Editing Virginia Woolf (section)

== Work ==
[[File:Roger Fry - Virginia Woolf.jpg|thumb|upright|A portrait of Woolf by [[Roger Fry]] {{circa|1917}}|alt= Portrait of Woolf in 1917 by Roger Fry]] [[File:StracheyWoolf.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Lytton Strachey]] and Woolf at [[Garsington Manor|Garsington]], 1923|alt=Lytton Strachey with Virginia Woolf 1923 ]]
[[File:Virginia Woolf 1927.jpg|thumb|upright|Woolf in 1927|alt=Portrait of Virginia Woolf 1927]]
Woolf is considered to be one of the most important 20th-century novelists.{{sfn|Curtis|2006|p=4}} A [[literary modernism|modernist]], she was one of the pioneers of using [[stream of consciousness (narrative mode)|stream of consciousness]] as a [[narrative device]], alongside contemporaries such as [[Marcel Proust]],{{sfn|Leonard|1981}}{{sfn|Taunton|2016}} [[Dorothy Richardson]] and [[James Joyce]].{{sfn|Rahn|2018}}{{sfn|Goldman|2001}}<ref name=Ross10/> Woolf's reputation was at its greatest during the 1930s, but declined considerably following the Second World War. The growth of [[Feminist literary criticism|feminist criticism]] in the 1970s helped re-establish her reputation.{{sfn|Beja|1985|pp=1, 3, 53}}{{sfn|Snodgrass|2015}}

Virginia submitted her first article in 1890, to a competition in ''[[Tit-Bits]]''. Although it was rejected, this shipboard romance by the eight-year-old would presage her first novel 25 years later, as would contributions to the ''Hyde Park News'', such as the model letter "to show young people the right way to express what is in their hearts", a subtle commentary on her mother's legendary matchmaking.{{sfn|Licence|2015|p=20}}<ref name=Alexander46/> She transitioned from juvenilia to professional journalism in 1904 at the age of 22. Violet Dickinson introduced her to [[Kathleen Lyttelton]], the editor of the ''Women's Supplement'' of ''[[The Guardian (Anglican newspaper)|The Guardian]]'', a Church of England newspaper. Invited to submit a 1,500-word article, Virginia sent Lyttelton a review of [[William Dean Howells]]' ''The Son of Royal Langbirth'' and an essay about her visit to [[Haworth]] that year, ''Haworth, November 1904''.{{sfn|Gordon|2004}} The review was published anonymously on 4 December, and the essay on the 21st.{{sfn|Bell|1972|loc=Chronology |p=194}}<ref name=Koutsantoni5/> In 1905, Woolf began writing for ''[[The Times Literary Supplement]]'' (TLS);{{sfn|Liukkonen|2008}} in 2019, the ''TLS'' would publish a collection of her essays entitled ''Genius and Ink: Virginia Woolf on How to Read'',<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/dec/21/genius-and-ink-virginia-woolf-how-to-read-review|title=Genius and Ink by Virginia Woolf review – essays on 'how to read'|newspaper=The Guardian|first=Aida|last=Edemariam|author-link=Aida Edemariam|date=21 December 2019|access-date=2 May 2025}}</ref> which originally appeared anonymously, as did all their reviews.<ref>{{cite magazine|url=https://www.the-tls.co.uk/literature/literary-criticism/genius-and-ink-virginia-woolf|title=Genius and ink: An introduction to Virginia Woolf's writing for the TLS|first=Francesca|last=Wade|magazine=TLS|date=15 November 2019|access-date=1 May 2025}}</ref>

Woolf went on to publish novels and essays as a public intellectual to both critical and popular acclaim. Much of her work was self-published through the [[Hogarth Press]]. "Virginia Woolf's peculiarities as a fiction writer have tended to obscure her central strength: she is arguably the major [[lyric poetry|lyrical]] novelist in the English language. Her novels are highly experimental: a narrative, frequently uneventful and commonplace, is refracted—and sometimes almost dissolved—in the characters' receptive consciousness. Intense lyricism and stylistic virtuosity fuse to create a world overabundant with auditory and visual impressions."<ref name=Shukla51/> "The intensity of Virginia Woolf's poetic vision elevates the ordinary, sometimes banal settings"—often wartime environments—"of most of her novels."<ref name=Shukla51/>

Though at least one biography of Virginia Woolf appeared in her lifetime, the first authoritative study of her life was published in 1972 by her nephew Quentin Bell. [[Hermione Lee]]'s 1996 biography ''Virginia Woolf''{{sfn|Lee|1997a}} provides a thorough and authoritative examination of Woolf's life and work, which she discussed in an interview in 1997.{{sfn|Lee|1997b}} In 2001, [[Louise DeSalvo]] and Mitchell A. Leaska edited ''The Letters of Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf''. Julia Briggs's ''Virginia Woolf: An Inner Life'' (2005) focuses on Woolf's writing, including her novels and her commentary on the creative process, to illuminate her life. The sociologist Pierre Bourdieu also uses Woolf's literature to understand and analyse gender domination. Woolf biographer [[Gillian Gill]] notes that Woolf's traumatic experience of sexual abuse by her half-brothers during her childhood influenced her advocacy for the protection of vulnerable children from similar experiences.{{sfn|Haynes|2019a}} [[Biljana Dojčinović]] has discussed the issues surrounding translations of Woolf to Serbian as a "border-crossing".<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Dojčinović-Nešić |first=Biljana |date=1 February 2010 |title=Translation as Border-Crossing: Virginia Woolf's Case |url=https://journals.openedition.org/trans/417 |journal=TRANS-. Revue de littérature générale et comparée |volume=9 |language=en |issue=9 |doi=10.4000/trans.417 |issn=1778-3887}}</ref>

=== Themes ===
Woolf's fiction has been studied for its insight into many themes including war, shell shock, witchcraft, and the role of social class in contemporary modern British society.{{sfn|Harrington|2018}} In the postwar ''Mrs Dalloway'' (1925), Woolf addresses the moral dilemma of war and its effects{{sfn|Floyd|2016}}{{sfn|Bradshaw|2016}} and provides an authentic voice for soldiers returning from the First World War, suffering from shell shock, in the person of Septimus Smith.{{sfn|Church|2016}} In ''A Room of One's Own'' (1929) Woolf equates historical accusations of witchcraft with creativity and genius among women "When, however, one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman possessed by devils...then I think we are on the track of a lost novelist, a suppressed poet, of some mute and inglorious Jane Austen".<ref name=ROO3/> Throughout her work Woolf tried to evaluate the degree to which her privileged background [[framing (social sciences)|framed]] the lens through which she viewed class.{{sfn|Madden|2006}} She examined her own position as someone who would be considered an elitist snob but attacked the class structure of Britain as she found it. In her 1936 essay ''Am I a Snob?'' she examined her values and those of the privileged circle she existed in. She concluded she was, and subsequent critics and supporters have tried to deal with the dilemma of being both elite and a social critic.{{sfn|Hite|2004}}{{sfn|Latham|2003}}{{sfn|Bas|2008}}

The sea is a recurring motif in Woolf's work. Noting Woolf's early memory of listening to waves break in Cornwall, [[Katharine Smyth]] writes in ''[[The Paris Review]]'' that "the radiance [of] cresting water would be consecrated again and again in her writing, saturating not only essays, diaries, and letters but also ''Jacob's Room'', ''The Waves'', and ''To the Lighthouse''."<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/01/29/where-virginia-woolf-listened-to-the-waves/|work=The Paris Review|title=Where Virginia Woolf Listened to the Waves|date=29 January 2019|first=Katharine|last=Smyth|access-date=21 January 2021|archive-date=3 February 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210203232339/https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/01/29/where-virginia-woolf-listened-to-the-waves/|url-status=live}}</ref> Patrizia A. Muscogiuri explains that "seascapes, sailing, diving and the sea itself are aspects of nature and of human beings' relationship with it which frequently inspired Virginia Woolf's writing."<ref>{{Cite book|last=Muscogiuri|first=Patrizia|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=CvMwDgAAQBAJ|title=Virginia Woolf and the Natural World|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=2011|isbn=9781942954149|edition=First|location=UK|pages=258|access-date=1 February 2021|archive-date=18 August 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210818052523/https://books.google.com/books?id=CvMwDgAAQBAJ|url-status=live}}</ref> This trope is deeply embedded in her texts' structure and grammar; James Antoniou notes in ''[[Sydney Morning Herald]]'' how "Woolf made a virtue of the [[semicolon]], the shape and function of which resembles the wave, her most famous motif."<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.smh.com.au/culture/books/the-punctuation-mark-that-causes-so-much-angst-20190919-p52t17.html|work=The Sydney Morning Herald|title=The punctuation mark that causes so much angst|date=27 September 2019|first=James|last=Antoniou|access-date=21 January 2021|archive-date=4 February 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210204063951/https://www.smh.com.au/culture/books/the-punctuation-mark-that-causes-so-much-angst-20190919-p52t17.html|url-status=live}}</ref>

Despite the considerable conceptual difficulties, given Woolf's idiosyncratic use of language,{{sfn|Brassard|2016}} her works have been translated into over 50 languages.{{sfn|Harrington|2018}}{{sfn|Pratt|2017}} Some writers, such as the Belgian [[Marguerite Yourcenar]], had rather tense encounters with her, while others, such as the Argentinian [[Jorge Luis Borges]], produced versions that were highly controversial.{{sfn|Brassard|2016}}{{sfn|Snodgrass|2015}}

=== Drama ===
{{main|Freshwater (play)}}
Virginia Woolf researched the life of her great-aunt, the photographer [[Julia Margaret Cameron]], publishing her findings in an essay titled "Pattledom" (1925),<ref name="WoolfEssay4/280"/> and later in her introduction to her 1926 edition of Cameron's photographs.{{sfn|Cameron|1926}}{{sfn|Swenson|2017}} She had begun work on a play based on an episode in Cameron's life in 1923 but abandoned it. Finally, it was performed on 18 January 1935 at the studio of her sister, [[Vanessa Bell]] on Fitzroy Street in 1935.{{sfn|Wilson |Barrett|2003}} Woolf directed it herself, and the cast were mainly members of the Bloomsbury Group, including herself. ''Freshwater'' is a short three act comedy satirising the [[Victorian era]], only performed once in Woolf's lifetime. Beneath the comedic elements, there is an exploration of both generational change and artistic freedom. Both Cameron and Woolf fought against the class and gender dynamics of Victorianism{{sfn|Usui|2007}} and the play shows links to both ''[[To the Lighthouse]]'' and ''[[A Room of One's Own]]'' that would follow.{{sfn|Swenson|2017}}

=== Non-fiction ===
Woolf wrote a body of autobiographical work and more than 500 essays and reviews,{{sfn|Hussey|2006}} some of which, like ''A Room of One's Own'' (1929) were of book-length. Not all were published in her lifetime. Shortly after her death, Leonard Woolf produced an edited edition of unpublished essays titled ''The Moment and other Essays'', published by the Hogarth Press in 1947. Many of these were originally lectures that she gave,{{sfn|Trilling|1948}} and several more volumes of essays followed, such as ''The Captain's Death Bed: and other essays'' (1950).

==== ''A Room of One's Own'' ====
{{main|A Room of One's Own}}
Among Woolf's non-fiction works, one of the best known is ''A Room of One's Own'' (1929), a book-length essay divided into six chapters. Considered a key work of feminist literary criticism, it was written following two lectures she delivered on "Women and Fiction" at Cambridge University the previous year. In it, she examines the historical disempowerment women have faced in many spheres, including social, educational and financial. One of her more famous dicta is contained within the book "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction". Much of her argument ("to show you how I arrived at this opinion about the room and the money") is developed through the "unsolved problems" of women and fiction writing to arrive at her conclusion, although she claimed that was only "an opinion upon one minor point".{{sfn|British Library|2018a}} In doing so, she states a good deal about the nature of women and fiction, employing a quasi-fictional style as she examines where women writers failed because of lack of resources and opportunities, examining along the way the experiences of the [[Brontë family|Brontës]], [[George Eliot]] and [[George Sand]], as well as the fictional character of [[Shakespeare]]'s sister, equipped with the same genius but not position. She contrasts these women who accepted a deferential status with [[Jane Austen]], who wrote entirely as a woman.{{sfn|Kronenberger|1929}}

=== Hogarth Press ===
{{main|Hogarth Press}}
[[File:Shakespeare Plays hand bound by Virginia Woolf.JPG|thumb|Shelf of [[Shakespeare]] plays hand-bound by Virginia Woolf in her bedroom at [[Monk's House]]{{efn|It has been suggested that Woolf bound books to help cope with her depression, as is hinted at in her writing: "A great part of every day is not lived consciously. One walks, eats, sees things, deals with what has to be done; the broken vacuum cleaner; ... cooking dinner; bookbinding."{{sfn|Sim|2016}}{{page needed|date=July 2024}}}}]]
Virginia had taken up book-binding as a pastime in October 1901, at the age of 19.{{sfn|Bell|1972|loc=Chronology |p=192}}{{sfn|Heyes|2016}} The Woolfs had been discussing setting up a publishing house for some time{{snd}}Leonard intended for it to give Virginia a rest from the strain of writing, and thereby help her fragile mental health. Additionally, publishing her works under their own outfit would save her from the stress of submitting her work to an external company, which contributed to her breakdown during the process of publishing her first novel ''The Voyage Out''.{{efn|Her second novel, ''[[Night and Day (Woolf novel)|Night and Day]]'' (1919), was also published by Duckworth's, but ''[[Jacob's Room]]'' (1922) was published by Hogarth.{{sfn|Heyes|2016}}}} The Woolfs obtained their own hand-printing press in April 1917 and set it up on their dining room table at Hogarth House, thus beginning the [[Hogarth Press]].{{sfn|Heyes|2016}}{{sfn|Zakaria|2017}}

The first publication was ''Two Stories'' in July 1917, consisting of "The Mark on the Wall" by Virginia Woolf (which has been described as "Woolf's first foray into modernism"{{sfn|McTaggart|2010|p=67}}) and "Three Jews" by Leonard Woolf. The accompanying illustrations by [[Dora Carrington]] were a success, leading Virginia to remark that the press was "specially good at printing pictures, and we see that we must make a practice of always having pictures." The process took two and a half months with a production run of 150 copies.{{sfn|British Library|2018c}} Other short stories followed, including ''[[Kew Gardens (short story)|Kew Gardens]]'' (1919) with a [[woodblock printing|woodblock]] by Vanessa Bell as [[book frontispiece|frontispiece]].{{sfn|Todd|1999|p=13}} Subsequently Bell added further illustrations, adorning each page of the text.{{sfn|British Library|2018d}}

Unlike its contemporary small printers, who specialised in expensive artisanal reprints, the Woolfs concentrated on living avant-garde authors,{{sfn|McTaggart|2010|p=63}} and over the subsequent five years printed works by authors including [[Katherine Mansfield]], [[T.S. Eliot]], [[E. M. Forster]], Clive Bell and Roger Fry. They also produced translations of Russian works with [[S. S. Koteliansky]], and the first translation of the complete works of [[Sigmund Freud]].{{sfn|McTaggart|2010|p=68}}{{sfn|Heyes|2016}} They acquired a larger press in 1921 and began to sell directly to booksellers.{{sfn|Heyes|2016}} In 1938 Virginia sold her share of the company to [[John Lehmann]],{{sfn|Bell|1972|p=250}} who had started working for Hogarth Press seven years previously.{{sfn|Lee|1997a|p=590}} The Press eventually became Leonard's only source of income, but his association with it ended in 1946, after publishing 527 titles, and Hogarth is now an imprint of [[Penguin Random House]].{{sfn|Zakaria|2017}}{{sfn|Heyes|2016}}

The Press also produced explicitly political works. Pamphlets had fallen out of fashion due to the high production costs and low revenue, but the Hogarth Press produced several series on contemporary issues of international politics, challenging colonialism and critiquing Soviet Russia and Italian fascism.{{sfn|McTaggart|2010|pp=72,74}} The Woolfs also published political fiction, including ''Turbott Wolfe'' (1926) by [[William Plomer]] and ''In a Province'' (1934) by [[Laurens van der Post]], which concern South African racial policies and revolutionary movements respectively.{{sfn|McTaggart|2010|p=75}} Virginia Woolf saw a link between international politics and feminism, publishing a biography of Indian feminist activist [[Saroj Nalini Dutt]] and the memoirs of [[suffragette]] [[Elizabeth Robins]].{{sfn|McTaggart|2010|p=71}} Scholar Ursula McTaggart argues that the Hogarth Press shaped and represented Woolf's later concept of an "Outsiders' Society", a non-organised group of women who would resist "the patriarchal fascism of war and nationalism" by exerting influence through private actions, as described in ''Three Guineas''. In this view, the readers and authors form a loose network, with the Press providing the means to exchange ideas.{{sfn|McTaggart|2010|pp=63,65,66,70}}

=== Influences ===

Sybil Oldfield examines Woolf's convinced pacifism, its sources and its expression in her life and works.<ref name=":0" />

Michel Lackey argues that a major influence on Woolf, from 1912 onward, was Russian literature and Woolf adopted many of its aesthetic conventions.{{sfn|Lackey|2012}} The style of [[Fyodor Dostoyevsky]] with his depiction of a fluid mind in operation helped to influence Woolf's writings about a "discontinuous writing process", though Woolf objected to Dostoyevsky's obsession with "psychological extremity" and the "tumultuous flux of emotions" in his characters together with his right-wing, monarchist politics as Dostoyevsky was an ardent supporter of the autocracy of the [[Russian Empire]].{{sfn|Lackey|2012}} In contrast to her objections to Dostoyevsky's "exaggerated emotional pitch", Woolf found much to admire in the work of [[Anton Chekhov]] and [[Leo Tolstoy]].{{sfn|Lackey|2012}} Woolf admired Chekhov for his stories of ordinary people living their lives, doing banal things and plots that had no neat endings.{{sfn|Lackey|2012}} From Tolstoy, Woolf drew lessons about how a novelist should depict a character's psychological state and the interior tension within.{{sfn|Lackey|2012}} Lackey notes that, from [[Ivan Turgenev]], Woolf drew the lessons that there are multiple "I's" when writing a novel, and the novelist needed to balance those multiple versions of him- or herself to balance the "mundane facts" of a story vs. the writer's overarching vision, which required a "total passion" for art.{{sfn|Lackey|2012}}

The American writer [[Henry David Thoreau]] also influenced Woolf. In a 1917 essay, she praised Thoreau for his statement "The millions are awake enough for physical labor, but only one in hundreds of millions is awake enough to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive." They both aimed to capture 'the moment'––as Walter Pater says, "to burn always with this hard, gem-like flame."<ref>Walter Pater. The Renaissance Studies in Art and Poetry. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2398/2398-h/2398-h.htm {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210428025903/http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2398/2398-h/2398-h.htm |date=28 April 2021 }}</ref>{{sfn|Majumdar|1969}} Woolf praised Thoreau for his "simplicity" in finding "a way for setting free the delicate and complicated machinery of the soul".{{sfn|Majumdar|1969}} Like Thoreau, Woolf believed that it was silence that set the mind free to really contemplate and understand the world.{{sfn|Majumdar|1969}} Both authors believed in a certain transcendental, mystical approach to life and writing, where even banal things could be capable of generating deep emotions if one had enough silence and the presence of mind to appreciate them.{{sfn|Majumdar|1969}} Woolf and Thoreau were both concerned with the difficulty of human relationships in the modern age.{{sfn|Majumdar|1969}}

Woolf's preface to [[Orlando: A Biography|''Orlando'']] credits [[Daniel Defoe]], [[Sir Thomas Browne]], [[Laurence Sterne]], [[Sir Walter Scott]], [[Thomas Babington Macaulay|Lord Macaulay]], [[Emily Brontë]], [[Thomas de Quincey]], and [[Walter Pater]] as influences.{{sfn|Woolf|1928}}{{page needed|date=June 2024}} Among her contemporaries, Woolf was influenced by [[Marcel Proust]], writing to [[Roger Fry]], "Oh if I could write like that!"<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Shore |first=Elizabeth M. |date=Summer 1979 |title=Virginia Woolf, Proust, and Orlando |journal=[[Comparative Literature]] |volume=31 |issue=3 |pages=232–245 |doi=10.2307/1770923 |jstor=1770923}}</ref>

==== Virginia Woolf and her mother ====
The intense scrutiny of Virginia Woolf's literary output has led to speculation as to her mother's influence, including psychoanalytic studies of mother and daughter.<ref name=MP67/>{{sfn|Rosenman|1986}}<ref name=MH91/><ref name=Hirsch108/> Her memories of her mother are memories of an obsession,<ref name=Birrento69/> starting with her first major breakdown on her mother's death in 1895, the loss having a profound lifelong effect.<ref name=Simpson12/> In many ways, her mother's profound influence on Virginia Woolf is conveyed in the latter's recollections, "there she is; beautiful, emphatic ... closer than any of the living are, lighting our random lives as with a burning torch, infinitely noble and delightful to her children".{{sfn|Woolf|1908|p=40}}

Woolf's understanding of her mother and family evolved considerably between 1907 and 1940, in which the somewhat distant, yet revered figure, becomes more nuanced and complete.{{sfn|Schulkind|1985|p=13}} She described her mother as an "invisible presence" in her life, and Ellen Rosenman argues that the mother-daughter relationship is a constant in Woolf's writing.{{sfn|Rosenman|1986|loc=cited in {{harvtxt|Caramagno|1989}}}} She describes how Woolf's [[modernism]] needs to be viewed in relationship to her ambivalence towards her Victorian mother, the centre of the former's female identity, and her voyage to her own sense of autonomy. To Woolf, "Saint Julia" was both a martyr whose perfectionism was intimidating and a source of deprivation, by her absences real and virtual and premature death.{{sfn|Caramagno|1989}} Julia's influence and memory pervade Woolf's life and work. "She has haunted me", she wrote.{{sfn|Woolf|1923–1928|p=374}}

=== Historical feminism ===
According to the 2007 book ''Feminism: From Mary Wollstonecraft to Betty Friedan'' by Bhaskar A. Shukla, "Recently, studies of Virginia Woolf have focused on feminist and lesbian themes in her work, such as in the 1997 collection of critical essays, ''Virginia Woolf: Lesbian Readings'', edited by Eileen Barrett and Patricia Cramer."<ref name=Shukla51/> In 1928, Woolf took a grassroots approach to informing and inspiring feminism. She addressed undergraduate women at the ODTAA Society at [[Girton College, Cambridge]], and the Arts Society at Newnham College, with two papers that eventually became ''[[A Room of One's Own]]'' (1929).

Woolf's best-known nonfiction works, ''[[A Room of One's Own]]'' (1929) and ''[[Three Guineas]]'' (1938), examine the difficulties that female writers and intellectuals faced because men held disproportionate legal and economic power, as well as the future of women in education and society.<ref>{{Cite web|date=4 February 2018|title=The 1930s: 'Women had the vote, but the old agitation went on'|url=http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/feb/04/the-1930s-women-had-the-vote-but-the-old-agitation-went-on|access-date=24 January 2022|website=The Guardian|language=en}}</ref> In ''[[The Second Sex]]'' (1949), [[Simone de Beauvoir]] counts, of all women who ever lived, only three female writers—[[Emily Brontë]], Woolf and "sometimes" [[Katherine Mansfield]]—who have explored "the given".<ref name=Beauvoir53/>