Editing Virginia Woolf (section)

=== Controversies ===
[[Hermione Lee]] cites a number of extracts from Woolf's writings that many, including Lee, would consider offensive, and these criticisms can be traced back as far as those of [[Wyndham Lewis]] and [[Q. D. Leavis]] in the 1920s and 1930s.{{sfn|Lee|1995}} Other authors provide more nuanced contextual interpretations and stress the complexity of her character and the apparent inherent contradictions in analysing her apparent flaws.{{sfn|McManus|2008}} She could certainly be off-hand, rude and even cruel in her dealings with other authors, translators and biographers, such as her treatment of [[Ruth Gruber]].{{Citation needed|reason=I cannot find any sources on any relationship between Woolf and Gruber, or any comments Woolf may have made about Gruber|date=June 2022}} Some authors, including [[David Daiches]], Brenda Silver, Alison Light and other [[postcolonial]] feminists, dismiss her (and modernist authors in general) as privileged, elitist, [[classist]], racist, and [[antisemitic]].<ref>{{Citation |last=Mills |first=Jean |title=Virginia Woolf and the Politics of Class |date=14 March 2016 |url=https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781118457917.ch16 |work=A Companion to Virginia Woolf |pages=219–220 |editor-last=Berman |editor-first=Jessica |access-date=31 March 2023 |edition=1 |publisher=Wiley |language=en |doi=10.1002/9781118457917.ch16 |isbn=978-1-118-45788-7}}</ref>

Woolf's tendentious expressions, including prejudicial feelings against disabled people, have often been the topic of academic criticism:{{sfn|Lee|1995}}
{{blockquote| The first quotation is from a diary entry of September 1920 and runs: "The fact is the lower classes are detestable." The remainder follow the first in reproducing stereotypes standard to upper-class and upper-middle class life in the early 20th century: "imbeciles should certainly be killed"; "Jews" are greasy; a "crowd" is both an ontological "mass" and is, again, "detestable"; "Germans" are akin to vermin; some "baboon faced intellectuals" mix with "sad green dressed negroes and negresses, looking like chimpanzees" at a peace conference; Kensington High St. revolts one's stomach with its innumerable "women of incredible mediocrity, drab as dishwater".{{sfn|McManus|2008}}}}