring, like pleasure when we read a text. To read ethically, then, is to examine the
music […] a gigantic pattern, momentarily perceptible?” (Y 350-51). aesthetic and ethical negotiations that Woolf, her characters, and we as
Cuddy-Keane contends that while Woolf implies a “pattern,” the text readers make when we “feel the beauty” of it, “feel the fun” of it, when
does not “[offer] a spiritual entry into transcendent reality” (“Modernist” the desire to find a pattern eclipses the awareness that no pattern exists
393-94). I agree with her reading of this passage but also want to call outside a system of other patterns, all of which mutually constitute and
attention to a significant line she does not address: “The thought gave interrogate each other. Conversely, lest we become complacent about our
Eleanor extreme pleasure: that there was a pattern” (Y 315). Eleanor’s own engagement with disunity and undecidabilty, we need to explore
pleasure is crucial to my reading of how Woolf’s rejection of a pattern their seductive pleasures as well. Pamela L. Caughie, whose work
and “a transcendent reality” in The Years can work against our readings richly demonstrates the pleasures of reading Woolf from a postmodern
of earlier texts, where such transcendence is often more seductive. The perspective, regards The Years as a “spectacle, play, [and a] ruse” (105).
Tube Station singer again provides a case in point. After Peter gives the This assessment is substantiated by the novel’s copious word play, which
battered woman a coin, Rezia pities the “poor old wretch,” “standing I explore in my conclusion to illustrate yet another means by which The
there in the gutter” with presumably no place to sleep at night (Mrs. Years resists didacticism.
Dalloway [MD] 81). The paragraph that follows, to borrow from Oscar

34
“[D]idax,” the last word the caretaker’s children sing before they start Works Cited
grinning, not only recalls the commercial-sounding, sky-written “Glaxo” Auden, W. H. “September 1, 1939.” Selected Poems. Ed. Edward
in Mrs. Dalloway, but it evokes a commodified version of the didactic.5 Mendelson. 2nd ed. New York: Vintage, 2007.
I suggest that Woolf’s own well-documented efforts to avoid didacticism Barber, Stephen. “States of Emergency, States of Freedom: Woolf,
in The Years are whimsically reflected by her choice of the word History, and the Novel.” Novel: A Forum on Fiction 42.2 (2009):
“didax,” in the children’s song, as well as her placement of the Latin 196-205.
word for “year” (“anno”) within the nonsense-sounding words “tanno” Caughie, Pamela L. Virginia Woolf and Modernism: Literature in Quest
and “Fanno” (407). The novel prepares us for such word play when and Question of Itself. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1991.
the elderly Patrick hears the proper noun “Hacket” when Peggy says, Cuddy-Keane, Melba. “Inside and Outside the Covers: Beginnings,
“hatchet”; and the noun “body” when she speaks the name “Biddy” (334, Endings, and Woolf’s Non-Coercive Ethical Texts.” Woolfian
336). The nouns, when paired—hatchet and body—suggest a playful Boundaries: Selected Papers from the Sixteenth Annual International
dismembering of the corpus of the text: an image later reinforced by an Conference on Virginia Woolf. Ed. Anna Burrells et al. Clemson, SC:
allusion to the picture-drawing version of the surrealist word game, the Clemson U Digital P, 2006. 172-80.
exquisite corpse. All this is not to suggest that Woolf gives us a code to —. “Modernist Soundscapes and the Intelligent Ear.” A Companion to
crack in the children’s song or elsewhere; rather, affirming other readings Narrative Theory. Ed. James Phelan and Peter J. Rabinowitz. Malden,
of the significance of sound in The Years, I contend that a primary MA: Blackwell, 2005. 382-98.
function of the novel’s word play is aural—attuning our ears, if you will, Evans, Elizabeth F. “Air War, Propaganda, and Woolf’s Anti-Tyranny
so that when we reach its end we are well rehearsed to hear the words, Aesthetic.” Modern Fiction Studies 59.1 (2013): 53-81.
especially when we encounter a familiar sight: a man and a woman and Hite, Molly. “Tonal Cues and Uncertain Values: Affect and Ethics in
a taxi. Mrs. Dalloway.” Narrative 18.3 (2010): 249-75.
Hoberman, Ruth. “Aesthetic Taste, Kitsch, and The Years.” Woolf Studies
Woolf herself concedes, in A Room of One’s Own, that it is amateurish to Annual 11 (2005): 77-98.
“sketch a plan of the soul” upon the image of a man and a woman getting Johnson, Jerri. “The Years: Introduction.” Virginia Woolf: Introduction to
into a taxi (97), so perhaps we should be suspicious of the trope of a man the Major Works. Ed. Julia Briggs. London: Virago, 1994. 305-48.
and a woman getting out of a taxi at the end of The Years. As Eleanor Lee, Hermione. Virginia Woolf. London: Chatto & Windus, 1996.
watches the couple from a window, she repeats the word “There” (412); Matson, Patricia. “The Terror and the Ecstasy: The Textual Politics of
the word “there,” contends Merry Pawlowski, creates a “space” that Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway.” Ambiguous Discourse: Feminist
“sums [up] a new vision” of “equality” for men and women (89). But is Narratology and British Women Writers. Ed. Kathy Mezei. Chapel
it really that new or visionary? The woman, after all, follows the man, Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1996. 162-86.
who puts his key in the door, which he then shuts behind them with an Middleton, Victoria S. “The Years: ‘A Deliberate Failure.’ ” Bulletin of
insular “thud” (412). Given that The Years arguably most intriguing the New York Public Library 80 (1977): 158-71.
“couple” is made up of unmarried Sara and gay Nicholas—who, Woolf Minow-Pinkney, Makiko. Virginia Woolf and the Problem of the Subject:
reminds us, could be imprisoned for loving men—are we really afforded Feminine Writing in the Major Novels. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers
sufficient pretext to read the heteronormative couple who emerge from UP, 1987.
a taxi as a promising vision? And given that the novel has primed us Outka, Elizabeth. Consuming Traditions: Modernity, Modernism, and
to listen very carefully, might we not hear, faintly beneath Eleanor’s the Commodified Authentic. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2009.
“there,” its homonym, the plural possessive “their” as a reminder of Pawlowski, Merry M. “ ‘Where Am I?’: Feminine Space and Time in
the couple’s safe hegemonic status? Finally, turning her back to the Virginia Woolf’s The Years.” Literary Landscapes: From Modernism
window, Eleanor asks, “And now?” The novel’s last sentence does not to Postcolonialism. Ed. Attie de Lange et al. Houndmills, UK:
offer an answer, but it does continue the aural unsettling of the visionary Palgrave-MacMillan, 2008.
moment: “The sky above the houses wore an air of extraordinary beauty, Rosenfeld, Natania. Outsiders Together: Virginia and Leonard Woolf.
simplicity, and peace” (412). This final image is qualified by the verb Princeton: Princeton UP, 2000.
“wore,” as if the sky, too, were wearing its party best, evoking not a Snaith, Anna. Virginia Woolf: Public and Private Negotiations.
vision but its postmodern counterpart: a spectacle. Even the verb “wore” Houndmills, UK: Macmillan, 2000.
is disturbed by its homonym, the noun “war”—the novel’s constant Suh, Judy. Fascism and Anti-Fascism in Twentieth-Century British
specter, which further qualifies the tranquil noun “peace”—the novel’s Fiction. New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2009.
last word, which itself is unsettled by its homonym “piece,” a part rather Whittier-Ferguson, John. “Repetition, Remembering, Repetition:
than the whole, a fitting final note for The Years’ resistance to aesthetic Virginia Woolf’s Late Fiction and the Return of War.” Modern
unity. Fiction Studies 57.2 (2011): 230-53.
Wood, Alice. Virginia Woolf’s Late Cultural Criticism: The Genesis
In her compelling essay on The Years’ engagement with kitsch, Ruth
of The Years, Three Guineas, and Between the Acts. London:
Hoberman reads “the sunrise [as] an obvious cliché” and contends that
Bloomsbury, 2013.
“the novel’s closing lines express a utopian desire all the more poignant
Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. 1925. Annotated with an Introduction
for the inadequacy of its vehicle” (94-95). Our awareness of the brutality
by Bonnie Kime Scott. Gen. ed. Mark Hussey. Orlando: Harvest-
that followed Auden’s aptly named “low dishonest decade” (5) does
Harcourt, 2005.
make it tempting to want to linger on the poignant note Hoberman
—. A Room of One’s Own. 1929. Annotated with an Introduction by
locates at the novel’s end; but reading The Years as a text that resists its
Susan Gubar. Gen. ed. Mark Hussey. Orlando: Harvest-Harcourt,
own visionary seductions as well as those that occur in Woolf’s earlier
2005.
works can help us to better hear the ways in which utopian desires can be
—. “To Stephen Spender.” 30 April 1937. Letter 3240. The Letters of
tone deaf to voices of otherness.
Virginia Woolf. Vol. 6. Ed. Nigel Nicholson and Joanne Trautmann.
Annette Oxindine New York: Harcourt, 1980. 122-23.
Wright State University —. The Years. 1939. Annotated with an Introduction by Eleanor McNees.
Gen. ed. Mark Hussey. Orlando: Harvest-Harcourt, 2008.
Zimring, Rishona. “Suggestions of Other Worlds: The Art of Sound in
5
Woolf’s choice of the term “didax” turns out to have been quite prescient, as The Years.” Woolf Studies Annual 8 (2002): 127-56.
a Google search reveals that Didax, Inc. is an educational resource company in n
Massachusetts, its name copyrighted in 1996.
35
 Truly
Big Deal: Virginia Woolf & Ernie come to Terms
Miscellaneous
“He sleeps today with that old whore death,
who yesterday denied him thrice.”
Hemingway
“…Would you please, please, please, please, please Did Virginia Woolf Attempt Suicide in 1904?
stop talking.” Quentin Bell’s biography of Virginia Woolf refers to a suicide attempt
Virginia Woolf that she made in 1904, during the breakdown following the death of
her father, Leslie Stephen, earlier that year. A friend of the younger
Stephens’, Violet Dickinson, assisted the family by taking Virginia Woolf
Through a drunken mist to the Dickinson home, Burnham Wood at Welwyn, where she could be
she seems companion to a shorter night cared for. Here Bell describes a suicide attempt in which Virginia “threw
herself from a window, which, however, was not high enough from
though who she thinks she is, scratchy purple-ink the ground to cause her serious harm” (Bell 89-90). A posthumously
princess-bitch, to say him bare, abrupt, published work by psychoanalyst, Douglas W. Orr, who had consulted
Quentin Bell, parenthetically states that the window Woolf jumped out of
outspoken…and lacking relevance, was “just a few feet off the ground” (45).
A long night ahead,
It is possible to cast doubt on the idea that Woolf attempted suicide
but surely in 1904. There appears to be no reliable source, and it seems to be
no procurer she, contradicted by a letter from Virginia Woolf to Beatrice Webb of 8
April 1931 (The Letters of Virginia Woolf 4 305, letter no. 2344). Woolf
that unblessed vacuum, wrote to her correspondent that she was much ‘pleased by your views
resonant wet, hot space upon the possible justification of suicide. Having made the attempt [in
1913], from the highest motives as I thought—not to be a burden on my
gained bartering husband—the conventional accusation of cowardice and sin has always
in left-handed horse- rankled.” The same motive was given for her successful suicide in 1941.
Woolf refers to no other suicide attempt, and the editors’ parenthetical
trading: note indicates that she was referring to the well-documented 1913
he for pleasure, suicide attempt.

she critiquing for under-the-table It is indeed possible to suggest that through a misunderstanding of the
psychotic experience, this putative suicide attempt was actually no such
profits… thing. As one with some personal experience in this area, I would like
to offer a few insights into what may have occurred. Quentin Bell states
more she is that Woolf “heard voices urging her to acts of folly” (89). Woolf may
like an aeneous old waitress have been anxious to escape from the (unknown) voices as she did not
wish to succumb to performing such acts. It is even likely that, if this
moving in an anxious dance was her first experience of the psychotic experience known as “hearing
standing up close, lifting her cloak voices,” she did not recognise it as such, instead assuming that these
voices were embodied in real people. In this case they may also have
answering demands represented a physical threat. Woolf would probably have felt unable to
he makes— appeal to the medical staff in attendance for help against these voices or
people, since, as Bell tells us, she regarded her three nurses as “fiends”
leg-tired, smiling (89). In her psychotic state she may well have regarded these nurses as
for tips, being involved in the “plot” against her. In this situation the best remedy
probably appeared to be flight. The window would have offered the best
ready to clean up opportunity of escape and thus she may have exited from it.
later.
The lowness of the window would not have offered her the possibility of
a successful suicide attempt. We know that her suicide attempts of 1913
and 1941 were serious attempts. She took a lethal dose of Veronal in
Sandra Inskeep-Fox 1913 which nearly resulted in her death. In 1941, the fact that she loaded
her pockets with stones emphasises her determination to succeed. Both
Independent Scholar these attempts were made during illness and her judgment of the effects
[email protected] of jumping from a low window would have assured her that it could not
possibly kill her. So, it is possible that it was not suicide but escape she
aimed at in jumping or throwing herself out of the window at Welwyn.

Hilary Newman
Independent Scholar
iii iii iii iii
36
Works Cited cost, presumably cheaper transportation costs and a lower purchase price
Bell, Quentin. Virginia Woolf: A Biography Volume One: Virginia Ste- for colonial customers, all of which indicates quite clearly the intention
phen 1882-1912. London: The Hogarth Press, 1972. to distribute and sell these so called ‘colonial editions’ upon the colonial
Orr, Douglas W. Virginia Woolf’s Illnesses. Monographs. Clemson: market. ‘Colonial’ in the context of an increasingly post-colonial world
Clemson U Digital P, 2004. refers in this instance to colonies, dominions or former colonies of the
Woolf, Virginia. A Reflection of the Other Person: The Letters of Virginia British Empire, used intermittently alongside “imperial,” “dominions,”
Woolf 1929-1931. Vol. 4. Ed. Nigel Nicolson and Joanne Trautmann. “Commonwealth” and “overseas” among other blanket terms during
London: The Hogarth Press, 1978. the period in which Virginia Woolf’s works were published.3 Often,
this abbreviation is replaced with other similar abbreviations, such as
p “Col. Cloth” in the entry for To the Lighthouse, or with some alternative
marking such as a specific price at which the books are to be sold if
different from other colonial cloth editions. Nevertheless it is safe to
assume that any purposeful marking in this column denotes the sale of
colonial editions for a global marketplace. So the assumptions upon
A Woolf Abroad: which this study is built are firstly that any purposeful marking in the
The Novels of Virginia Woolf and Their Sales Overseas1 “Colonial Cloth Column” denotes editions intended for the colonial
marketplace, and secondly that this might provide a relatively accurate
The order books of the Hogarth Press held within the University of impression of the proportion of a book’s sales which were given over to
Reading’s Special Collections Archive may appear, on first glance, to be colonial distribution, the series of data being so large that anomalies and
nothing more than simple sales figures. To a lover of literature or history, mistakes should not have too great an effect upon the results.
sales figures, while no doubt useful, might not be the most attractive
prospect for study. They are, however, vital to our understanding of And so it falls upon the fabled figures to speak up for themselves. The
publishing both for individual authors and publishing houses, and, on a first publication to be examined is Woolf’s technical masterpiece, To
wider scale, for publishing on national and even global levels. Hidden the Lighthouse (1927). Compared with other more popular novels by
within and often behind long lists of figures and abbreviations, scrawled Woolf, To the Lighthouse had a small print run, being both a relatively
fleetingly or lovingly organized in several remarkably different and often early novel in the writer’s career and a famously difficult literary piece to
difficult examples of handwriting, are nuggets of information which, read, although still outselling
bound together in large collections between heavy leather covers, form her previous novels. The total
a cornucopia—a gold mine of unexpected proportions which might number of copies dispatched
overwhelmingly prove or disprove theories and warrants a great deal of by the Hogarth Press during
further study. the period of the 5th May 1927
to the 17th March 1943—the
I first came across these ledgers during a placement with the University extent of the To the Lighthouse
of Reading’s undergraduate research opportunities programme (UROP) order book entry—was 4,655.4
concerned with those who bought the books of Virginia Woolf. Of this number, 1,035 copies
The placement, as part of a wider research project, formed an early were sold on the colonial
step towards the Modernist Archives Publishing Project (MAPP); market—meaning here that
an international academic collaboration aiming to bring together 1,035 copies are indicated as
information from archives across the world into one easily navigable colonial editions in the order
database.2 Since the project’s inaugural case study deals with the book. For the sake of clarity,
Hogarth Press, the publications of Woolf herself seemed to be the most these figures are represented as
appropriate initial foray into research for the fledgling project, and percentages in figure 1.
my contribution was the digitization of a number of entries from the
MS2750/A/27 Order Book entitled “Novels Sackville-West & Woolf, It must be noted that while
1927-1944.” the Hogarth Press dealt in
Britain and overseas, it did
Leafing through the ledgers, one comes across multiple abbreviations, not do business in the United
often more than one for the same end as dictated by the individual States. Stanley Unwin writes,
taste of the scribe—in this case Leonard Woolf or one of the Press’s “When American publishers
secretaries. Some of these abbreviations are common practice among acquired books of British
contemporary publishers, some are less familiar, and some written in origin it was normal for them
a less legible hand could be either; for example those from within the to have the exclusive rights
entry for Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, which is written almost entirely of sale in the U S A, the
in a singularly stylized hand which denies comprehension. One such British publisher to retain the
abbreviation that is readily understood, however, is ‘C.C.,’ which is rest of the world,” and this
given its own column within the records beside a column which denotes is certainly true of Woolf’s
the number of books ordered by a particular customer. ‘C.C.’ refers to novels, being published in the
books bound in colonial cloth, a less substantial cloth binding than the US by Harcourt, Brace (after
standard used for British publications resulting in a cheaper production the publication of Night and Day in 1920 by George H. Doran Co. of
New York). This policy goes some way to explaining the somewhat
1
Author’s note: with thanks to the University of Sussex and the Society of
3
Authors as the Literary Representative of the Estate of Virginia Woolf and The For more information on issues of terminology surrounding the colonial book
Random House Group Ltd. for permission to access material held in the Archives trade, see Graeme Johanson. See also Nicola Wilson’s forthcoming essay, ‘British
of the Hogarth Press, University of Reading Special Collections. I would also like Publishers and Colonial Editions” in The Book World: Selling and Distributing
to acknowledge the University of Reading’s Undergraduate Research Opportuni- British Literature, 1900-40, Leiden: Brill.
ties Programme for funding the early stages of this research. 4
MS2750/A/27 Order Book: Novels Sackville-West & Woolf, 1927-1944. All
2
For more information on MAPP, see Nicola Wilson, Elizabeth Willson Gordon, further use of statistics pertaining to the sales figures of the novels of Virginia
Alice Staveley, Helen Southworth, and Claire Battershill. Woolf are from this ledger.
37
low percentage of overseas sales compared with what may have been situation concerning paper rationing, citing figures from a pamphlet
expected from the inclusion of the rich American home market. written by Stanley Unwin called Publishing in Peace and War:

Published a full ten years later, The Years (1937) proved far more However, the consistent demand for paper paired with a decreasing
popular than To the Lighthouse, outselling the latter nine days before supply did nothing to satiate demand for books; in fact Ian Norrie
the official date of publication, 15 March 1937. Within just shy of seven suggests that demand rose due to a newfound nationwide appreciation
years, the Hogarth Press sold 14,482 copies of the novel, of which 3,100 for the arts brought about by the prospect of total war. He writes:
copies were colonial editions. The figures for The Years go some way “New books were printed under wartime economy regulations; page
to explaining the American dilemma, as Leonard Woolf claims that in margins were meagre, the paper quality usually poor and the use of
the first six months after its publication, The Years sold 13,005 copies small typefaces essential” (88). The quality of British-produced books
through the Hogarth Press, but in the US, Harcourt, Brace sold 30,904. fell dramatically, and while it was obviously still more convenient for
British residents and companies to purchase their books from their
The chart in figure 2 appears remarkably similar to its counterpart in home country, this was not the case overseas. Quality was not the only
figure 1, the percentage of colonial editions remaining almost constant, contributor to the reduction in colonial sales, however; with rationing
despite the large disparity in the number of books sold. also came a reduction in the number of books published by British firms.
In an appendix to Mumby’s Publishing and Bookselling in the Twentieth
The constant fails to persist, however, within the figures for Woolf’s
Century, there exists a table of figures referring to the number of new
posthumous, foreboding publication Between the Acts. The total number
books published in Britain at intervals between 1900 to 1981. For 1937,
of books sold remains closer to that of The Years, at 12,697, whereas
the date of publication for The Years, the number of new publications is
the proportion of those which were intended for overseas markets drops
11,327. For 1940 and 1943 the figures are 7,523 and 5,504 respectively
far nearer to the figures given in the To the Lighthouse entry, at 1,458,
(Norrie 220). In addition to this, Johanson cites “a sudden decrease in all
shown below in figure 3.
British exports, [and] enemy menaces to shipping” (Johanson 260), all
The percentage of overseas editions has all but halved in the space of of which led, according to Johanson’s study which focuses specifically
four years, whereas the number of home editions sold is almost the same upon Australia, to a dramatic increase in the cost per centum weight of
as the home edition consumption of The Years, despite the almost 2,000 imported British books in Australia in pounds sterling from 7.5 in 1932
strong difference in the total number of books sold. Figure 4 below to 16 in 1946 (Johanson 265). Australia is one example of a portion of
illustrates quite how dramatic this upheaval was on a comparative line the overseas market for whom imported British books were no longer the
graph. most financially viable option, particularly considering the decrease in
their overall quality.
It is obvious from these
figures that Between the Fewer British books were bought by customers overseas during the
Acts sold almost as well in war, that much is clear; but it would be naive to assume that the same
Britain as The Years did, customers simply did not buy the books at all. Where, then, are the
and that the only reason missing 2,000 odd colonial editions of Between the Acts? Norrie suggests
for the drop in sales is an answer in passing: “In Canada, however, the public tended to buy the
the reduction in colonial more attractive-looking American editions of books of British origin”
orders. (Norrie 88). As previously noted, Virginia Woolf’s novels were published
in the US by Harcourt, Brace separately from any British Hogarth
The most obvious operations. The established problems facing the British publishing export
explanation for this trade were not so present for American exports. Although dangerous,
occurrence is the most exports from America were less affected by the war than those from
significant event to happen Britain, with the war on its doorstep. Furthermore, for timber-rich North
between the publication America, paper rationing was never the issue it was in Britain, and
of The Years and Between the quality of American-published books saw little or no reduction in
the Acts—i.e., between quality, hence Norrie’s description of them as “more attractive-looking.”
Presumably the lack of problems such as those faced by Britain led
to a lesser increase in the cost per weight of American book exports,
making them far more financially viable for customers on the overseas
markets. Johanson explains, however, that in 1943, American and British
publishers reached a profit-sharing agreement closer to earlier colonial
edition contracts. Put simply, the war began in 1939, and by 1943 British
and American publishers had a profit-sharing agreement; but Between
the Acts was published in 1941, at quite possibly the lowest point in the
twentieth century for overseas sales of books from British publishers.

Therefore, using figures from the Hogarth Press archives at the

University of Reading, the suggestion stands that the decrease in
overseas sales
of colonial
editions of
Between the
Acts compared
with those
1937 and 1941—the outbreak of the Second World War. With war of The Years
came rationing of resources which were in high demand in the United and To the
Kingdom, like paper. In an article for the Tribune from 1944 entitled Lighthouse
“As I Please,” George Orwell writes with considerable anger about the might correlate to an increase in overseas sales of the same book from its

38
American publishers as a direct result of the Second World War. The next It is of great significance, however, that in the original holograph neither
piece of this emerging puzzle could be found in the archives of Harcourt, of the ‘lights, lights, lights’ phrases appeared. The earlier version reads:
Brace; provided they have details pertaining to the sale of these books
on the American and overseas markets similar to those housed within the It was awfully late probably. One could tell that by the lights in
Hogarth Press archives.5 the bedroom windows. & it must be late, with the lights in the
windows. Burn, he said; blaze; make a whole in the the night,
Dale Hall brave lights; & they were her eyes, only & her childrens eyes burning
Independent Scholar in all their chambers & which seemed to him to burning there,
blazing there. (Holograph 128)
Works Cited
Battershill, Claire and Helen Southworth. “The Hogarth Press in a The alterations and crossings out show that the composition of this
Global Context.” Blackwell Companion to Virginia Woolf. Ed. Jessica passage gave Woolf some difficulty. Much of the original was deleted
Berman. Oxford: Blackwell, 2016 (forthcoming). and Polonius’s cry of “Lights, lights, lights!” substituted, revealing
Johanson, Graeme. A Study of Colonial Editions in Australia, 1843- that this was a deliberate and considered change. This section in the
1972. Wellington: Elibank Press, 2000. holograph draft is not dated, but it was very probably before March 5,
Norrie, Ian. Mumby’s Publishing and Bookselling in the Twentieth 1926, when the following section numbered XIV begins.
Century. 6th ed. London: Bell & Hyman, 1982.
Orwell, George. “As I Please.” Tribune 20 October 1944. http:// Intriguingly, during the early composition of To The Lighthouse, Woolf
www.telelib.com/authors/O/OrwellGeorge/essay/tribune/ wrote in a letter to Vita Sackville-West (no.1588, 25 September 1925;
AsIPlease19441020.html Web. 24 August 2014. Letters of Virginia Woolf [L] 3 214 ): “But I was going to write about
Unwin, Stanley. The Truth about Publishing. 8th ed. Ed. Phillip Unwin. Hamlet, which I read last night, but have no time.” As a general point,
London: George Allen & Unwin, 1976. Woolf’s thoughts never strayed far from the admired Shakespeare.
Wilson, Nicola, Elizabeth Willson Gordon, Alice Staveley, Helen During the composition of To The Lighthouse there are five references in
Southworth, and Claire Battershill. “The Hogarth Press, Digital her letters and one in her diary to Shakespeare. They vary from recording
Humanities, and Collaboration: Introducing the Modernist talking to Desmond MacCarthy about Shakespeare on two occasions to
Achives Publishing Project (MAPP).” Virginia Woolf and the a partly teasing letter to Lytton Strachey, in which she described herself
Common(wealth) Reader: Selected Papers from the Twenty-Third as a “venerable lady” who “finds her chief consolation in the works of
Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf. Ed. Helen Shakespeare and Lytton Strachey” (no.1615, 26 July 1926; L3 234).
Wussow and Mary Ann Gillies. Clemson: Clemson U Digital P, 2014.
My conclusion is that, while it is not possible to prove that this phrase
223-231. http://www.clemson.edu/cedp/press/pubs/vwcon/23.pdf.
was a conscious borrowing from Hamlet, the fact that the three reiterated
Woolf, Leonard. Downhill All the Way: An Autobiography of the Years
words were decided on at a later date in the novel’s composition suggest
1919-1939. London: The Hogarth Press, 1968.
that at the least it was an unconscious echo.
5
For more information on the publication of Woolf’s novels in the US, see the Hilary Newman
forthcoming work by Claire Battershill and Helen Southworth. Independent Scholar

Works Cited
Dick, Susan. Introduction. To the Lighthouse: The Original Holograph

f Draft. By Virginia Woolf. Transcribed and ed. Susan Dick. Toronto:

U of Toronto P, 1982. 11-35.
Woolf, Virginia. To the Lighthouse. 1927. Ed. David Bradshaw. Oxford:
Oxford UP, 2000.
An Echo from Hamlet in To the Lighthouse? —. To the Lighthouse: The Original Holograph Draft. Transcribed and
ed. Susan Dick. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1982.
In “The Mousetrap,” the play-within-the-play in Hamlet, the title
character contrives so that the visiting players act out how he thinks his nnn
father was murdered by his uncle Claudius. King Claudius’s conscience
is touched to the quick and he disrupts the performance. Amidst the
confusion, Polonius calls out, “Lights, lights, lights!”  (III.ii.264).

In To The Lighthouse, Paul Rayley and Minta Doyle return from a

walk with Nancy and Andrew Ramsay on the beach as an engaged
couple. Seeing the well-lit house differentiated from the surrounding Praeterita and Mrs. Dalloway: A Hypothetical Note1
darkness, Pauls Rayley says to himself “childishly, as he walked up the
“The Victorians are…in Virginia Woolf,” Gillian Beer observes; they
drive, Lights, lights, lights! and repeated in a dazed way, Lights, lights,
are “internalized, inseparable, as well as held at arm’s length” (139). Of
lights....”(Woolf 107).
Ruskin, in particular, Beer states that he attracted Woolf “because of his
Susan Dick’s introduction to her edition of the original holograph of To antagonistic relationship to the powers of his society” and “his capacity
The Lighthouse points out that Virginia Woolf included light imagery in for self-contradiction” (146). Beer goes on to say:
this earlier version but that it was greatly expanded in the final novel.
But another reason for her responsiveness to Ruskin [in spite of his
Dick comments, “We cannot isolate any single emblematic meaning
teachery tone] is his countervailing immersion in the specific: his
for light since it is a word used or suggested so frequently and in such
joyous zeal in particularizing gives life to his writing in the modernist
varied contexts” (Holograph 18). It may suggest that Paul Rayley is
era, particularly to Virginia Woolf in her search for the “moment,”
to be considered a major character in the novel, as light is particularly
both evanescent and fully known. (146)
associated with other major characters, such as the Ramsay parents
and Lily Briscoe. Equally it may simply be another contribution to the
prevailing imagery of light and dark in the novel. 1 
A slightly different, Japanese version of this article appeared in Eigo Seinen [The
Rising Generation] in 2012.
39
Beer’s discussion of the two writers centers round Orlando and Modern anything that convinces me about Ruskin”—shows some familiarity
Painters. This is very natural, for there is a fairly explicit reference to with Ruskin. It is not altogether surprising that by the period of the
Ruskin in Orlando, and it has been a standard practice to study that composition of Mrs. Dalloway (1922-24), the familiarity should have
novel when the association of Woolf and Ruskin is brought up.2 The included Praeterita, given her voracious reading habit.
present article, however, seeks to explore the relationship between these
two writers through Ruskin’s unfinished autobiography, Praeterita, and My hypothesis is built upon verbal echoes between the two texts.
Mrs. Dalloway.3 Consider the final paragraph of Ruskin’s autobiography (Woolf quotes
from “Fonte Branda” to “the stars” in her essay, “Ruskin”):
Woolf speaks, in an essay titled “Ruskin,” of the Victorian writer’s
“force which is not to be suppressed by a whole pyramid of faults.” How things bind and blend themselves together! The last time I saw
Although “so much of his force” has gone into “satire and attempts at the Fountain of Trevi, it was from Arthur’s father’s room—Joseph
reformation,” she suggests that, “if we want to get unalloyed good from Severn’s, where we both took Joanie to see him in 1872, and the old
Ruskin, we take down not Modern Painters, or the Stones of Venice, or man made a sweet drawing of his pretty daughter-in-law, now in
Sesame and Lilies, but Praeterita.” Here Ruskin has ceased to preach, her schoolroom; he himself then eager in finishing his last picture
she says, and he is “unfailingly benignant”: of the Marriage in Cana, which he had caused to take place under
a vine trellis, and delighted himself by painting the crystal and
Compared with much of his writing, it is extremely simple in style; ruby glittering of the changing rivulet of water out of the Greek
but the simplicity is the flower of perfect skill. The words lie like vase, glowing into wine. Fonte Branda I last saw with Charles
a transparent veil upon his meaning. And the passage with which Norton, under the same arches where Dante saw it. We drank of it
the book ends, though it was written when he could hardly write, together, and walked together that evening on the hills above, where
is surely more beautiful than those more elaborate and gilded ones the fireflies among the scented thickets shone fitfully in the still
which we are apt to cut out and admire. (462) undarkened air. How they shone! moving like fine-broken starlight
through the purple leaves. How they shone! through the sunset that
She then quotes a passage from the autobiography that we shall examine faded into thunderous night as I entered Siena three days before, the
later. white edges of the mountainous clouds still lighted from the west,
and the openly golden sky calm behind the Gate of Siena’s heart, with
Woolf also wrote a review of Praeterita, “Ruskin Looks Back on Life,”
its still golden words, “Cor magis tibi Sena pandit,” and the fireflies
subtitled “Serene Thoughts with the Echoes of Thunder” (Kirkpatrick
everywhere in sky and cloud rising and falling, mixed with the
and Clarke 284). Again she commends the book’s plain, unadorned
lightning, and more intense than the stars. (526-27; emphasis added)
style: if one wishes to feel for oneself “the true temper of his genius,
these pages, though much less eloquent and elaborate than many others, William Arrowsmith, one of the most astute commentators on
preserves it with exquisite simplicity and spirit” (503). She then talks Praeterita, makes a suggestive remark that here Ruskin must have been
about the ending of the book, but this time with a subtly different accent: remembering Dante’s “great metaphor…of the peasant and the fireflies,
who stand for the fire-enveloped sinners” in the Inferno (219-20).7
Before the book is finished the beautiful stream wanders out of his
Significantly, Septimus is reading this very book—“‘Septimus, do put
control and loses itself in the sands. Limpid as it looks, that pure
down your book,’ said Rezia, gently shutting the Inferno” (79)—while
water was distilled from turmoil; and serenely as the pages run, they
thinking about “the sin for which human nature had condemned him to
resound with the echoes of thunder and are lit with the reflections of
death” (81). The allusions to Dante in this novel have been examined,
lightning. For the old man who sits now babbling of his past, was a
most notably, by Beverly Ann Schlack. She argues that the name
prophet once and had suffered greatly. (505)
“Septimus” can be understood fully only in this connection. In Dante’s
Woolf seems to emphasize what lies behind the serenity of the prose. Of world, “the seventh sin in the seventh terrace is sexual (lust) and it is
course she knew about Ruskin’s madness and suggested it by mentioning punished in flames” (70). Septimus’s chief sin is his homosexual love for
the disruptive “thunder” and “lightning.” I suspect that one of the things Evans, and as we shall shortly see, he is in fear of being burnt. Schlack
that aroused Woolf’s interest in Ruskin was his madness, and I wish to also notes: “Because Septimus is mad, he is quite literally one of Dante’s
advance a hypothesis that Ruskin’s autobiography served as a possible ‘fallen people, / souls who have lost the good of intellect’” (69).8 Of
inspiration for Woolf’s elaboration, if not creation, of Septimus Warren course Woolf could have conjured up these associations directly from her
Smith in Mrs. Dalloway.4 I must emphasize the word “hypothesis,” for own reading, but her use of the Italian poet in this novel, I submit, may
what I am going to offer cannot go beyond that. Of the two essays I have have had Ruskinian inflections.
quoted, the date of the first is unknown. Stuart N. Clarke says that “the
Bearing in mind the ending of Ruskin’s autobiography, let us examine
style suggests a later work” (463). The latter was published in December
the following passage, describing Septimus’s agitated mind:
1927. That is to say, I have no empirical proof to show that Woolf knew
Praeterita before she wrote Mrs. Dalloway.5 My speculation, however, A marvellous discovery indeed—that the human voice in certain
is not groundless. In her letter to Vanessa Bell (5 April 1916; Letters 2 atmospheric conditions (for one must be scientific, above all
88) Woolf spoke of a review assignment on Ruskin,6 and another letter scientific) can quicken trees into life! Happily Rezia put her hand
(to George Rylands, 30 September 1923; Letters 3 71)—“I see Desmond with a tremendous weight on his knee so that he was weighted down,
[MacCarthy] has returned to his vomit this week, without bringing up transfixed, or the excitement of the elm trees rising and falling, rising
and falling with all their leaves alight and the colour thinning and
2
See studies by Jane de Gay, Steve Ellis, and Caroline Webb. thickening from blue to the green of a hollow wave, like plumes on
3
George Landow, pointing out the diffuse, unconventional narrative mode of horses’ heads, feathers on ladies’, so proudly they rose and fell, so
Praeterita, has speculated about its influence on modernist writers such as “Conrad,
Faulkner, and Woolf” (84).
4 7
For the connection between this character and Woolf’s own “madness,” Arrowsmith, it must be noted, is not arguing that Ruskin sees himself as a sinner
see Roger Poole. here; he is quick to add that “not all Ruskin’s fireflies are infernal or funereal”
(221). The fireflies in question recall Canto XXVI, depicting the eighth circle.
5
I have consulted Brenda Silver’s study of Woolf’s reading. 8
Anne Fernald, in the note to her edition of the novel, states that Woolf “read
6
B. J. Kirkpatrick and Stuart N. Clarke note that this review, possibly of A Sketch Dante throughout her life, including during the composition of Mrs Dalloway
of John Ruskin by Peggy Webling, has not been traced (302). although her most intense study of his poetry was in the 1930s” (p. 266).
40
 superbly, would have sent him mad. But he would not go mad. He that brightens the world keepeth his face least hidden from us, what time
would shut his eyes; he would see no more. the fly yieldeth to the gnat, sees many fireflies down in the valley….”
(Canto XXVI).
But they beckoned; leaves were alive; trees were alive. And the
leaves being connected by millions of fibres with his own body, there I have premised the foregoing speculation on the possibility that Woolf
on the seat, fanned it up and down; when the branch stretched he, too, read Praeterita before she wrote Mrs. Dalloway. If she did not, the
made that statement. The sparrows fluttering, rising, and falling in above findings will lead us, somewhat less excitingly, to imagine that
jagged fountains were part of the pattern; the white and blue, barred when she turned the final page of Ruskin’s autobiography she must have
with black branches. (20; emphasis added) discovered a remarkable literary affinity with its author.

Here the trees and sparrows are “rising and falling,” and they almost Toru Sasaki
drive Septimus to madness. He imagines that the leaves of the “rising Kyoto University
and falling” elm trees are “alight” and they are “connected by millions of
fibres with his own body.” The identification with a tree and the sense of Works Cited
being alight also appear in an earlier passage: Arrowsmith, William. “Ruskin’s Fireflies”. The Ruskin Polygon. Eds.
John Dixon Hunt and Faith Holland. Manchester: Manchester UP,
Traffic accumulated. And there the motor car stood, with drawn 1982. 198-235.
blinds, and upon them a curious pattern like a tree, Septimus thought, Beer, Gillian. “The Victorians in Virginia Woolf: 1832-1941.” Arguing
and this gradual drawing together of everything to one centre before with the Past. London: Routledge, 1989. 138-58.
his eyes, as if some horror had come almost to the surface and was Dante Alighieri. The Divine Comedy. Trans. Charles Eliot Norton. Web.
about to burst into flames, terrified him.9 (13-14; emphasis added) 2 April 2015.
de Gay, Jane. Virginia Woolf’s Novels and the Literary Past. Edinburgh:
Here I cannot help feeling the relevance of Arrowsmith’s perceptive Edinburgh UP, 2006.
comment— though he is talking about the workings of memory—on Ellis, Steve. Virginia Woolf and the Victorians. Cambridge: Cambridge
Ruskin’s “things bind and blend themselves together,” which triggers the UP, 2007.
final paragraph of Praeterita (quoted above): Kirkpatrick, B. J. and Stuart N. Clarke. A Bibliography of Virginia Woolf,
The intricacy of binding here, whether these concinnities are 4th ed., Oxford: Oxford UP, 1997.
deliberate or the work of “dream-gifted” association in a mind Landow, George Ruskin. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1985.
nearing madness, is close to miraculous. Ruskin’s things (“How Poole, Roger. The Unknown Virginia Woolf. Cambridge: Cambridge UP,
things bind and blend…”) suggests that here things—active 1978.
memories—are in control; that the narrator’s mind is merely a chain Ruskin, John. Praeterita. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1989.
on which these memories thread themselves and collect, imposing Schlack, Beverly Ann. Continuing Presences. University Park:
their own apparently adventitious unity on the musing mind whose Pennsylvania State UP, 1979.
past they casually glean. (208) Silver, Brenda R. Virginia Woolf’s Reading Notebooks. Princeton:
Princeton UP, 1983.
Similarly, things get hold of Septimus’s mind, and in another passage Webb, Caroline. “‘All Was Dark; All Was Doubt; All Was Confusion’:
where Woolf depicts it, she again seems to recollect Ruskin: Nature, Culture, and Orlando’s Ruskinian Storm-Cloud.” Virginia
Woolf Out of Bounds. Ed. Jessica Berman and Jane Goldman. New
Up in the sky swallows swooping, swerving, flinging themselves York: Pace UP, 2001. 243-49.
in and out, round and round, yet always with perfect control as Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Vol. 2. Ed. Nigel Nicolson
if elastics held them; and the flies rising and falling; and the sun and Joanne Trautmann. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976.
spotting now this leaf, now that, in mockery, dazzling it with soft —. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Vol. 3. Ed. Nigel Nicolson and Joanne
gold in pure good temper; and now and again some chime (it might Trautmann. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977.
be a motor horn) tinkling divinely on the grass stalks—all of this, —. Mrs. Dalloway. Ed. Anne E. Fernald. Cambridge: Cambridge UP,
calm and reasonable as it was, made out of ordinary things as it 2015.
was, was the truth now; beauty, that was the truth now. Beauty was —. “Ruskin Looks Back on Life”. The Essays of Virginia Woolf, Vol. 4.
everywhere. (62-63; emphasis added) Ed. Andrew McNeillie. London: The Hogarth Press, 1994. 502-06.
—. “Ruskin”. The Essays of Virginia Woolf. Vol. 6. Ed. Stuart N. Clarke.
When she had Septimus think of “beauty” and the “truth,” it is likely that London: The Hogarth Press, 2011. 460-64.
Woolf had Keats in mind, as Anne E. Fernald suggests.10 But, since these
matters can be overdetermined, it is tempting to imagine that Woolf was
also thinking about Ruskin as a theorist of beauty, seeing that her phrase,
the “flies rising and falling,” resonates with Ruskin’s “fireflies rising and
falling.”11 Behind this, perhaps we hear an echo of Dante, where the fly
OP
and fireflies are placed in close proximity; in the translation of Charles
Eliot Norton (a friend of Ruskin’s, mentioned in the Praeterita quotation
above): “As the rustic who rests him on the bill in the season when he Making Woolf Work: Woolf Works at the Royal Ballet
9
We have long known that Septimus is the double of Mrs Dalloway, and that they I greeted the news of the Royal Ballet’s newest production, Woolf Works,
seem to communicate with each other with shared images and motifs (“Fear no with delight. As both a lover of Woolf and an ardent ballet enthusiast,
more,” etc.; see 8, 27, 124, 166). In this connection it is interesting to note that I find the idea of an immersive Woolf experience—one that takes you
Septimus’s fear of things burning and his feeling of the “leaves alight” bring to by the ears and eyes, as well as by the mind—to be thrilling. The ballet
mind Mrs. Dalloway’s thought when she visits a flower shop, where she finds
premiered on 11 May 2015 at the Royal Opera House in London.
“every flower...glows...; every flower seems to burn by itself” (12).
With an original score by Max Richter and choreography by Wayne
10
See her note on this passage in the Cambridge edition (252). McGregor, who hails from a contemporary dance background and is well
11
Ruskin discusses the connection of “beauty” and “truth” in his Modern known for his cutting-edge choreography, Woolf Works is certainly a
Painters, Vol. 2, Ch. 4, “Of False Opinions Held Concerning Beauty.” high profile production and the first treatment of Woolf and her work by
a major company on the scale of a full length ballet.
41
After marking my calendar and assuring myself that the world did indeed fond. The use of mimed gestures to convey plot means that the dancer’s
hold such wonders in store, I settled down to speculate on how Woolf’s body must work in two ways:the body not only conveys the literal plot
work might appear. In this ballet, Woolf’s novels, I reasoned, could of the piece, but also the conscious or unconscious emotional life of the
not appear on stage exactly as they do in the text. The ballet explores character. When the dancer must move quickly from a sublime, heart-
three of the novels, Mrs. Dalloway, Orlando, and The Waves—ample wrenching pas de deux (the Giselle Act II pas de deux comes to mind),
material for any production. It would be impossible to cover roughly 700 to a necessary sequence of mimed plot information, the shift sometimes
years worth of combined plot in a two hour time-slot—the number of feels strange. Indeed Hameed noted that “the gestural language of mime
set changes, costumes and characters alone would be staggering. Aside can seem an uncomfortable compromise within an essentially abstract
from these practical matters, there was the more pressing difficulty of medium, like dance”, and that attempts to convey plot through mime
Woolf’s narratives themselves. Narrative ballets, such as Swan Lake “often make ballet less accessible, detracting from the immediate,
or Sleeping Beauty, tend to have simple, linear plot structures, relying intrinsic power of the movements.” In other words, the dance and the
heavily on mime and symbolism to convey the story. Woolf’s plots are story often seem to be at odds.
neither simple, nor linear, but rather a constant stream of flashbacks,
digressions, dialogues, monologues and memories. Furthermore, Woolf’s On the other hand, Hameed was aware that these gestures are necessary
characters often live much more in their minds than in the plot-proper; to the plot, and the plot is, of course, somewhat necessary; get rid of plot
these minds bleed into each other within the narrative, shifting between entirely and the audience becomes disoriented. Hameed acknowledged
past and present. Such shifts are possible for Woolf, who can slip details this point, saying “We do want to detach people from any familiar sense
of plot and setting into the characters’thoughts as relevant, but are more of dramatic realism, but we don’t want them to be completely lost or
difficult to represent in a medium like ballet,which is entirely non-verbal. to become disengaged. Dance is good at the big sublime states, and the
Given the nature of Woolf’s actual work, and ballet’s own methods heightened emotional subtext; more difficult is identifying the narrative
of communication, Woolf Works as a project seemed to demand a anchors which allow the audience to grasp the intention of the work,
reinterpretation of narrative ballet as a genre in order to support Woolf’s especially if the ‘story’ we are telling is not plot-driven.” The task for
fiction. Woolf Works becomes, as Hameed put it, “similar to Woolf’s when she
was writing The Waves—finding the ‘tables’ to put our ‘interesting
Intrigued by the prospect of the new kind of story ballet necessitated things’ on.” The project has to strike a balance between including enough
by Woolf’s novels, I contacted the dramaturge of the production, Uzma narrative cues to make the work intelligible, but at the same time keep
Hameed, early in May 2014 to discuss Woolf Works. The ballet had the narrative open enough to be hospitable to the dance. The structures
only just been announced, and was still in the early stages of conceptual of Woolf’s narratives, then, hold incredible potential for story ballet.
development. I began by asking Hameed about the methods of adapting Woolf often uses plot points as touchstones from which her character’s
Woolf that the creative team had been discussing as the ballet came reflections spring. Her novels contain enough plot to be intelligible while
together. She confirmed my analysis of the potential challenges, leaving plenty of space for the thoughts and emotions of her characters.
remarking that theater artists tend to shy away from adapting Woolf’s Woolf’s narratives—driven by emotional development, rather than plot
work, both because of her complexity and because of the practical action—would make more space to display dance’s strong suit, its ability
difficulties in representing her stream of consciousness narratives on to convey what Hameed called the “larger emotional subtext.”
stage. “Why Woolf, then?” I asked, “being so difficult to work with, why
was she chosen for this large scale production?” Hameed laughed, but At the same time, Hameed said that McGregor “[did] not wish to
her answer was quite serious: “I believe that, in choosing Woolf for his transpose Woolf’s novels into dance”—i.e., literally realize all of Woolf’s
subject, Wayne McGregor is doing for story-ballet what Woolf was doing plots and characters in exact detail—“but to find their equivalents.”
for literature, finding ways to extend its range, both in terms of the forms Hameed and McGregor want to see if the same sense which the novels
it employs and the subject matter it traditionally encompasses.” Not only convey can also be conveyed in dance through a different theatrical
was Woolf attractive to McGregor for the beauty of her prose—a topic language. “There are opportunities here that [Woolf] would have loved,”
which Hameed and I could not help discussing at length—but as a tool. Hameed said, “and, of course, Woolf herself adapted formal techniques
The necessary reinterpretation of the story ballet that I had anticipated from other art forms in her own work.” Woolf’s work with Roger Fry’s
prior to our conversation seems, for McGregor and Hameed, not merely biography sprang to mind. While writing the biography, Woolf looked
a side-effect of the choice to represent Woolf, but also a conscious to the sonata form of the Classical composers, like Mozart and Haydn,
decision to use her work to expand story ballet as a genre. to organize her material: “there was such a mass of detail that the only
way I could hold it together was by abstracting it into themes. I did try
This was not the answer I had expected, but one whose implications to state them in the first chapter, and then bring in developments and
both pleased and intrigued: If Woolf is being used as a tool to achieve variations, and then to make them all heard together and end by bringing
a change in the genre of narrative ballet, why is such an expansion back the first theme in the last chapter” (The Letters of Virginia Woolf 6
of narrative ballet’s possibilities attractive? When asked, Hameed 426). Or again in The Waves, when Woolf, inspired by a string quartet,
went on to explain that, dance, even in the story ballets we know and finds a way to unify the disparate impressions of a single character at
love, is not always well suited to conveying the stories it traditionally the end of the novel: “It occurred to me last night while listening to
adapts. I see the tension. While I am deeply fond of the classical story a Beethoven quartet that I would merge all the interjected passages
ballet—I’ll take a good grand pas for the third act any day—the dancing into Bernard’s speech & end with the words O solitude: thus making
occasionally feels incidental. The “stories” of traditional story ballets him absorb all those scenes, & having no further break” (The Diary of
rarely contain much dancing in and of themselves; the dance is added in Virginia Woolf 3 339). Clearly Woolf herself certainly was not opposed
and around the plot. Indeed, Choreographers and composers often need to importing techniques from one art form to another and did so to great
to make space within the plots of their own ballets for the dancing, hence effect. McGregor and Hameed seem to be taking a Woolfian approach to
the profusion of weddings, birthday parties, and balls. These scenes tend their own adaptation of Woolf’s material.
to take up full acts, and have little to do with the stories themselves.
During our discussion, Hameed mentioned a few different staging
When plot information does need to be conveyed, it is done through paradigms which had been mentioned as possible options for adapting
mime, a code of hand and arm gestures which loosely correspond to key Woolf’s psycholigcal realism for dance. For example, Hameed pointed
words and phrases, like “marriage” or “death” or “I have been turned out that Woolf’s stream-of-consciousness structure, the rhapsodies of
into a swan.” Mimed hand gestures are beautiful and evocative, if a bit thought that spring from a single incident, often feel “very complete,
mystifying, and one of the story ballet’s hallmarks of which I am deeply like a movement in a piece of music” already—ready made for a pas de

42
deux or a solo variation. Hameed noted Clarissa Dalloway’s refections
at the beginning of Mrs. Dalloway, both in Regent’s Park and in her
bedroom, as particularly good examples of this structure. Throughout
[
these sections, Clarissa spends much of her time remembering the past A Bloomsbury Miscellany from the Charleston Attic
and reflecting on her past selves. In dance, that act of remembering
could be expressed as a pas de deux between Clarissa and her younger Opening up an unexplored archive of original Bloomsbury materials
self. While the theatrical language Hameed and McGregor use to express and shedding new lights on the relationships between Vanessa Bell and
Woolf may not be exact—Clarissa would not be alone on stage, as she Duncan Grant with Virginia Woolf. In April 2014 work on the Centenary
is in the novel—they seek to be true to the work in a different way: Project at Charleston, Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant’s Sussex home,
remembering a past self is an interaction with another person, as is a officially began.
pas de deux. A staging like this would allow McGregor and Hameed
The site of the museum is undergoing a period of intense transformation,
to capture an essential aspect of Woolf’s characterization of Clarissa,
one hundred years after Bell and her family moved to Charleston
without reproducing the literal details of the novel.
on Woolf’s recommendation: “I wish you’d leave Wissett and take
I emerged from our conversation thinking very much of Woolf herself Charleston[…][.]It has a charming garden, with a pond, and fruit trees,
on the topic of genre innovation and the development of new artistic and vegetables, all now rather run wild, but you could make it lovely”
techniques. Particularly of her essay “Mr. Bennet and Mrs. Brown,” (14 May 1916, Letter 575; Letters of Virginia Woolf 1 95). The project
where she speaks to the difficulty of establishing new conventions will provide additional facilities such as a new road leading to the
with which to convey character in fiction. As Woolf notes, in order to property, specialised archival storage space, educational facilities and
be true to the new “human character” post “December 1910” (“Mrs. a gallery that will take pressure off the delicate fabric of the house,
Brown” 320), modern writers can no longer use the conventions of their safeguarding Charleston’s future accessibility.
Edwardian predecessors: “they [the Edwardians] have made tools and
Fresh from completing my PhD thesis, “Vanessa Bell and the
established conventions which do their business. But those tools are not
Significance of Form”—I was lucky enough to be hired to spend six
our tools, and that business is not our business. For us those conventions
months working in Bell’s former attic studio to begin the work of
are ruin, those tools are death” (330). As the essay progresses,however,
cataloging, conserving and researching a largely unseen archive of
Woolf articulates the same problem that Hameed noted surrounding
Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant’s material. This bequest, known as
the balance of narrative in the story ballet: one cannot do away with
the Angelica Garnett Gift (henceforth AGG), was left to the Trust by
convention entirely. To communicate effectively,Woolf knows she
Angelica Garnett, Bell’s
must find “a common ground” between herself and her audience, “a
daughter by Grant.1 It arrived
convention which would not seem…too odd, unreal, and far fetched to
at Charleston in November
believe in” (332). For Hameed and McGregor,Woolf seems to be that
2008 after hitherto being
“common ground”; a “tool” which is “not too far fetched,” and will still
stored by Anthony D’Offay,
allow them to take story ballet in a new direction, while maintaining the
whose gallery handled
narrative balance which makes the abstract intelligible.
the sale of much Bell and
Towards the end of our interview, Hameed brought up one of Woolf’s Grant’s work. The remainder,
famous quotations: “the ‘book itself’ is not a form which you see, but now constituting the AGG,
emotion which you feel” (“Re-reading” 340). This seems a good phrase comprises of over 8,000
to sum up the process of Hameed and McGregor’s adaptation. From my works in a wide range of
conversation with Hameed, I gathered that, in Woolf Works, Hameed and media, including several
McGregor are dealing with essentials, with emotions. The adaptation is hundred of the artists’
not about matching the details of Woolf’s novels one to one on the stage, sketchbooks.
but about finding “the emotion which you feel” in dance, as conveyed
Figure 1 Not only did the spectacular
by the “‘the book itself.’” The best question, then, is what the essential Photograph of the Angelica Garnett Gift in storage. spring and summer of 2014
emotion is that McGregor and Hameed perceive in Woolf’s work, and Photograph © The Charleston Trust show the Sussex Downs
seek to express.
and beautiful Charleston
Katherine Horgan gardens in their best light, but investigating the archive opened up Bell
McGill University and Grant’s worlds in tremendously enlightening and exciting directions
(as well as providing many happy hours poring over new works with
Works Cited my colleague, Polly Mills). Artist’s sketchbooks have long fascinated
Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Vol. 6. Eds. Nigel art lovers and scholars alike, the methodological evidence contained
Nicolson and Joanne Trautmann. New York: Harcourt Brace within them appealing to professional and connoisseurial interest, and
Jovanovich, Inc, 1980. the window they provide into artists’ private worlds fascinating even
Woolf, Virginia. The Diary of Virginia Woolf. Vol. 3. Ed. Anne Olivier the most casual observers. When the archive first arrived in boxes
Bell, vols. 2-5 assisted by Andrew McNeillie. New York: Harcourt at Charleston the original item count considered each sketchbook as
Brace Jovanovich, Inc, 1980. one unit, but in actual fact, some contain over one hundred pages,
Woolf, Virginia. “Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown.” 1924. Collected Essays. multiplying this initial census significantly.
Vol. 1. London: Chatto & Windus, 1966. 319-37. This amounts to a substantial body of small scale, intimate works by
Woolf, Virginia. “On Re-reading Novels.” The Essays of Virginia Woolf. both artists, encompassing not only sketches, studies and designs—
Vol. 3. Ed. Andrew McNeillie. London: Hogarth Press, 1988. 336-46. objects that art historians might expect to find; but also items deeply
imbued with personal, and historical and sociological interest. These
treasures include lists, games, addresses, correspondence, newspaper

1
This phrasing is an accurate indication of the relationship dynamic between the
three – Garnett only became aware that Grant, not Clive Bell, was her biological
father aged 18. In her autobiography she described their relationship as ‘gentle,
equable and superficial’ (135).
43
 clippings, colour swatches and press’ emblem. Woolf’s use of her sister’s designs to introduce her
even erotica, some bearing the books shows her faith in the value of Bell’s work and a desire for her
indexical traces of their makers own work to be associated with it. Some attempts have been made
in the form of handwriting, to consider the imagery of the dustjackets, but so far, there has been
cigarette ash, and coffee cup no consideration their materiality as three-dimensional objects which
rings. enclose Woolf’s words. When also viewed as objects, rather than simply
as images, it becomes apparent the jackets bind Woof’s texts offering,
Woolf was fascinated with in both literal and metaphorical fashions, support and protection to the
her sister’s creativity, and material within. Woolf’s name and titles are not printed in a standard
their deep and abiding font, but personalised, approved, and caressed by Bell’s own hand,
connection, together with so that not only Bell’s imagery, but her unique handwriting preface
their correspondent currents Woolf’s often experimental and politically daring writings. Bell’s covers
of reciprocal influence, have were not always well received, but the sisters’ continuing publishing
collaborations indicate a shared perception of the jackets as having
“inextricably linked meanings as images and meanings as objects”
(Edwards and Hart 2).2

Much has been made of the spontaneity of Bell’s approach to designing

Woolf’s dustjackets and her apparent lack of interest in reading the work
first. Bell’s biographer Frances Spalding records that Bell based her
Figure 2:
Vanessa Bell, Death of the Moth sketchbook
design for Three Guineas “entirely on the title” (287), and a footnote
605 cover, CHA-P-605-1.  from John Lehmann’s Thrown to the Woolfs quotes Bell as having
Photograph © The Charleston Trust. informed Lehmann that she not read this, or any other of Woolf’s
manuscripts:
been well documented by esteemed
Woolf scholars including Diane Thank you so much for the dummy. I will do my best to have the
Filby Gillespie, Jane Dunn, Jane design soon. Until it is done I don’t think I can decide about a
Goldman and Nuala Hancock. coloured top but I will let you know then. I’ve not read a word of
Maggie Humm goes so far as to the book – I only have had the vaguest description of it and what she
argue that, read through the lens of want me to do from Virginia—but that has always been the case with
genetic criticism, Woolf’s writings Figure 3: the jackets I have done for her. (27)
about Bell “show a self in process” Vanessa Bell, Death of the Moth
(12). The relationship between sketchbook 605, While on the one hand this fortifies theories about the sisters’ complicity
p.23, CHA-P-605-23.
Photograph © The Charleston Trust
and instinctive understanding of one another’s aims (to the extent that
Woolf asked Bell: “Do you think we have the same pair of eyes, only
Woolf and Grant was also close and different spectacles?”), it downplays Bell’s pride and pleasure in her
full of inspiring sparks. Woolf, along sister’s achievements, and, to an extent, the value of her analogous
with many other admirers, valued designs (17 August 1937, Letter 3294; L 6 158). Bell did read and
Grant’s ease and the role he played respond to Woolf’s works, as this painfully intense reaction to Woolf’s
in Bell’s life. Although fewer direct depictions of their parents in To the Lighthouse shows:
correlations to these two members
of the Bloomsbury group exist, they as far as portrait painting goes, you seem to me to be a supreme artist
were close contemporaries working and it is so shattering to find oneself face to face with those two again
in the creative field, directly engaging that I can hardly consider anything else. In fact for the last two days
with Modernist and queer practises. I have hardly been able to attend to daily life[.][…] I am excited and
thrilled and taken into another world as one only is by a great work of
The AGG holds the potential to art, only now also it has this curious other interest, which I can’t help
further deepen our understanding of feeling too. (11 May 1927; Bell, Selected Letters 314-15)
Figure 4: Bell’s outlook, her constant honing of
Vanessa Bell, Death of the Moth She also professed on several occasions that she often found Woolf’s
sketchbook 605, p.27, CHA-P-605-27. writing profoundly visually inspiring. After reading “The Searchlight”
Photograph © The Charleston Trust (later published in A Haunted House) she told Woolf:

It seems to me lovely—only too full of suggestions for pictures

her skills, as well as her relationship almost. They leap into my mind at every turn. Your writing always
to the places and culturally does that for me to some extent, but I think this one more than usual.
noteworthy people surrounding her, (31 May 1939, Berg Collection Bell; qtd. by Spalding 291).
including Woolf. One discovery
of major significance has been Just as Bell’s relationship with Leonard Woolf regarding her designs for
her designs for the dustjacket for the Hogarth Press changed considerably between 1917, when she refused
Woolf’s collection of essays The to let Leonard have control over her designs, to their close working
Death of the Moth, published relationship evidenced in letters of the 1930s and 40s, it is possible her
posthumously in 1942. approach to designing Woolf’s dustjackets may evolved into a more
engaged process over the years. It is also probable that due to her many
Bell designed dustjackets for commitments there may may have been occasions when there was
Figure 5:
all of Woolf’s publications with Photograph of Virginia Woolf, The
the Hogarth Press, from Jacob’s Death of the Moth, with cover by 2 
Although Edwards and Hart are discussing photography, their argument for the
Room (1922) onwards. Her wolf Vanessa Bell.
Photograph © The Charleston Trust cultural importance of the materiality of the photographs is also applicable in this
head colophon design became the case to Bell’s dustjackets.
44
little time before creating a design, forcing her to work intuitively from even allowing characters to have internal dialogues, as when an aspect of
Woolf’s explanations of her vision. Septimus (James Miller) compares his prewar aspirations to his postwar
paralysis.
Bell’s multiple designs for The Death of the Moth cover together with
her careful incorporation of symbolic imagery indicates that we must In focusing the drama around Septimus and Clarissa’s trauma,
reassess long held beliefs that reduce Bell’s role in the dustjacket McLaughlin stays true to Woolf’s intent of presenting sanity and insanity
designs, and indeed her wider creative relationship with Woolf, to acts of side by side and demonstrating the tenuousness of this categorical binary.
telepathy. This AGG sketchbook shows that Bell’s agency in the sisters’ As the title indicates, the production forgrounds Septimus, clarifying
relationship, as well as her independent stature as an important British that he is as important to the story as Clarissa: as Woolf’s working notes
artist, must be further recognized. on the novel imply, they are two sides of the same coin. The first act
presents much of the 1890s action at Burton, the past over which 1923
Hana Leaper Clarissa broods. In the second act, the drama of Septimus’s final days
Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art is imbued with extreme tension. The poignant compassion of Lucrezia
(Christine Doidge) opposes Dr. Holmes’s (Daniel Roth) unfeeling
Works Cited
devotion to sneering patriarchy, but the staging underscores that they
Humm, Maggie. “Autogiographical Interfaces: Virginia Woolf and
Vanessa Bell” Virginia Woolf Miscellany 79 (Spring 2011): 12- are equally unaware of Septimus’s internal torment. In an early moment
13. https://virginiawoolfmiscellany.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/ of mental isolation, for example, Septimus’s trauma is externalized by
vwm79spring2011.pdf. Web. 7 August 2015. the ensemble players advancing from the back of the stage and giving
Edwards, Elizabeth and Janice Hart. Introduction: Photographs as whispered voices to the birds that call to him, urging him to kill himself.
Objects. Photographs Objects Histories: On the Materiality of The effect of these stage-whispered injunctions was perhaps the most
Images. Ed. Elizabeth Edwards and Janice Hart. London: Routledge, powerful and certainly the most chilling element of the production.
2004. 1-15.
Garnett, Angelica. Deceived with Kindness: A Bloomsbury Childhood. While some of the nuance of Woolf’s comparison of the sane
London: Random House, 1995. and the insane is inevitably lost, it is remarkable how successful
Lehmann, John. Thrown to the Woolfs. London: Weidenfeld and this interpretation of her novel is at questioning and undermining
Nicolson: 1978. assumptions about what characterizes mental health and mental
Spalding, Frances. Vanessa Bell. 2nd ed. Gloucestershire: Tempus, 2006. breakdown. McLauglin portrayed the later Clarissa elegantly and
Woolf, Virginia. The Question of Things Happening: The Letters of commandingly (Renee Fawess played the younger Clarissa), her
Virginia Woolf 1912-1922. Vol. 1. Ed. Nigel Nicolson and Joanne performance always suggesting, as the character demands, that Clarissa’s
Trautmann. London: Chatto and Windus, 1980. control over her life and obligations is a reaction against the recurring
—. Leave the Letters Til We Are Dead: The Letters of Virginia Woolf and semi-conscious wish that her life had followed her more impulsive
1936 – 1941. Ed. Nigel Nicolson and Joanne Trautmann. London: and heartfelt attractions to Sally Seton (Cassandra Pisieczco) and Peter
Chatto and Windus, 1983. Walsh (Daniel Roth). McLaughlin’s Clarissa vacillates between her usual
mask of authority and gentility and the vulnerability of her secret desire
to have lived for herself rather than for Richard (Andrew Hubatsek) and
to have devoted more time to her personal rather then her social identity.

Both complementing and complicating McLaughlin’s Clarissa, Eric

Wunsch’s Septimus Smith fluctuates between moments of clarity, in

| which he can recapture his external identity as masculine soldier-poet,

and moments of terrifying despair. These lead performances were
strongly supported by the actors of the Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble,
THEATER REVIEW: each of whom played a variety of roles. Elizabeth Dowd’s rendition
Septimus and Clarissa of Miss Kilman, Elizabeth’s tutor and religious guide and Clarissa’s
Alvina Krause Theatre, Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania nemesis and rival, was particularly illuminating. Dowd played the role
5 June 2015; 7:30 PM with humor and pathos, bringing out Miss Kilman’s churning resentment
Starring Ellen McLaughlin and Eric Wunsch, in a hilariously passive aggressive near shouting match with Clarissa.
Directed by Rinde Eckert
Adapting modernist prose to the stage or screen is notoriously difficult, The production was directed by Rinde Eckert, whose inventive staging,
and Virginia Woolf’s works present a particular challenge. The majority sound effects, and unconstrained sense of movement created strong
of the action in novels such as Mrs. Dalloway occurs through characters’ visual and aural analogues to Woolf’s fluid prose. The freedom and
variously intentional and incidental introspection. The adapter thus mobility of Elizabeth Dalloway’s escape from Miss Kilman onto a city
faces the challenge of externalizing action that is, in the novels, largely bus, for example, is effectively captured by two other ensemble players
internal. Robert Browning, a master of psychological complexity and a acting as swaying passengers. Similarly, through motion alone, the seven
modernist forebear, famously turned away from writing drama precisely actors bring the lively party scene to life through constant movement
because, as he put it, he was better at representing “action in character” within the confined space of a raised central platform on the stage, their
than “character in action.” Similarly, Mrs. Dalloway is a tour de force of close proximity and constant motion creating the illusion of a much
action in character, as the central figures reflect on the ongoing internal larger gathering. This movement was occasionally and suddenly halted
changes they have experienced and that have shaped who they have for a brief soliloquy from Clarissa or Peter.
become by June 1923.
This staging also found a physical expression for the work’s theme of
Ellen McLaughlin’s Septimus and Clarissa successfully overcomes the mental duality in the contrast between the central raised platform, which
challenge of adapting Mrs. Dalloway by externalizing thought on stage became the site of conscious thought and action, and the semi-darkness
in a streamlined version of the text that refines the action through a dual of the stage’s periphery, which became the space of unconscious
focus on Septimus’s breakdown and Clarissa’s wavering regrets about cognition and mystery. To bring out not only the social aspect of
her past. While all characters speak aloud their thoughts, their mental Clarissa’s party, but Woolf’s overarching concern with social interaction
action is occasionally represented by another actor who gives voice to even among strangers, and how the subject internalizes the public gaze,
“aspects” of their minds, thus externalizing their interior conflicts, and audience members were invited onto the stage to occupy tables in the

45
periphery. The costumes, like the staging, were understated, elegant, and
appropriate for the period.
FROM THE BOOK REVIEW EDITOR
Gina Leishman provided music, which was supplemented by imaginative All publishers, authors and scholars should direct inquiries
sound effects provided by the ensemble players when they faded into regarding books to Karen Levenback, the Book Review Editor,
the background as characters conversed. Miss Kilman’s roiling anxiety as should anyone interested in
at the tea-shop with Elizabeth, for example, was rendered aural by reviewing books for the Miscellany.
players crinkling plastic bottles and blowing across their tops to create Please direct any queries to Karen Levenback at
an undertone of menace. To build tension and unease during Septimus’s <[email protected]>
breakdown, several ensemble members ran their fingertips around the
rims of wineglasses, creating an eerie and suspenseful high-pitched
humming.

Septimus’s suicide and the reflections on the value of life that it inspires
in Clarissa were handled gracefully and subtly. The performance closes
as Clarissa realizes that she is indeed united in mortality with not only
this strange young man, whose death has interrupted her party, but also
with Peter, whom she had loved, but whose proposal of marriage she
had rejected, and Sally, who had been more than a best friend, the object z
of her deepest desire. Though they have grown apart, the intrusion of
shared mortality seems to cast a new intimacy with not only Peter and REVIEW
Sally, but with the rest of her guests, and, indeed, the rest of humanity. BECOMING VIRGINIA WOOLF: HER EARLY DIARIES & THE
DIARIES SHE READ
The moving performance was a highlight of the 25th Annual International by Barbara Lounsberry. Florida: University Press of Florida, 2014.
Virginia Woolf Conference. Fittingly, McLaughlin and Eckert’s 272 pages. $74.95 cloth, $24.95 paper
production was as much analysis of the novel as adaptation, and
succeeded at showing new dimensions of the constant action in these Works about Woolf’s life and fiction are numerous but few academics
well-known characters. have focused on the 770,000 words that constitute her longest work
so that a book-length study of Woof’s diaries is welcome. Significant
Austin Riede contributions to this area of Woolf studies include a section in Daily
University of North Georgia Modernism by Elizabeth Podnieks which considers Woolf’s diaries as
modernist literary works; Susan Sellers’ essay sees them through the lens
of French feminist theory as expressions of selfhood; Joanne Campbell
Tidwell’s monograph focuses on the aesthetic and political aspects of
Woolf’s diaries; Anna Jackson considers the style and form of six early-
twentieth-century diarists, including Woolf. Barbara Lounsberry has
taken a different approach. She has undertaken meticulous research into
the 66 diaries she knows that Woolf read and traces how these diaries

yyy
might be seen as sources for her later work. She claims that Woolf’s
“diaries disclose (when carefully studied) a clear path of development
no biographer yet has shown” (225). She divides Woolf’s own diaries
into three stages: the early dairies from 1897 to mid-1918; her “spare
modernist” diaries from 1919 to 1929; and a final “flowering from 1930
to her death” (2). Lounsberry’s book is a detailed exploration of the
first twelve “experimental” diaries over the first two decades of Woolf’s
writing life. It makes some intriguing connections with other diarists and
considers how they might have influenced Woolf’s own work.

Distinguished theorist of autobiography, Philippe Lejeune writes in On

Diary about Woolf as diarist. He writes that we know very little about
the private practices of journal writers because the form is still under-
researched. He employs the term terra incognita, and Lounsberry begins
the Introduction to Becoming Virginia Woolf by using this expression. As
this title promises, the book sets out to explore the process of its subject,
Virginia Stephen, “becoming” Virginia Woolf. “Becoming” implies
a teleological methodology, suggesting that the book will map the
development of the writer and account for the construction of the writer
as a subject. The sub-title, Her Early Dairies and the Diaries She Read,
makes a direct correlation between the young writer’s reading material
and selfhood. The book finishes in 1918, so, by the end of that diary, its
writer had “become” the subject as we would recognize her: “Virginia
Woolf leaves a trail in her first dozen diaries that shows how she comes
to be the writer we know” (225).

The project is conceived concurrently in terms of a “treasure hunt” (4)

and a detective work; Lounsberry is pursuing “leads” and so, predictably,
she finds them. In tracing Woolf’s literary foremothers and fathers she
employs words associated with narrative such as “foreshadows” (151)
46
and “anticipates” (161). The reader is encouraged to see many details Dalsimer’s book Virginia Woolf: Becoming a Writer. Lounsberry
as indicators of Woolf’s almost inevitable success. The objective is to frequently returns in her book to the problem of sub-text, what may
explain “how [Woolf] becomes the writer so widely revered today” (2). be done consciously and what may be the result of an “unconscious
Arguably through, the diaries do not allow a neat and clear movement need” (137). The 1909 life diary strikes her, for example, “as an act
forwards towards what Lounsberry terms a “mature, spare modernist of self-assertion and self-definition. A complex rather than simple
diary style” (226). The provisional diary form was so attractive for Woolf regression occurs” (136). She identifies the country as a feminine space
because of the satisfaction of continually making and re-making versions in apposition to the masculine locus of London. Woolf’s literal travelling
of a life. Lounsberry’s hypothetical approach suggests some interesting is read as metaphorical. Lounsberry assesses the 1903 diary as “pivotal”
ideas but, in places, her suppositions seem fanciful and occasionally and in it “[t]he whole diary elides London—surely a step required”
awkward. She wonders if Sir Walter Scott’s image of his work as (120). Her analysis of the 1906 New Forest diary is set against Woolf’s
composed of odds and ends like an olla podrida [stew pot] might have ambivalent relationship with her sister’s fiancé, Clive Bell. Lounsberry
led to Woolf’s metaphors for her diary of the compost heap or a great says that a “psychological reading...seems inescapable” (96). She goes
desk into which anything could be thrown (16). A great deal is inferred on to argue that Woolf seeks the “country-in-London” in her diaries.
in this book: “Scott often uses initials in place of names and he regularly In 1907, rejecting traditional routes through London, on an expedition
employs ampersands—traits Virginia’s diary also apes” (15). Several through Golders Green and Hampstead, Woolf “defies hedge and fences”
rather general and inconsequential similarities are discerned, for instance (98) preferring to be a bold, free traveller. Solitary Sussex walks by
between the literary curate Stopford Brooke and Woolf. Both writers night, in 1907, “show Woolf’s further embrace of the unconscious begun
liked Scott’s work; both suffered illness as children; both were speed- in Cornwall in 1905” (120).
readers; both wrote periodic diaries; both composed as they walked; both
shared a “passion for self-expression” (212) and had a “love-hate affair Although admitting that “[o]ne can never gauge a book’s precise impact
with London” (207). “[Brooke’s] quicksilver, perhaps even bi-polar, on its readers” (15), hypothetical expressions are numerous here: “might
mind also resembles hers” (206). Lounsberry wonders: “Did Woolf see explain”; “might have recalled”; “could”; “perhaps”; “likely”; “One
that Brooke anticipated her intellectual as well as geographical moves?” cannot say for certain” (32); “[h]e may have planted in her mind” (39);
(207). She makes a conjectural textual link between the two writers “may have caught Woolf’s fancy and lodged in her mind” (150); “they
when she points to Brooke’s phrase “There’s never anything lost by might have refreshed and fortified her” (152). Very often rhetorical
hanging out our colours and letting them blow in the wind” (written in questions are use to introduce a tentative interpretation: “One wonders
1876). These words remind Lounsberry of the March 1941 Woolf diary if...” (passim); “[c]ould this be the genesis of Mistress Joan Martyn?”
entry: “I will go down with my colours flying” (D5 358). The unbearable (91); Rosamond Merridew “might be read as Virginia’s projection of
poignancy of the last entry does not seem to me to echo Brooke’s herself in 1906 of herself in middle age” (92); “surely it is noteworthy
words. Such comments are made rather nonchalantly, as if in passing, that...” (124). Lounsberry uses the distancing device of the first person
or as if the writer is thinking aloud. Observations such as these, though plural: “we note too” (44); “we see” (67); “we should not be surprised”
speculative, do, however, serve as testimony to the very close textual (126). There is occasional intervention through use of the first person;
work Lounsberry has done on Woolf’s work and the diaries that she read this tends to be when observations are less contentious, for instance: “I
as she seeks to find and plot a trail through “unknown territory” (page find her consciously seeking in her diary her own view, voice, and form”
needed). But, as is often the case when plotting is involved, suppositions (127). Sometimes Lounsberry’s interrogative style appears to be genuine
have to be made about things that one could never know for sure. rather than rhetorical. There is a sense of unease and frustration when
she is trying to interpret certain knotty clues: “We wish she would say
The book aims to trace a discernable path but the trail through the diaries more” (170) or “[s]everal scenarios seem possible” (164). Lounsberry
is neither straight nor steady, rather it is crooked and discontinuous. The is clearly engrossed by Woolf’s creative process and, occasionally, even
text will not obediently allow neat mapping. In tension with her wish takes an editorial role such when she writes, with reference to the 1905
to control her route, Lounsberry acknowledges at several points that Cornwall diary, that “‘The Ghost Diary’ should be the title of Virginia
the diaries are heterogeneous; she writes that, “the first seven diaries Stephen’s fifth journal” (82). Lounsberry’s imaginative style contributes
are extraordinarily varied” (2). She recognises the chaos of the diary to the elucidation of the text so a “‘row of sea gulls’ might be the
form and uses Woolf’s own expression for her diary: it was a “compost Stephen children sitting on the skirts of the wave. Birds will symbolize
heap” (10). The delightful rich fertility of the diaries is diminished the young writer as the Cornwall diary unfolds” (83). Lounsberry uses
somewhat by the way Lounsberry tries to sort them stylistically or the trope of unknown territory again when she writes, lyrically, of “the
thematically. She states her objective along with the problem of young writer’s intent to chart unmarked waters and find richness in her
organising the book quite openly on its first page: “How to sort through misty dappled terrain” (85).
and say something meaningful about such a variegated mass?” (1). As
she works chronologically through the diaries there is a tendency to Setting out her aims for the book Lounsberry uses Hermione Lee’s
gloss over contradictory qualities in the attempt to find an “evolving phrase that Woolf’s mind was “full of echoes” (5). This densely
aesthetic” (10). She argues that Woolf sees herself as an “outsider” in referenced study seeks to recall the many voices resonating in Woolf’s
the 1903 diary (54); that the 1904 diary is about the development of the writing. The most illuminating aspect of this book is the sensitive
“professional” writer (75). She notes the gap between 1909 and 1915 and comparative work undertaken on the eclectic selection of diarists Woolf
proposes that in 1918 Woolf is writing herself back from illness. 1897, read: “Emerson, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Stendhal, the Goncourt brothers,
1909 and 1915 are “life” diaries (12, 40, 135, 163); 1899, and 1906- de Maupassant, Jules Renard, André Gide, Jonathan Swift, Boswell,
1909 are “travel” diaries (87, 114); though Lounsberry indicates that a Burney, Scott, William Allingham, Dorothy Wordsworth, Mary Berry,
new interest in portraits rather than places is a significant development George Eliot, Mary Coleridge, Katharine Bradley, and Edith Cooper
in the 1909 pieces. 1917-19 are categorized as “natural history” diaries (‘Michael Field’), Beatrice Webb, and Katherine Mansfield” (3) among
(183); 1917 is “collaborative” (188). Her final section is headed “The others. The analysis of Burney and Scott as models and “diaristic
Diary Coalesces” and here she suggests that, between 1915 and 1918, father and mother” (3; my emphasis) for the very young writer is
these various styles “begin finally to fuse” (226). She seems almost especially absorbing and Lounsberry interpolates helpful mini-essays
relieved that contradictory styles and forms may be able to be more tidily on more obscure diarists such as Lady Dorothy Nevill, Lady Charlotte
resolved. Bury and Mary (Seton) Berry. Although, in places, the connections
made between writers and Woolf seem tenuous or serendipitous,
Certain diaries are seen as key to Woolf’s development as a writer Lounsberry’s scholarship is to be commended. There is excellent work
and this symptomatic approach recalls clinical psychologist Katherine on the materiality of the diaries; she clearly distinguishes between them

47
physically and this is of value to those who are unable to access the interwar period” (9). The first chapter, “Introducing Late Woolf,”
volumes themselves. This book is most likely to appeal to those with provides the parameters and trajectory of the debate. In stylistically
previous knowledge of Woolf and to those with interested in diary theory accessible prose, Wood provides an overview of the reception history
but the biographical details will also be of interest to non-specialists. of Woolf’s work from the interwar period and during the final decades
The writer’s deep commitment to Woolf’s work is manifest by her of her life, outlining the misogyny and anxieties of many of her
introductory description of the diary as “heart-stopping, boundary- contemporary male critics and placing her within the context of other
stretching,” serving “as a doorway to [Woolf’s] fiction and non-fiction” contemporaneous women writers, such as Storm Jameson, Jean Rhys,
(1). Dorothy Richardson, Stevie Smith and others producing work during the
1930’s. Here we encounter many of the “usual suspects” emphasized in
Gill Lowe critical heritage studies: early critics, both women and men, who often
University Campus Suffolk missed Woolf’s social and political critiques, (see, for example, Arnold
Works Cited Bennett’s “Queen of the High-Brows” 28 November 1929; Wyndham
Dalsimer, Juliet. Virginia Woolf: Becoming a Writer. Yale: Yale UP, Lewis’s misogynistic skewering of Woolf in Men Without Art (1934);
2002. and Winifred Holtby’s prediction in an early critical study of Woolf
Jackson, Anna. Diary Poetics: Form and Style in Writers’ Diaries, 1915- that her “range will remain limited, her contact with life delicate and
1962. Routledge Studies in Twentieth-Century Literature 12. London: profound rather than comprehensive” (Holtby 201 qtd. in Wood 10) and
Routledge, 2010. literary histories of the 1930s, which stress the importance of the so-
Lejeune, Philippe. On Diary. Honolulu: Biographical Research Center at called “Auden Generation.” These trends were of course challenged by
the U of Hawaii P, 2009. subsequent scholarship and research in the fields of feminist criticism,
Podnieks, Elizabeth. Daily Modernism: the Literary Diaries of Virginia new historicism and textual studies, each of which Wood credits and
Woolf, Antonia White, Elizabeth Smart, and Anaïs Nin. Montreal; acknowledges, pointing to the work of Jane Marcus, Julia Kristeva, Alex
Ithaca: McGill-Queen’s UP, 2000. Zwerdling, and, more recently, Julia Briggs, Anna Snaith, Melba Cuddy-
Roe, Sue and Susan Sellers. The Cambridge Companion to Keane, and Anne E. Fernald, among many other feminist scholars who
Virginia Woolf. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000. have helped draw attention to Woolf as a social commentator and public
Tidwell, Joanne Campbell. Politics and Aesthetics in the Diary intellectual.
of Virginia Woolf. Studies in Major Literary Authors. London: Wood’s study relies upon a bedrock of archival research which deploys a
Routledge, 2012. meticulous textual investigation of published and unpublished materials,
many of which are presented in the three Appendices of extracts from
the holograph drafts of The Years and Three Guineas and which Wood
>>_>> uses to discuss the ways in which Woolf’s process informs her “late
analyses of the historical and contemporary oppression of women in
patriarchal Britain, the links between patriarchy, imperialism and war,
and the relationship between literature and politics” (17). What one
REVIEW realizes in reading such a study is how, as Wood points out, “voluminous
VIRGINIA WOOLF’S LATE CULTURAL CRITICISM: THE and still largely unexplored” these archival materials truly are, and the
GENESIS OF THE YEARS, THREE GUINEAS, nature and scope of the possibilities they present for Woolf studies in
AND BETWEEN THE ACTS general. Wood’s Chapters 2 and 3 on the publication and pre-publication
by Alice Wood. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2013. 187 pages. processes of Three Guineas and The Years are to be read in relation to
$110 cloth. one another, as they, to an extent, mirror the “shared textual histories of
Expanding upon a conversation enriched and framed by late Virginia the works themselves” (21). Woolf’s additions, deletions and revisions
Woolf scholar, Julia Briggs, Alice Wood delivers an innovative and can be daunting at times, but Wood’s well-organized and efficient
incisive examination of Woolf’s processes of writing and thinking. handling of “the six years of socio-political research, writing, and
Focusing on Woolf’s later work, especially the novels The Years thinking that preceded the publication” (27) of the two texts brings a
(1937), Between the Acts (1941), and her major pacifist polemic, Three fresh perspective and a way in to a portrait of Woolf as a social and
Guineas (1938), originally attached as a novel-essay to The Years, Wood political critic, a moniker, which the author admits, has become familiar
approaches her analysis deploying the practices and principles of genetic and “something of a cliché” (27) in academic circles.
criticism, a French school of textual studies, avant-textes or (‘pre- Part of Chapter 4 addressing Woolf’s contributions to the Daily Worker
texts’), a branch of manuscript studies reliant upon historical context. first appeared in these pages (see Wood’s “‘Chaos. Slaughter. War
This is a welcome addition to “Historicizing Modernism,” Bloomsbury Surrounding Our Island’”). In addition to a textual analysis of Between
Publishing’s book series dedicated to interdisciplinary, source-based the Acts, the chapter covers commentary on Woolf’s essays “A Letter
readings providing historical context of late nineteenth and twentieth to a Young Poet” (1932), “Why Art To-day Follows Politics,” (a piece
century literary Modernism. in the Daily Worker, published in 1936, which Woolf basically did as a
Placed within a feminist-historicist critical frame, the significance of favor to a friend of her nephew, Quentin Bell) and “The Leaning Tower”
Wood’s volume rests on her recognition of Woolf as a social and cultural (1940), each of which Wood persuasively argues are “pre-texts” to
critic, and her study “crucially reads Woolf’s late cultural criticism as Woolf’s last novel. At issue here are Woolf’s own pacifism and political
an extension of, rather than a departure from, the innovative feminist positions held up against criticism of her as an isolated, out-of-touch,
politics and aesthetic experimentation of her earlier writing” (4). This is Bloomsbury aesthete, accusations mainly lobbed at her by 1930s male
a candid, refreshing examination of Virginia Woolf’s political theories, poets, such as Stephen Spender, and taken up by John Lehmann, Peter
processes, and ideas, in conversation with and in revolt against the Quennell, and later by critics of the 1940s and 50s, such as David
dominant male narratives responding to the political, economic, and Daiches. Wood does well to outline the sources and counter arguments of
social crises between 1931 and 1941. Woolf’s controversial remarks in these essays, noting, along with others,
Aligning her work with scholars of late Modernism, particularly Tyrus that Woolf’s political engagement had been evident throughout her entire
Miller (1999), Jed Esty (2004) and Marina Mackay (2007), Wood body of work.
points out the hazards of periodization and places Woolf’s development The author does sometimes seem to contradict herself, however, for
as a cultural critic as part of “a bridge between two decades and two example, identifying a shift “reflected by Woolf’s altered perspective
generations often artificially divided in scholarly discussions of the in her final novel on the relationship between art and society” (123)

48
but then contending that “[t]his late novel follows the trend of Woolf’s Esty, Jed. A Shrinking Island: Modernism and the National Culture in
earlier fiction in camouflaging her cultural criticism within the narrative, England. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2004.
revealing her politics through the course of the novel’s action and Holtby, Winifred. Virginia Woolf: A Critical Memoir. 1932. Chicago:
dialogue rather than in authorial comment” (124). I would suggest that Cassandra, 1978.
there is more evidence of Wood’s latter contention, and much of it is Lewis, Wyndham. Men without Art. London: Cassell, 1934.
provided in the Wood’s own critique and archival work presented here. MacKay, Marina. Modernism and World War II. Cambridge: Cambridge
Woolf was not arguing in these three “pre-texts” what the snarky UP, 2007.
disclaimer, published above her Daily Worker piece, stated—that artists Miller, Tyrus. Late Modernism: Politics, Fiction, and the Arts Between
“have been so peacefully immune from the conditions and issues of the World Wars. Berkeley: U of California P, 1999.
the society in which they live” (Daily Worker qtd. in Wood 119), nor Wood, Alice. “Chaos. Slaughter. War Surrounding Our Island.” Virginia
what Lehmann, Quennell, and others read as a reductive contention that Woolf Miscellany 76 (Fall/Winter 2009): 18-20.
politics has no place in art. Woolf was pointing out the importance of
resisting heavy-handed, soap-boxerism in art and arguing for freedom of
expression, a condition of society which is undermined and challenged
during times of war. Wood, citing Woolf, writes that, “in peacetime,
the artist is granted detachment from society in order to write and paint
‘without regard for the political agitations of the moment’” but then
adds, “because otherwise [the artist’s] productions would not provide the
i
humanizing escape from current affairs that we expect from art” (Woolf
qtd. in Wood 118). This is not what Woolf says we should “expect” from
art, and, Wood’s approach constitutes, in my view, a common misreading REVIEW:
of the complexities of Woolf’s pacifism, politics, and ideas about art in CONTEMPORARY WOOLF. WOOLF CONTEMPORAINE
relation to society, theories which Woolf mines early, as early as 1904, edited by Claire Davison-Pegon & Anne-Marie Smith-Di Biaso.
from the works of her public intellectual role model, Jane Harrison. Montpellier: Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée, 2014. 261 pages.
In the essays cited by Wood, Woolf never mentions what kinds of art €18 cloth.
might be produced. This is impossible to know. Woolf is outlining the This handsome volume bears witness to the impressive vitality of
conditions necessary for art, for freedom of expression to take place, Woolf studies in France and more specifically of the 15-year old Société
conditions now commonly referred to as “positive peace” (a term coined d’Études Woolfiennes, currently chaired by Claire Davison, a society
by Johan Galtung in the 1990s), arguing against using art to grind an axe whose many activities regularly culminate in the annual conference
while contending that the more effective way of achieving one’s artistic it organizes (http://etudes-woolfiennes.org/). The book here reviewed
aims is to avoid hitting the reader over the head with one’s agenda. results from the conference held in September 2010 at the University
Woolf is not suggesting artists ignore politics during wartime but instead of Aix-en-Provence, which brought together nine French Woolfians
to resist fascist ‘shoulds’ and ‘musts’ in all of their guises. It is one of and a number of internationally known scholars, including three from
the reasons we continue to find Three Guineas on our syllabi today, but the U.S., three from the U.K., and one from Japan, Italy and Greece
not so much Quack! Quack! by Leonard Woolf. Wood, in her assessment respectively. The book is bilingual but only four articles are in French. In
of Woolf as an “internationalist,” also suggests that Woolf exhibits “a their introduction, the two editors very usefully refer us to Woolf’s own
tempering of her pacifist argument in her last novel,” Between the Acts reflections in “How it Strikes a Contemporary,” an essay first published
(106), a position, which Wood increasingly qualifies as we move through in 1923, in which she shows how difficult it is for the reader “to take his
her argument and which might benefit from revision, again based on bearings in the chaos of contemporary literature” (353). Woolf herself
much of the first-rate evidence Wood has produced here herself. finds that she lives in an “age of fragments” (355). Of “The Waste
Nevertheless, Virginia Woolf’s Late Cultural Criticism ultimately Land” she says that “Mr Eliot makes phrases” and of Ulysses that it is “a
locates Woolf’s political and cultural critique within the context of memorable catastrophe—immense in daring, terrific in disaster” (356).
her entire body of work. The author reveals the traps and limitations In 1923, the difficulty there was in being a perceptive contemporary
of categorizing Woolf as a “New” or “Late” modernist as such labels critic, spotting masterpieces and major authors-to-be, is unforgettably
“lead us to overlook the feminist politics that directed her creative exemplified by Arnold Bennett himself who, also in 1923, wrote in
and critical outputs from the outset of her career” (139). This is a “Is the Novel Decaying?” that the characters in Jacob’s Room “do not
thread Wood successfully follows in her concluding remarks, which vitally survive in the mind” and that he could not “descry any coming
counter the three critics of late modernism mentioned above, especially big novelists”—which sparked off a well-known polemic and led to
Miller and Esty, “on the basis that their reading of late modernism as the writing by Woolf of “Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown” (384). Woolf,
a reaction against apolitical high modernism relies on the illusion of however, is by now undisputedly acknowledged the world over as a
modernist marginality” (143). Wood, citing Bonnie Kime Scott among major author or “big novelist,” and Contemporary Woolf is also about
others, points to gender and Woolf’s feminism as factors informing “the immense relevance” and contemporaneity of her works for us living
her outsidership from the mostly male modernist literary canon. in the twenty-first century. To the question of Woolf’s contemporaneity
Ultimately, this work cautions against reaching for such easy and there are thus clearly two lines of approach to be envisaged, one dealing
artificial assessments of Woolf as a late modernist and is valuable to with Woolf in her own lifetime, the other with Woolf in our own time.
succeeding generations of Woolf critics and common readers for using The question involves and articulates past, present and future. Georgio
a textual methodology which offers a host of possibilities for emerging Agamben, whose essay “What Is the Contemporary?” is referred to
perspectives in the field. by several contributors, insists upon the concept of “noncoincidence,”
or “dys-chrony”: “Contemporariness is, then, a singular relationship
Jean Mills with one’s own time, which adheres to it and, at the same time, keeps
John Jay College-CUNY a distance from it. More precisely, it is that relationship with time that
adheres to it through a disjunction and an anachronism” (Agamben 41).
Works Cited
Bennett, Arnold. “The Queen of the High-Brows.” Arnold Bennett: The first series of articles begins with “Virginia Woolf and the Art of
The Evening Standard Years; ‘Books and Persons’ 1926-1931. Ed. the Novel,” in which Laura Marcus focuses on essays of The Common
Andrew Mylett. Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1974. 326. Reader, the act and art of reading and the writing of literary history.

49
Woolf is very much aware that she lives in an age of transition. She and contretemps, analyses the regimes of enunciation grappling with
feels cut off from the age of great authors and great critics, which is the forces of history (in the somber years 1936-1941), and detects the
now past, and disappointed by the work of her contemporaries. And yet, writing of desire subtending the ethical dimension of the diary.
in spite of it all, the present time and modern literature have “the same
endearing quality of being that which we are, that which we have made, The last three essays stand apart from the rest. They deal with various
that in which we live” (20). Noriko Kubota shows that the Japan-British aspects of Virginia Woolf’s presence in the contemporary literary scene.
Exhibition which took place in London in 1910 contributed to the sense Monica Latham examines four postmodernist or neo-modernist Woolfian
that in that pivotal year “human nature changed” (33). Kathryn Simpson palimpsests that bear witness to the lasting influence of Mrs. Dalloway:
contributes a well-documented ethnographic study of early twentieth- Robin Lippincott’s Mr. Dalloway, Michael Cunningham’s The Hours,
century commodity culture and the experience of shopping as reflected Ian McEwan’s Saturday and Rachel Cusk’s Arlington Park. Anne-Laure
in Woolf’s œuvre. Claire Rosé deals with the process of reading poetry Rigeade, in the third essay in French, argues that Nathalie Sarraute’s
as “what is timeless and contemporary” (53) and what she calls the response to Woolf’s work, together with the specific writer-to-reader
interdependence of historically-bound meaning and the historicity of the relation between the two women, marks them as contemporary. For
signifying process; also with the process of writing, Woolf’s poetics of Christine Froula, in the concluding essay, “Orlando Lives,” Orlando
“life itself,” and the intimacy made possible between reader and author. is alive and embodies the essence of contemporaneity. Orlando’s
Nathalie Pavec, who writes in French, interestingly brings together Three continuing life is attested by the many editions and translations of
Guineas, The Years and Woolf’s “Memoir of Julian Bell” in order to the book and by all the theater, film, music and dance adaptations, a
concentrate upon the present reality of the years 1936-1938 and analyze considerable number of which are methodically reviewed and superbly
Woolf’s position as an author writing from “the platform of time” (73). illustrated with color photographs.
Naomi Toth gives a close reading of Orlando’s arrival in “the present
This book offers a distinct and welcome contribution to Woolf
moment” (“It was the eleventh of October. It was 1928. It was the
scholarship. It reflects on a variety of critical and theoretical approaches
present moment.”) and shows that Orlando’s experience of the present is
to the problematics of Woolf contemporaneity. The editors must be
then marked by discrepancy, by a tension between the present visible and
thanked for their excellent work, and for allowing one more volume
the invisible past that endures within it.
to be added to the considerable amount of studies on Virginia Woolf
The second series of essays engages with the aesthetics of Woolf’s art. In already produced in France over the past decades.
“Dating Mrs. Dalloway: The Use and Abuse of History,” Michael Davis
Adolphe Haberer
examines the tension there is between the formalist tradition which
Université Lumière-Lyon 2
proclaims the autonomy of the novel as regards linear time and the
historicist tradition which maintains that it takes place on 13 June 1923. Works Cited
Adriana Varga explores the connections between music and language in Agamben, Georgio. “What Is the Contemporary?” What Is an
Woolf’s modernist novels, notably The Waves and Between the Acts, and Apparatus? and Other Essays. Trans. David Kishik and Stefan
suggests that her ultimate desire was to break the boundaries between Pedatella. Stanford UP, 2009. 39-54.
the arts, between poetry, music and the novel. Derek Ryan’s exciting Bennett, Arnold. “Is the Novel Decaying ?” Cassells Weekly 28 March
reading of To the Lighthouse is based upon Deleuze’s rhizome concept, 1923: 47.
and the opposition he makes between the arborescent rigidity of trees Cunningham, Michael. The Hours. New York: Picador, 2000.
and the rhizomatic, multiple, horizontal growth of grass. Like grass and Cusk, Rachel. Arlington Park. London: Faber, 2006.
its “line of flight” (129), the characters are viewed in what Ryan calls Lippincott, Robin. Mr Dalloway. Louisville: Sarabande Books, 1999.
their “journey of becoming” (129). In “Un regard posé sur le monde,” McEwan, Ian. Saturday. London: Vintage, 2006.
Adèle Cassigneul adopts what she terms in her abstract for the article Woolf, Virginia. “How It Strikes a Contemporary.” The Essays of Virginia
an “intermedial approach” (139) and analyses the text of Three Guineas Woolf. Vol. 3. Ed. Andrew McNeillie. New York: Harcourt, Brace and
together with the photos and newspaper clippings Woolf collected at the Jovanovich, 1988. 353-60. 
time of writing it. She then draws a parallel between Woolf’s visions —. “Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown.” The Essays of Virginia Woolf. Vol. 3.
and those of James Whistler, whose works reflect an endlessly changing Ed. Andrew McNeillie. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Jovanovich,
world. 1988. 384-89. 

The next sequence of essays is more precisely related to Agamben’s

concept of “non-coincidence or dys-chrony” inherent in the
contemporary. In “The Fissured Contemporaneity of Virginia Woolf,”
m
Angeliki Spiropoulou reads in Woolf’s disjunctive narratives her
response to modernity and her attempt at retrieving from the past what
has been repressed by official history. Anne-Marie Smith-Di Biaso, one
of the two editors of the book, ventures into what Woolf called “the REVIEW
pale borderland of no man’s language” (Woolf qtd. in Smith-Di Biaso TRANSLATION AS COLLABORATION:
167) and traces a link between hallucinatory images and remnants of VIRGINIA WOOLF, KATHERINE MANSFIELD, AND S. S.
dream whose haunting presences obscurely refer to Woolf’s terrors of KOTELIANSKY
sterility and pregnancy, to the “most archaic layer of female sexuality,” By Claire Davison. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014.
and concludes with an interpretation of Mrs. McNab as “an archetypal 256 pages. $120 cloth.
figure of maternal remembrance” (167) Teresa Prudente’s contribution It is nearly a century since the works of the classic nineteenth-century
is centered upon The Waves. It takes up the issue of permanence and Russian writers burst into Western awareness through translation. Even
of the transience of time, impersonality and individuality, and shows though isolated Russian works appeared in French and English in the
how Woolf tries to adhere to her own time while conveying the timeless late nineteenth-century, it was only during the early twentieth century
nature of the human soul. In “‘We are….marking time’: the Impossible that the “Russian point of view” achieved critical momentum in Britain.
Contemporary as a Poïe/Litical Threshold in Virginia Woolf’s Diary, More recently, Woolf scholars have explored Virginia Woolf’s significant
Volume 5,” Chantal Delourme rejects the view that the diary merely engagement with Russian literature. Scholarly analyses by Natalya
chronicles contemporary time. In the light of the theories of Jean- Reinhold, Laura Marcus, Christine Froula, Emily Dalgarno, myself, and
François Lyotard and Agamben, she introduces the concepts of differend others have focused, for the most part, on Woolf’s imaginative debt to
50
the Russian writers, whom she read and reviewed during her formative irregularities, repetitions, shifting voices, and even rough syntax in the
years as a writer and whose substantive and stylistic divergences Russian original rather than attempting—as had traditional translators—
from traditional British fiction inspired her earliest and most enduring to domesticate the language into a “a smooth, coherent textual surface”
experiments with literary form and style. Claire Davison turns her (84) in English.
focus to a less noticed aspect of Woolf’s—and Katherine Mansfield’s—
engagement with the Russian writers: their co-translations, with the Moreover, given Woolf and Mansfield’s literary interests, their parallel
Russian émigré S. S. Koteliansky, of belles lettres by Tolstoy, Chekhov, involvement in the co-translation process opened up for each of them
and Gorky, most of which were published by Virginia and Leonard “a creative space between fiction writing and classic translation” (48) as
Woolf’s Hogarth Press during the early 1920s. each writer put her own individual stamp on her collaborative endeavor.
Their active engagement in the rendering of words and ideas from
Davison’s rich study builds on two widely separated cultural moments: Russian into English influenced their “aesthetic intuitions” and prompted
first, the fertile period of the early twentieth century, during which them to “hone their own convictions about life-writing and fiction”
“cultural, intellectual, political and linguistic factors all fed into a huge (150). As Davison observes,
interest in literatures seen through the prism of translation” (5); and,
beginning in the 1990s, the “translation turn” (5) prompted by critical What may have started as an interesting means to gain more
attention to the complex linguistic, aesthetic, and cultural assumptions specialised, reliable knowledge of Russian literature and to help an
embedded in the process of translation. Drawing on both contexts, endearing friend get published soon evolved into a subtly disguised
Davison challenges the “long-standing tendency to write off Mansfield mode of experimentation in writing styles, which formed a very
and Woolf’s work with Koteliansky as essentially that of editor wielding practical bridge between personal emotion and an escape from
the red pen to correct uncouth language” (115). Brilliantly plumbing personality into the lives of other speaking, living selves, saying ‘I’
her subject to offer multiple new angles for understanding both the without wholly being the ‘I’ that speaks. (47-48)
practice and outcomes of co-translation, she illuminates Woolf’s and
Woolf and Mansfield contributed not only aesthetically but also
Mansfield’s unacknowledged substantive contributions to the endeavor.
editorially to the translation process. Through her attentive examination
Interestingly, she downplays the essay that has for decades provided the
of such works as A. B. Goldenveiser’s Talks with Tolstoi (co-translated
essential starting point for scholarly examination of Woolf’s view of
by Koteliansky and Woolf) and Chekhov’s diary and letters (co-
the Russians: her close reading of “The Russian Point of View” leads
translated by Koteliansky and Mansfield)—biographical works whose
her to conclude that much of the essay is “a masquerade of refined table
contents were rendered into English not in their entirely but selectively—
talk”—less a decisive position on the subject than “recycled cliché or
Davison uncovers biases, including gender bias, that result from the
conventionalism” (25).
selection process itself. Comparing the Koteliansky-Mansfield collection
Davison’s project might be described in terms of a triangle, with Woolf, of Chekhov’s letters with the same letters in the volume translated by
Mansfield, and Koteliansky occupying the cardinal points while the Koteliansky and Philip Tomlinson, she observes that “more than half
aesthetics, politics, and other aspects of translation, co-translation, and the female characters—dinner guests, addressees, visitors, artists—are
collaboration fill in the figure. Through this structure, she examines written out [of the latter volume]. Their entire narrative is male focused. .
the ways in which co-translation and collaboration not only influenced .” (126). Thus, the process of selection and omission was not neutral but
both writers at the early stage of their respective literary careers but one that shaped the Russian writers for their English readers according to
also the reverse: Woolf’s and Mansfield’s linguistic, aesthetic, and the translator’s own conscious and unconscious values.
editorial choices distinctively shaped their respective co-translations.
Admittedly, Woolf and Mansfield had their own biases. As Davison
Although Virginia and Leonard, stimulated by their association with
posits, “Woolf and Koteliansky’s editorial choices suggest a decidedly
Koteliansky, took Russian language lessons for a time and Mansfield
modern take on how to use certain materials to fashion the reception
knew some Russian, their knowledge of the language was rudimentary;
of the author. Mansfield and Koteliansky’s translations of Chekhov’s
their contributions depended on their association with the native Russian
letters . . . show a comparable, editorially motivated translation strategy
speaker—who also acquired the Russian texts for these collaborative
shaping and promoting a precise, very timely image of Chekhov” (123).
translations.
Thus, while the Russians indeed contributed to Woolf’s and Mansfield’s
In five sharply focused chapters, Davison examines different facets of development as modernists, the writers in turn helped to “modernize”
her subject, including “thinking through translation,” voice, “imprudent the Russians, “literally lifting [them] from their late nineteenth-century
movables” (“translation as a form of speculative mutability,” 84), mindset and setting, and electing them as honorary Georgians, speaking
craftsmanship and marketplace, and biographical writing in translation. in and speaking to the present . . .” (168).
Herself conversant in Russian, French, and German, Davison is
Davison’s compelling, impressively researched, and lucidly articulated
particularly good at providing telling examples of the ways in which
book enables readers to appreciate both the significance of Woolf’s
small differences in word choice, syntax, “orality,” and “musicality”—
and Mansfield’s collaborative co-translations from the Russian and the
the last understood as attending to “the original patterns in the making of
poetics and politics of translation itself.
meaning” (73)—result in outcomes that, in her judgment, preserve more
faithfully the essence of the original Russian. For example, focusing Roberta Rubenstein
on Stavrogin’s Confessions—Dostoevsky’s suppressed chapters from American University
The Possessed, which Woolf and Koteliansky co-translated for the
Hogarth Press—she compares the same passages in several English
and French translations to highlight the ways in which the Koteliansky/
Woolf version captures the “dialogic tensions” (73) in the character of

w
Stavrogin that are absent from other translations.

Davison establishes each writer’s implicit theory of translation,

emphasizing that both Woolf and Mansfield—the latter more obviously
an “outsider” from New Zealand—relished the sense of “intermediate
foreignness” (33) that they experienced through the process of co-
translating. Affirming their own aesthetic preferences, each strove,
with Koteliansky’s collaboration, to maintain rather than minimize
51
REVIEW alongside Quentin Bell and Virginia Nicholson’s Charleston: A
THE BLOOMSBURY COOKBOOK: RECIPES FOR LIFE, LOVE Bloomsbury House and Garden (1997) or Virginia Woolf’s Garden
AND ART (2014) by Caroline Zoob. And as a work of culinary anthropology,
by Jans Ondaatje Rolls. London: Thames & Hudson, 2014. 384 pages, it reveals myriad facets of the fact that, whatever else they did, the
165 b/w and color illustrations. $39.95 cloth. Bloomsburies also ate. Bloomsbury was a circle composed of triangles
who lived in squares1—and it was a group of friends who enjoyed Bell
Virginia Woolf once told her friend Janet Case about a delicious mishap. Family Christmas Cake baked in an eight-inch round pan (315-16);
In a cooking class, Woolf had “distinguished [her]self by cooking my took their tea with Ham Spray Triangles—fish roe, ham, and bechamel
wedding ring into a suet pudding” (97). Jans Ondaatje Rolls recounts this sandwiches from Frances Partridge’s recipe book (160-61); snacked on
anecdote in The Bloomsbury Cookbook: Recipes for Life, Love, and Art, pureed sardines spread over fried toast squares (41); and—beyond such
and includes a recipe for Plain Suet Pudding with the wry note of cau- strict geometrical limits—devoured Bunny’s Honey from the hexagonal
tion: “if possible, remove all rings beforehand” (97). This book is chock- combs of the bee-hives kept by David Garnett during the Great War
full of such moments, showing the interconnectedness of food, story, and (126-27).
affection in the daily lives of the Bloomsburies (or Bloomsberries), their
friends, and descendants. Bloomsbury inspires perennial interest among The book is especially intriguing when Rolls uses recipes to flavor iconic
scholars, casual readers, and, in recent years, social-media lifestyle ma- moments. Woolf fans can try their hand at Mildred’s Masterpiece, Rolls’s
vens. Today, “Bloomsbury” signifies not only a collection of artists and own recipe for the legendary Boeuf en Daube from To the Lighthouse.
intellectuals who helped to shape British life in the twentieth century, They can also test the eleven recipes spread over the Cookbook’s longest
but also a lifestyle. Charleston Farmhouse and Monk’s House have long entry. Seven pages detail contrasting menus from the impoverished Fern-
been sites of domestic pilgrimage. The Bloomsbury Cookbook, written ham dinner and the luxurious Oxbridge lunch in A Room of One’s Own,
for scholar and common reader alike, functions as a field guide to one of providing a culinary confirmation of Woolf’s insights into the reciprocal
the most nourishing spaces in Bloomsbury homes—the kitchen. connection between economic advantage and literary excellence, eating
well and thinking well. Open to the menu for “Dinner at a Women’s Col-
At Charleston in 2009, Rolls pitched to Virginia Nicholson an “idea lege” and discover homely recipes for Consommé, Beef Loaf, Sprouts,
for a book about Bloomsbury food and cookery.” Nicholson recalls, Prunes, Custard, and Savoury Biscuits and Sour Milk Cheese (209-12).
“No stone seemed to have been left unturned where Bloomsbury was Turn to “Lunch at a Men’s College” and find such delicacies as Fillets de
concerned—and yet here, in the kitchen, was an aspect of my ancestry Sole à la Crème, Perdrix en Cocotte, Salade de Haricots Verts, Pommes
that I had long felt to be underexplored” (9). After five years of thorough Sautées, and Gateau de Riz en Moule (212-14).
archival research, Rolls has turned over a new stone: she has gathered
together an impressive collection of period recipes, stories, and images, This is a great book to get lost in, and not only for the recipes. Just as the
and invites her readers as fully as has ever been done into the everyday culinary arts rely on presentation to announce the quality of food, so too
life of Bloomsbury. the Cookbook, beginning with Cressida Bell’s vibrant dust jacket, serves
up a visual feast. Scores of images give an intimate, kaleidoscopic,
The Bloomsbury Cookbook is not organized like traditional cookbooks, and lush portrait of Bloomsbury’s world. There are reproductions of
by type of food or meal, but by story. Anecdotes are interspersed with paintings, book covers, and sketches—Carrington’s caricature of Lytton
recipes by Bloomsbury’s members, cooks, and friends, as well as Strachey reading while lounging in a soup bowl and her sketch of hens
recipes from period cookbooks. The book begins with Nicholson’s eating a spoiled steak and kidney pie are as sweet as the “sugar” that
note on the Charleston Trust, to which Rolls is generously donating all she and Mark Gertler used as a euphemism for sex (107-108). There
profits. Anne Chisholm’s Foreword indicates two of the book’s greatest are reproductions of handwritten letters, menus, and recipes, includ-
strengths. Bloomsbury aficionados “will be richly entertained”; newcom- ing one, for “Meat Bobbity, in Tamil” (87). A facsimile vote tally from
ers “could not receive a better introduction…to Bloomsbury’s cuisine an Apostles meeting on the question, “Eggs or Omelettes?” notes that
[and] to its curiously enduring fascination” (11). Rolls’s Introduction Lytton Strachey “is really eggy” (42). And there is a generous helping of
affirms the importance of “lingering breakfasts” and “painting lunches” photographs. Octogenarian Leonard tends plants in his greenhouse. Clive
to Bloomsbury, from its emergence in turn-of-the-century Cambridge hoes a field at Garsington. Frances Partridge lunches under a weeping
and London to the 1940s and after (12). Biographical notes cover 29 willow. And Virginia Woolf sits at table, at home, ring on finger, gazing
dramatis personae from Helen Anrep and the Bells to the Stracheys and at the camera over a loaf of bread and a cup of tea.
Woolfs. Entries include the longtime Charleston housekeeper and cook
Grace Higgens, whose recipes feature prominently in the collection, and Todd Avery and Gigi Thibodeau
who, together with Sophia Farrell and Nellie Boxall, receives deserv- Portland, Maine
ing praise. Seven chronological chapters compose the Cookbook proper.
Each chapter begins with a menu of recipes surrounded by a colorful Works Cited
Grant-and-Bell-style frame. Appendices and other back matter include Bell, Quentin and Virginia Nicholson. Charleston: A Bloomsbury House
additional recipes, a Bloomsbury chronology, notes on imperial and met- and Garden. New York: Henry Holt, 1997.
ric measures, an extensive Bloomsbury bibliography, an index of recipes, Rhodes, Dennis, ed. In an Eighteenth Century Garden: A Receipt Book
and a list of their sources. of Cookery, 1698. Pref. Beverley Nichols. Ill. Duncan Grant. London:
Cecil and Amelia Woolf, 1968.
The chronological structure of the Cookbook, with each chapter featuring Zoob, Caroline. Virginia Woolf’s Garden: The Story of the Garden at
a hodgepodge of recipes and anecdotes (many sans recipes), makes for Monk’s House. London: Jacqui Small, 2013.
an entertaining read while limiting its practical value. The book is not
organized according to types of food or meal, and it has no clear rubrics,
so it is difficult to find a particular type of recipe. But, then, is The 1
Editor’s note: In the Telegraph on 18 Aug 2014, in an article titled “BBC Drama
Bloomsbury Cookbook, strictly speaking, a cookbook? Does it belong Charts Lives and Loves of the Bloomsbury Set,” Anita Singh previews the three-
beside Mrs. Beeton, Delia Smith, or Nigella? Its subtitle, Recipes for part “Lives in Squares,” and attributes to Dorothy Parker “the quotation that the
Life, Love and Art, speaks to the fact that it is at once something less and Bloomsbury group ‘lived in squares, painted in circles and loved in triangles’”
something more than a cookbook. As a work of archival recuperation, it (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/11037524/BBC-drama-charts-
might sit proudly beside the Duncan-Grant-illustrated In an Eighteenth lives-and-loves-of-the-Bloomsbury-set.html).
Century Kitchen: A Receipt Book of Cookery, 1698 (Rhodes, 1968).
As a glimpse into the domestic life of Bloomsbury, it could be shelved v
52
 Diary of Mistress Joan Martyn],” or the use of domestic space as a

h signifier of characters’ interior lives in “Moments of Being: Slater’s

Pins Have No Points” and other stories. Most suggestive, and most in
keeping with the volume’s stated approach, is Pieri’s brief discussion
of the metafictional implications of common household objects such as
REVIEW a curtain or picture. Pieri’s observations are sound and her piece might
THE HOUSE OF FICTION AS THE HOUSE OF LIFE: serve as an entrée to Woolf’s short stories for a newcomer, but seasoned
REPRESENTATIONS OF THE HOUSE FROM RICHARDSON TO Woolfians may find the essay’s usefulness limited by its brevity.
WOOLF
edited by Francesca Saggini and Anna Enrichetta Soccio. Newcastle Janet L. Larsen’s longer contribution, “The Personal is National:
Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012. 290 pages. $67.99, Houses of Memory and Postwar Culture in Mrs. Dalloway” more fully
€61,95 cloth. realizes the volume’s objectives. Larsen draws on Bakhtin’s notion
of the chronotope in order to demonstrate how Woolf destabilizes the
As the editors acknowledge, this volume of “expanded” conference national myth of historical “continuity” embodied in the image of the
proceedings, originating in a 2008 Seminar held in Aarhus, Denmark and English country house by “levitating” that image “into time’s flow in
sponsored by the European Society for the Study of English, joins what the mind” (194). Making the personal national in this sense, the novel’s
is already a “vast literature” on the representation of houses in literature experimentalism breaks up the imaginary continuity of what Woolf
and the problematics of “inhabited space” more generally (1). Inspired called “historian’s histories” (193) in a process congruent with post-war
by such germinal works as Martin Heidegger’s “Building Dwelling transformations of the English “manor-house system” and its ordering
Thinking,” Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space, and Henri of consciousness (196). Larsen illuminates submerged connections
Lefebvre’s The Production of Space, scholarship on space and place has between Clarissa’s and Peter’s memories of Bourton, Lady Bruton’s
proliferated vigorously since at least the 1980s, as the Works Cited to evocation of her family’s rural seat at Aldmixton, and an unnamed “old
this volume amply attests. Woolf scholars have of course participated in Manor House” whose loss is mourned by a certain Mrs. Foxcroft more
these developments in studies such as Susan Squier’s Virginia Woolf and sincerely than the human casualties of the War (196). Incidentally, since
London: The Sexual Politics of the City (1985), Anna Snaith and Michael no one was more invested in the myth of the country house and national
Whitworth’s Locating Woolf: The Politics of Space and Place (2007) and “continuity” than Vita Sackville-West, Orlando’s dismantling of that
several contributions to Maggie Humm’s The Edinburgh Companion to myth, linked as it is to Woolf’s deliberate outing of Sackville-West, in a
Virginia Woolf and the Arts (2010), among many others. different sense also makes the national very personal (as discussed in my
contribution to Humm’s Edinburgh Companion). But we do not usually
Most distinctive about The House of Fiction’s contribution to the still-
connect Woolf’s critique of the country house with Mrs. Dalloway.
burgeoning field of place/space studies is the chronological ordering and
Larsen’s essay shows that we should, and effectively demystifies
conceptual framing of its twenty-one essays, a presentation intended to
romanticizing interpretations of Bourton’s significance.
draw out connections between the evolution of the novel as a genre and
changing constructions of domestic space. The essays focus on British As a genre, conference proceedings are generally most valuable when
novels by canonical writers from the eighteenth through the twentieth they offer a snapshot of emerging trends and new perspectives, since the
centuries. Six of them address eighteenth century figures, including brevity of the papers typically precludes depth. The House of Fiction
Samuel Richardson and Frances Burney; twelve address nineteenth as the House of Life does not escape this limitation but, while no
century figures including Charles Dickens, Charlotte Bronte, Wilkie connections are drawn between papers within the papers themselves (as
Collins, and George Meredith; the twentieth century is represented by is sometimes done in revising for publication), Saggini and Soccio frame
just three essays, two on Woolf and one on crime fiction that treats both their collection thoughtfully, in a way that will be of interest to students
nineteenth and twentieth century writers. The editors’ brief introduction of the novel and of place/space studies. I particularly enjoyed the
distills from the essays a panoptic account of the shifting cultural and opportunity to sample work by an international array of English scholars
social meanings of house and home in England and other “northern not only from England and the U.S., but also Italy (primarily), Germany,
countries” (3) from the seventeenth to the twentieth century, identifying Romania, the Czech Republic, and Costa Rica.
three major themes: the house’s role in articulating binary categories
such as public/private, male/female, adult/child; the house as a locus Elizabeth Hirsh
of sometimes “strident contradiction” (7), particularly for Victorian University of South Florida
women; and the rise and decline of the myth of the country house and its
attendant fantasy of national identity. The editors emphasize too that the Works Cited
essays reconcile the broadly interdisciplinary approach required by space Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space. Foreword by John R. Stilgoe.
studies with discipline-specific “textual and narratological analysis” (4), Trans. M[aria] Jolas. Boston: Beacon P, 1994.
treating novelistic representations of the house as “dynamic narrative Heidegger, Martin. “Building Dwelling Thinking.” Basic Writings. Ed.
element[s]” (5) that actively shape plot and sites of encounter between D. Ferrell Krell. London: Routledge, 1978. 319-40.
text and world. “The main aim of the project,” Saggini and Soccio write, Hirsh, Elizabeth. “Virginia Woolf and Portraiture.” Humm 160-78.
“is to investigate and reconsider the forms and modes through which Humm, Maggie, ed. The Edinburgh Companion to Virginia Woolf and
the figure of the house was represented in English literature” during the the Arts. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2010.
period of the novel’s emergence and development (5, my emphasis). At Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space. Trans. Donald Nicholson-
once the singularly dominant form in English literature and the genre Smith. Oxford: Blackwell, 1991.
par excellence identified with private consumption, the novel provides Snaith, Anna and Michael Whitworth, eds. Locating Woolf: The Politics
a privileged vantage on the house, and vice-versa, because the two have of Space and Place. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
been mutually constructing. Squier, Susan. Virginia Woolf and London: The Sexual Politics of the
City. Chapel Hill: The U of North Carolina P, 1985.
The first of the essays on Woolf is not concerned with the novel,
however. Francesca Pieri’s “Closed Spaces, Women’s Rooms, Symbolic
Objects: The House in Virginia Woolf’s Short Stories” surveys thirteen EFGHEF
stories in just five pages, noting the various meanings and functions of
the house in each—for example, the negative valorization of domestic
space in “Phyllis and Rosamond” versus its positive valence in “[The
53
 of space to the location of the supposed widow, Celia. The narrator

REVIEW
? believes she has read the death of Celia’s husband, Humphry Hammond
in the newspaper, and is subsequently troubled by “the blind moment” or
incommunicable experience that impoverishes her experience of Celia’s
conversion to the subject position of widow. The narrator receives an
invitation to dine with the Hammonds, which reveals that he did not die,
MODERNIST FICTION AND NEWS: REPRESENTING that the name in the newspaper merely bore a resemblance to Humphry.
EXPERIENCE IN THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY Rando compares Woolf’s representation of the impoverished experience
by David Rando. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. 198 pages. of newspaper reading to René Magritte’s 1938 painting Man with a
$95 cloth. Newspaper (L’Homme au journal), which “represents newspaper reading
as time spent outside of oneself, and perhaps as absent to oneself, as
David Rando’s first monograph undertakes, with innovation, a kind of
well as to one’s immediate environment” (35). Rando then proposes
media studies of literary modernism, understanding modernist novels
Benjamin’s form of the anecdote as that which remedies the problem
as contending with what Mark Wollaeger has called the media ecology
of representing experience in the media ecology of news. Benjamin
of popular news. Rando joins recent scholarship that has explored the
criticizes “the empathetic distance of historicism and contrasts it with
embeddedness of modernism in forms of mass culture such as journalism
the anecdotal nearness of materialist historiography” (37). With Woolf’s
(Patrick Collier) and radio (Jussi Parikka’s the edited collection
well-known short story “The Mark on the Wall,” Rando demonstrates
Broadcasting Modernism). Even though not explicitly stated by its
“the narrator’s experiment in archiving experience and anarchiving facts
author, Modernist Fiction and News also relates to the burgeoning field
and objective reportage” (41). The narrator seeks unmediated, intimate
of media archaeology, which, as Jussi Parrika delineates, “sees media
experience that taps into the pathos of nearness, which unfolds in the
cultures as sedimented and layered, a fold of time and materiality where
private and gendered spaces of domesticity.
the past might be suddenly discovered anew” (3). Rando embarks on
such an archaeological project on the early twentieth century, which, Moving to the tabloid condition of news in contrast with the difficult
he claims, “was the first period to face the impossibility of adequately reading experience of modernist fiction, the second chapter examines
storing, remembering, and prioritizing the avalanche of information that Joyce’s Finnegans Wake in the context of scandal. Rando foregrounds
new recording technologies and mass communication networks pressed one of the Wake’s auto-descriptive moments: when it labels itself “This
upon consciousness, thereby altering not only human experience but noonday diary, this allnights newseryreel” (489.35). Rando continues
also reality itself” (1). Modernist novels perceive news as an inauthentic with the analytic of anecdotal form, and he illustrates how “the Wake
way to represent communicable experience; however, amid the flow of springs scandal upon its readers anecdotally, in such a way that facts
the dialectical tension that Rando identifies, modernist novels and news and actors remain primarily elusive but something of the experience of
lose their mediatic territorial boundaries. Through eclectic readings of scandal is allowed to emerge with nearness” (53). He is also interested
Woolf, James Joyce, John Dos Passos, and Gertrude Stein, Rando’s in the dialectical oscillation between public and private that occurs in
methodology queries the expansionist mode of historicism that has one’s reading experience of the Wake. The “plebiscite section”––Joyce’s
characterized the “new modernist studies,” as dubbed by Douglas Mao creative revision of the Bywaters-Thompson adultery scandal and
and Rebecca Walkowitz; instead of a project oriented toward a revision murder trial––functions as the central source of textual evidence in the
of modernist literary history (Gayle Rogers) or an explicit account of chapter. He compares Joyce’s archiving practices of journalism with the
the sociology of modernism (Jeremy Braddock), Rando “explor[es] contemporary scandalous article from the Daily Sketch on December 14,
modernism’s implicit challenge and response to contemporary ideologies 1922.
and practices of technology” (16). Modernist Fiction and News reads
canonical modernists alongside Walter Benjamin’s model of materialist In the third chapter, Rando interrogates the modernist construction of
historiography and Jacques Derrida’s theory of the archive, endeavoring character as represented in Dos Passos’s U.S.A. trilogy which he views
to show how “we must arrest modernism in a relationship with our “as engaged in a complex and continuous negotiation and power struggle
moment and read the resultant image not as a continuum of history, but with news discourse over the language of character in the media ecology,
as a form of potential awakening” (25). Thus Rando situates modernist one that finally opens out into a class struggle over the language of
novels within the dialectical conflict of Benjamin’s two concepts of America itself” (74). Responding to what criticism has lamented as the
experience, Erfahrung and Erlebnis, which one might translate as flatness and transparency of the characters in U.S.A., Rando eruditely
accumulated, lived experience and immediate, living experience, explains these formalistic features in terms of Dos Passos’s aesthetic
respectively. Channeling Benjamin from cover to cover, Rando’s response to the “homogenous, empty time of the newspaper’s columns”
chapters pursue the shock of experience in which the past and present (76). The characters are thus cut out of history and pasted into clinical
flash together and dialectics comes to a standstill, revealing historicism narrative description that is analogous to journalistic style; however,
as homogenous, empty time. The six thematic chapters of nearness, Rando withholds the hope that there are remainders in the free indirect
scandal, character, identity, and war constellate and modify each other discourse that indicate how Dos Passos’s style negotiates reportage and
as Modernist Fiction and News progresses, tracking the form of the intimate experience. Dos Passos shows the imbricated relationship of
anecdote as an antidote to the impoverished experience that one receives news and novels––that the two media are coeval and indistinguishable.
in the news. Rando supports these claims with an extended reading of Dick’s
unmediated experience of President Wilson and the impoverished,
United in their focus on newspaper reading, Virginia Woolf’s two short “reptilian” representation of Dick having sex with Daughter.
stories “Sympathy” and “The Mark on the Wall” appear in the first
chapter, which analyzes the category of nearness through affective The fourth and fifth chapters of Modernist Fiction and News probe
identification. Rando interrogates the difference between empathy and the categories of identity and war as represented in Gertrude Stein’s
what Benjamin lauds as the “pathos of nearness”; the former affect autobiographical practices of the thirties and forties. In Rando’s view,
draws the reader out into the space of the object whereas the latter invites Stein rejects identity for the way in which it emulates the structure
the object into her own intimate space. For Rando, empathy “is this of a news story that depicts the continuous development of the past
disconnection from and mediation of history, this movement outward into the present; therefore, he reads Everybody’s Autobiography as “a
from oneself toward some abstracted object, that Benjamin equates narrative of process, discovery, particularity, and nonidentity,” whereas
with newspaper reading” (33). Indeed, Woolf’s “Sympathy” charts this The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas might be seen as newspaper,
empathetic movement in the form of the narrator’s imaginative traversal description, and historicist historiography (98). Rando upholds

54
Everybody’s Autobiography for its method of “being existing,” as Stein Society Column continued:
puts it. While the news homogenizes and normalizes the differences Please also welcome our new officers listed and remember that, as of this
and antimonies inherent to identity in order to tell a coherent story, fall, the membership dues for the IVWS have increased.
Stein’s novelistic practice represents strong personalities that rupture
the smooth continuity of narrative progress. As Rando argues, “Stein 1-year student,retired, or not full-time employed membership
wants to reclaim autobiography as a space for strong personality, to write ($15 US)
autobiography against the news-like grain of autobiography” (106). In
1-year regular membership
Benjaminian terms that conjure the idea of a dialectical image, Rando
($35 US, with optional $5 or $10 donation to the society)
contends that “Stein stresses past and present ‘being existing’ together,
always within potential striking distance” (113). Rando goes on to 5-year regular membership
examine Stein’s 1945 autobiography Wars I Have Seen, concentrating ($130 US, with optional $25 or $50 donation to the society)
on different ways in which a war reporter and Stein handle endings. For
example, Ernie Pyle’s war dispatches always end with an empathetic 5-year retiree membership
appeal to the reader: “The imaginative movement is always one in ($60 US)
which the news consumer at home is asked to travel empathetically
to the battlefields alongside vividly represented soldiers who remain, To join, update your membership or donate, you can go to http://sites.
nonetheless, in a space apart” (129). Comparable to Benjamin, Stein utoronto.ca/IVWS/how-to-joindonate.html.
seeks endings that arrest experience so that one might represent the
Until next time,
pathos of nearness. While the news moves apace with wartime, Stein
values the quotidian, daily life of wartime as represented through rumor Kristin Czarnecki
over report and official news––common and anecdotal experience (e.g., President, International Virginia Woolf Society
a woman giving birth to a litter of puppies) as opposed to the onward
marching of battles.
Officers of the International Virginia Woolf Society
Rando concludes with a coda that cogently meditates on the critical
relevance of the study of modernism in our twenty-first century media serving from January 2015 through December 2017
ecology of vacuous tweets, ubiquitous likes, and sensational Gawker President
headlines. Returning to the introduction’s modification of historicist Kristin Czarnecki
modernist studies, Rando proposes a presentist approach to modernism, <[email protected]>
“less a new modernist studies so much as a ‘now’ modernist studies
[…] [which] presumes that modernism matters most right now, and Vice-President
always has” (143). He echoes Wollaeger’s sense that the difficulty of Ann Martin
modernism produces within its readers a necessary critical consciousness <[email protected]>
or what Rando terms “a habit of mindfulness”; he goes further to suggest
Treasurer/Secretary
that the study of inscrutable modernist texts constructs a dam in the
incessant stream of digital information (145). Even though Rando does Alice Keane
not completely flesh out this presentist modernism, one is left intrigued <[email protected]>
and sanguine about further critical inquiry into the interrelationship Historian/Bibliographer
of contemporary mass culture and the legacies of modernism. Indeed, Drew Shannon
Modernist Fiction and News insists that the study of modernism in <[email protected]>
its contemporary media ecology is now most crucial because “[t]he
problems that the modernists first faced have thus become our own Archival Liaison
urgent problems” (144). Karen Levenback
<[email protected]>
Brandon Truett
The University of Chicago Membership Coordinators
Lois Gilmore [email protected]
Works Cited &
Braddock, Jeremy. Collecting as Modernist Practice. Baltimore: The
Marilyn Schwinn Smith [email protected]
Johns Hopkins UP, 2012.
Cohen, Debra Rae, Michael Coyle, and Jane Lewty, eds. Broadcasting Members-at-Large serving from 2015-2017
Modernism. Gainesville: U of Florida P, 2009. AnneMarie Bantzinger
Collier, Patrick. Modernism on Fleet Street. Aldershot and Burlington:
<[email protected]>
Ashgate, 2006.
Mao, Douglas and Rebecca Walkowitz. “The New Modernist Studies.” Elizabeth Evans
PMLA 123.3 (2008): 737-48. <[email protected]>
Parikka, Jussi. What Is Media Archaeology? Cambridge: Polity, 2012.
Rogers, Gayle. Modernism and the New Spain: Britain, Cosmopolitan Emily Hinnov
Europe, and Literary History. New York: Oxford UP, 2012. <[email protected]> or <[email protected]>
Wollaeger, Mark. Modernism, Media, and Propaganda: British Alice Lowe|
Narrative from 1900 to 1945. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2008. <[email protected]>
Ex Officio
z Vara Neverow, editor of the Virginia Woolf Miscellany
[email protected]

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Society Column Saturday, 9 January 8:30-9:45 a.m.
451. Woolf and Disability
What a lark it’s been so far this year for the International Virginia Woolf
Society! Program arranged by the International Virginia Woolf Society and the
MLA Committee on Disability Issues in the Profession
The Annual Conference
Presiding: Maren T. Linett, Purdue University, West Lafayette
The Twenty-Fifth Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf,
Virginia Woolf and Her Female Contemporaries, organized by the 1. “On Being Still: Woolf, Illness, and Immobility,” Louise Hornby,
incomparable Julie Vandivere and hosted by Bloomsburg University. The University of California, Los Angeles
conference, which was from June 4-7, was a smashing success, with a
cornucopia of stimulating panels and special events. Among the many 2. “Woolf, Wheelchairs, Feminism,” Lisa Griffin, University of Saint
highlights were three plenary dialogues—by Linda Leavell and Susan Andrews
McCabe on patronage, friendship, and money in the creation of creative
3. “Labor Pains: Disability, Work, and Reproduction in To the
spaces; by Helen Southworth and Jane Garrity on “obscurity” and its
Lighthouse,” Matt Franks, Bates College
relation to women; and by Melissa Bradshaw and Madelyn Detloff on
the role of “big personality” modernist women writers on making and For abstracts, contact [email protected]
breaking the literary reputations of their female contemporaries.
Please join us at the MLA Woolf Society dinner on Saturday, January 9,
Anne E. Fernald and Cassandra Laity held a roundtable to announce at 7:30 p.m. at the highly recommended and festive-looking Fonda San
their launching of a new journal, Feminist Modernist Studies, while a Miguel (http://www.fondasanmiguel.com/). The reservation is for 30
theory roundtable with Celia Marshik, Judith Brown, Emily Ridge, and people, so if you’d like a spot, please email me at kristin_czarnecki@
Allison Pease considered theoretical issues that level the playing field georgetowncollege.edu.
between so-called major and minor figures.
“Virginia Woolf Fans Save the View…For Now”…read one recent
Attendees also enjoyed a poetry reading by Cynthia Hogue, a fiction headline as social media lit up in July about proposed construction in St.
reading by Maggie Gee, “The Mark on the Wall” art exhibition Ives, Cornwall that would obstruct the view of the Godrevy Lighthouse
in a beautiful gallery nearby, and a theatrical reading by award- from Talland House, the Stephen family’s summer home from the time
winning playwright and actress Ellen McLaughlin, performed by Ms. of Woolf’s birth in 1882 to the year of her mother’s death, 1895. Paula
McLaughlin and the Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble, called Septimus and Maggio, Social Media Coordinator for the IVWS, immediately leapt
Clarissa, followed by Mrs. Dalloway’s Party, where the audience had the into action, posting up-to-the-minute news about the plans on Facebook,
chance to don fabulous 1920s-era hats and mingle with the cast. Twitter, the VWoolf listserv, and other on-line spaces and encouraging
Woolfians around the world to send letters of protest to the Cornwall
Saturday’s banquet, always a festive occasion, was particularly special
Council about the ill-advised plan to build a block of flats and a parking
due to honored guests Cecil Woolf and Jean Moorcroft Wilson. After
garage that would forever mar a literary treasure.
the wonderful meal, Jean interviewed Cecil, asking him questions about
Aunt Virginia, Uncle Leonard, and the ongoing allure of the Bloomsbury Dozens of news outlets, including BBC News, The Guardian, and
Group. Telegraph, picked up the story, contacting Woolf scholars, common
readers, and literary tourists, all of whom decried the proposed
The conference was also notable for its impressive undergraduate
construction, and their voices were heard: After five days of frequent
presence. Dozens of students from Bloomsburg University and colleges
posts, tweets, and retweets, along with a letter-writing campaign to
across the country presented fantastic papers on the conference theme.
Cornwall Council, the Council put the plan on hold—for now. Council
Thank you, students! You are the future of the IVWS! The entire
will take up the matter again at a later date. Consider following us on
conference program may be viewed online at woolf.bloomu.edu.
Twitter @IntVWoolfSoc to keep up with this issue and other IVWS
Next up is MLA in Austin, Texas, January 7-10, 2016, and the IVWS news. If you would like to express your views on the issue, you can
has two scheduled panels, exact locations TBA: email the Cornwall Council Planning Committee at planning@cornwall.
gov.uk. Include the planning application number PA15/04337 in your
Friday, 8 January 3:30-4:45 p.m. message. For more details, visit this post on Blogging Woolf: https://
363. Textual Woolf bloggingwoolf.wordpress.com/2015/07/22/virginia-woolf-fans-save-
the-view-for-now/.
Program arranged by the International Virginia Woolf Society
New Web Site Design and Membership/Fee Structure
Presiding: Mark F. Hussey, Pace University, New York Be sure to take a look at the fresh new design of the International
Virginia Woolf Society Web site at <http://sites.utoronto.ca/IVWS/>,
1. “How Should One Read a Draft? Virginia Woolf and Moments of
which includes a wealth of information on the Society’s activities
Publication,” John Young, Marshall University
along with links to invaluable archived material. Many thanks to Melba
2. “Kindling Taste; or, How I Tried Going Paperless and (Finally) Cuddy-Keane and Alex Nica for their stellar work on this! The site
Became a Common Reader,” Benjamin Hagen, University of South also includes a revised membership form reflecting a new fee structure
Dakota intended to ensure the long-term viability of the IVWS. Our officers
and especially our Membership Coordinators, Marilyn Schwinn Smith
3. “Macroanalyzing Woolf,” Jana Millar Usiskin, University of Victoria and Lois Gilmore, worked tirelessly over several months to streamline
membership practices and bring files up to date.
For abstracts, contact [email protected] (The Society Column continues on page 55)
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