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Thank you to everyone who entered the Blogging Woolf Virginia Woolf’s Night & Day Ticket Giveaway, in collaboration with @woolfsnightandday and @quiverdistribution. We now have three winners, each of whom will get a pair of tickets to a U.S. screening of the film.

And each shared their answer to the optional question, “How did you meet Virginia Woolf?

Tickets for the “unromantic comedy” based on Virginia Woolf’s 1919 novel are available for purchase at this link.

Winners in the Blogging Woolf Night & Day Ticket Giveaway

  1. Sherry Arendt
  2. Kathleen Dixon Donnelly
  3. Diane Gillespie

Here’s how our winners first met Virginia

Sherry Arendt’s answer to “How did you first meet Virginia Woolf?”

I became aware of Virginia Woolf in the 1970s. She sounded fascinating, and over the years I bought many of her books. However, I didn’t read them; my high school teachers had convinced me I wasn’t smart enough. So, instead, I went out into the world, earned a living, and took care of animals and people.

Then lockdown. My life moved online. Having realized there are worse things than somebody’s unimaginative assessment of one’s intelligence, I took on a zoom book club that had lost its organizer. We started with Mrs. Dalloway. Being retired, and having the books, I managed. We do Woolf: novels, letters, essays, diaries, short stories; and the Woolf-adjacent: Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, T. S. Eliot, Vanessa Bell, the trench poets, Sappho, Shakespeare. Wherever my members want to go. The wonderful people who come every week have made me the most fortunate woman in the world. Every week, five years, and counting. Common readers all.

Diane Gillespie’s answer to “How did you first meet Virginia Woolf?”

We met in Mrs. Dalloway’s London, introduced in the 1960s by Professor Sarah Youngblood, one of the few women English Department faculty members at the University of Minnesota. I’ve kept in touch with Virginia Woolf through her writing ever since. Accompanied by Professor Shirley Rose, we conversed through my dissertation years at the University of Alberta. We collaborated on seminars I taught at Washington State University where the Leonard and Virginia Woolf Library resides in Manuscripts, Archives and Special Collections. Virginia Woolf continues to inspire much of what I write and publish in my retirement years.

Kathleen Dixon Donnelly’s answer to “How did you first meet Virginia Woolf?”

When I’d heard of something called the “Bloomsbury Group,” and started my research into writers who hung out together…

Share yours

Please share your reminiscences of how you first met Virginia Woolf in the comments section below.

Katharine Hilbery

A champagne toast for Katharine and William’s short-lived engagement

Mary Datchett and Katharine

A Hilbery family portrait

Katharine Hilbery in her lab

The film Virginia Woolf’s Night and Day, a playful, visually stunning adaptation of Woolf’s second novel, is now out in the U.S. for a limited run. You can enter a drawing to win a pair of tickets for this fun film with a feminist message.

Why the giveaway?

Justine Waddell, screenwriter and producer, reached out to Blogging Woolf and put us in touch with @woolfsnightandday and @quiverdistribution, who provided six free tickets for our readers, and Blogging Woolf will give them away in pairs.

How to enter the ticket giveaway

Complete the steps below and you will be entered in a drawing for two free tickets to a U.S. showing of Night and Day, which is billed as “an unromantic comedy.”

One entry per person. Submission deadline: Sept. 8, 2026.

  1. Fill out the form below.
  2. Click submit.

← Back

Thank you for your response. ✨

The drawing will be held and winners will be notified on Sept. 8, 2026.

Screenings and tickets

Night and Day will be shown in more than 100 U.S. cinemas around the country. In Ohio, where I live, it will be screened at the following theaters, beginning on the dates noted:

Cleveland/Akron
9/4 – Regal Cobblestone Square 20
9/4 Regal Medina 16
9/25 -Nightlight Cinema in Akron

Columbus
9/4 – AMC Easton Town Center 28

Dayton
9/4 – Regal Fairfield Commons 20

Cincinnati
9/4 AMC West Chester 18

Screenings will also take place in these cities:

New York Metro area, Buffalo, Hartford/New Haven, Boston, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, D.C., Norfolk, Atlanta, Augusta, Jacksonville, Orlando/Daytona Beach, Miami/Ft. Lauderdale, Ft. Myers/Naples, Tampa/St. Pete, Huntsville/Decatur, Nashville, Memphis, Louisville, Detroit, Lansing, Indianapolis, Chicago Peoria/Bloomington, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Kansas City, Dallas/Ft. Worth, Houston, San Antonio, Oklahoma City, Wichita/Hutchinson, Salt Lake City, Denver, Albuquerque/Santa Fe, Phoenix/Sedona, Tucson, Los Angeles, Palm Springs, Santa Barbara, Portland, Seattle, and Spokane.

To find a theatre near you, check Fandango.

Watch the trailer below for more.

Terms and conditions of the ticket giveaway, via Fandango

Terms and Conditions: Limited time offer. Fandango Promotional Code (“Code”) is good for up to $15 off (total ticket price and associated fees and charges) the purchase of one movie ticket to see Virginia Woolf’s Night & Day at participating Fandango theaters in the US. Code must be entered at checkout. Code is void, and can no longer be used, if not redeemed by 11/30/26 or when Virginia Woolf’s Night & Day is no longer in theaters, whichever comes first. Only valid for purchase of movie tickets made at Fandango.com or via the Fandango app and cannot be redeemed directly at any theater box office. If lost or stolen, cannot be replaced. No cash value, except as required by law. Void where prohibited. Not valid with any other offer. Offer valid in U.S. and D.C., excluding U.S. territories and where prohibited by law. One-time use only. Non-transferable. Not for resale; void if sold or exchanged. If cost of movie ticket with Fandango’s associated fees and charges included is more than Code’s maximum discount, then user must pay the difference. Any price difference between movie ticket purchased and Code’s maximum discount will not be refunded. Excludes multiple admission tickets. Fandango Loyalty Solutions, LLC is not a sponsor or co-sponsor of this offer. The redemption of the Code is subject to Fandango’s Terms and Policies at www.fandango.com/terms-and-policies. FANDANGO is a registered trademark of Fandango Media, LLC.

It’s Sept. 1, which means we have only three days to wait until the U.S. Sept. 4 release of the film Virginia Woolf’s Night and Day, a playful and visually stunning adaptation of  Woolf’s second and longest novel that emphasizes her feminist theme.

Night & Day is an unromantic comedy about a passionate astronomer Katharine Hilbery who does everything she can to avoid romantic love and marriage. – official synopsis

Screenings and tickets

A Hilbery family portrait

The film will be shown in more than 100 U.S. cinemas in these cities: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Boston, Washington DC, Seattle, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Dallas, Denver, Minneapolis, Portland, Phoenix, Austin, San Diego, Miami, Detroit, Cleveland and Nashville.

You can purchase tickets at this link.

Released in the UK on June 19, after premiering in the European market early this year, Digital Spy called it a “refreshing” period drama.

The cast and the changes

Katharine Hilbery in her lab

Set in 1910, Night and Day stars Haley Bennett playing Katharine Hilbery as a would-be astronomer who wants to study at Cambridge.

Coincidentally, Haley spent her early years split between Ohio and Florida, which included attending high school in Stow, an Ohio city adjacent to mine.

Justine Waddel wrote the screenplay and produced the film. Simon Goff wrote the energetic score. Both were part of an interesting post-screening discussion at the 35th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf: Woolf and Sound in Istanbul in June, which was moderated by Woolf scholar Anne Fernald.

Here are some of the changes to Woolf’s novel that the film includes:

  • Jennifer Saunders and Timothy Spall play Mrs. and Mr. Hilbery, who are rather different from their novelistic originals,

    Katharine

  • Elyas M’Barek is “working-class editor” Ralph Denham,
  • Jack Whitehall is an effectual William Rodney, who confuses ‘astrologer’ with ‘astronomer’; and
  • singer Lily Allen is forthright suffragette Mary Datchet.

Filming locations

Filming took place last year at sites in in the north-east of England:

  • Literary and Philosophical Society (Newcastle upon Tyne)
  • Common Room of the Great North (The Mining Institute, also in Newcastle)
  • Ryhope Engines Museum (Sunderland)
  • Tanfield Railway (Gateshead/Durham) and
  • Beamish Museum (County Durham); as well as in Cologne.

Woolf’s novel and the film

Mary Datchet and Katharine

Woolf published Night and Day in 1919 and dedicated it to her artist sister Vanessa Bell, who readers — and Woolf herself — identify as Katharine Hilbery.

In writing the novel, Woolf noted in one of her letters that she was concerned with “the whole question . . . of the things one doesn’t say; what effect does that have?” (L2 400).

So does the film.

Mark Hussey, author of Virginia Woolf A To Z (1995), describes the novel as

“a comic novel of manners concerning five young people struggling with issue of love and work, engagement and marriage, in London in the early years of the twentieth century as the Edwardian generation Woolf herself belonged to sought to escape the social and moral strictures of their parents’ Victorian world. (183).

So does the film.

Fun and contemporary in tone, this refreshing film showcases an ensemble of humourous performances against the ravishing backdrop of London in 1910, advances in science and technology and crumbling Edwardian patriarchy. – official synopsis

Watch the trailer below for more.

Edward Mendelson had a need. While working on the text of To the Lighthouse, the Virginia Woolf scholar wanted to use a hard-copy facsimile of the first edition. And since he couldn’t find anything available online, he created his own.

Now he has made that facsimile available to everyone as a hard copy print-on-demand edition. It can be purchased via Amazon at the lowest price the mammoth online retailer allows.

Here’s how Mendelson describes the volume, which uses his “low-quality scans of the first edition” of Woolf’s 1927 novel printed by the Hogarth Press:

This is an absolutely no-frills production, with plain paper covers and all the faults of my original scans. But it’s there if anyone wants it. Despite its faults, it’s surprisingly satifisfying to work with.

They are the same scans that Mendelson posted online some time ago.

How to purchase it

About Mendelson

Mendelson is the Lionel Trilling Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University. His new book, The Inner Life of Mrs Dalloway, came out last year from Columbia University Press. Mendelson also edited Mrs. Dalloway: The First-Edition Text with the Author’s Revisions, which was published by New York Review Books.

Pioneer. Visionary. Rebel. That’s how economist and Bloomsbury Group member John Maynard Keynes is portrayed in a new play on stage at the Theatre Royal Haymarket in London for a limited run Sept. 21 – Dec. 12.

Titled The Standard of Living, the play is written by James Graham and directed by Nicholas Hytner. It is billed as the story of how Keynes — husband to ballerina Lydia Lopokova, lover to Duncan Grant, and friend to Virginia Woolf — moved between the corridors of power in Whitehall and his circle of creative, rule-breaking friends.

It also explores the question: What is a good life? while markets crash, old systems crumble and Britain teeters on the edge of chaos.

Including music, dance, desire and debate, The Standard of Living is being called “a thrilling, funny and deeply moving portrait of a man who dared to imagine something better.”

Get tickets

Performances:
Monday – Wednesday, 7 p.m.
Thursday to Saturday 7:3 p.m.
Thursday & Saturday 2:30 p.m.

Tickets from £25, are available through the Theatre Royal Haymarket website.