August | 2007 | Blogging Woolf

Archive for August, 2007

Steamy summer Bloomsbury reads

Posted in a blog of her own, Blogging Woolf, Bloomsbury, books, Duncan Grant, Harold Nicolson, Juliet Nicolson, Orlando, The Perfect Summer, Vanessa Bell, Virginia Woolf, Vita Sackville-West, Woolf blog on Thursday 9 August 2007| 5 Comments »

Juliet Nicolson’s social history, The Perfect Summer: England 1911, Just Before the Storm, focuses on a time period some reviewers call “the high noon of the Victorian era.” Her first book tells the story of the super-hot summer of 1911 in England, covering the steamy sex lives of the upper crust and the economic trials of the working class.

The Bloomsbury connection to this London Daily Mail’s book club choice is the fact that its author is the granddaughter of Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West, Woolf’s lover in the 1920s and the inspiration for her psuedo-biography Orlando. Granddaughter Juliet lives in South Cottage, a 2-bedroom Elizabethan on the grounds of Sissinghurst Castle, her grandparents’ former home in Cranbrook, England.

Read a review of the book, which came out in May, in the Guardian or the Washington Post.

In Uncommon Arrangements, Katie Roiphe chronicles the romances of seven post-Victorian power couples, as well as their theories about modernizing marriage. Vanessa and Clive Bell are one couple among the seven.

They are singled out for attention because of their unusual living arrangements, including Vanessa’s longtime relationship with the bi- or homosexual Duncan Grant while she was still married to Clive.

Another couple with a connection to Woolf who is thrust into the limelight in this book is Lady Ottoline Morrell and her husband Phillip.

Is the book wise and witty, as Wall Street Journal writer David Propson pronounces? Or shallow and irksome, as noted by Michelle Green of the New York Times? Only the reader can decide.

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Two retreats of our own

Posted in a blog of her own, A Room of Her Own Foundation, A Room of One's Own, Blogging Woolf, Ghost Ranch, Hedgebrook, Virginia Woolf, women, tagged A Room of Her Own Foundation on Tuesday 7 August 2007| 1 Comment »

Virginia Woolf’s idea that a woman needs a room of her own in order to write fiction has inspired two retreat sites in the U.S. for women writers — as well as a $50,000 award that provides worthy women writers with an income of their own.

Room of Her Own on Ghost Ranch
A Room of Her Own Foundation, located in New Mexico, bills its nonprofit mission as “furthering the vision of writer Virginia Woolf by bridging the often fatal gap between a woman’s economic reality and her artistic creation.”

The foundation nurtures women writers in several ways. It offers writing retreats, as well as a $50,000 Gift of Freedom Award for worthy women writers. The award provides the winner with an income of her own while she completes her writing project.

Meredith Hall, whose 2007 Without a Map has received widespread critical acclaim, was the recipient of the 2004 Gift of Freedom Award. The award gave Hall the freedom to finish her book, which was originally conceived as a collection of essays but ultimately became a memoir.

I just finished reading Hall’s book, which begins with her experience as a 15-year-old teenager facing the harsh consequences of being pregnant and unmarried in a small New Hampshire town in 1965. Her sad and thoughtful story gripped me in a way that few stories do. I also found myself captivated by the beauty of her writing. But what affected me the most was the wisdom and insight she has drawn from her life experiences and the power of her honest portrayal of them.

As for the six-day retreats that A Room of Her Own Foundation sponsors, they give women the time and place to do solitary writing and the opportunity to attend group workshops and discussions. Retreats are held at Georgia O’Keefe’s Ghost Ranch in Abiquiu, New Mexico. Scholarships are available.

The foundation’s Web site has a page dedicated to Woolf. It also has a store that features a tote bag and a CD, both titled “A Room of Her Own.”

Hedgebrook faces Puget Sound
Then there’s Hedgebrook, a retreat well-known within the international writers’ community. It has hosted more than 1,000 women writers — about 40 each year — from all over the world. Residencies range from two weeks to two months, and they are offered to selected writers at no cost.

Writers chosen for the program are housed in handcrafted cottages on Whidbey Island, about 35 miles northwest of Seattle. Hedgebrook itself is situated on 48 acres of forest and meadow facing Puget Sound.

Resident writers spend their days in solitude – writing, reading, and walking. In the evenings, they gather in the farmhouse kitchen to share a home-cooked gourmet meal, along with their work, if they like.

The residency season runs from early February to mid-November, and the selection process begins in the fall of each year. Hedgebrook was co-founded by philanthropist Nancy Nordhoff in 1988 and became a non-profit in 2001.

Read the latest news about Hedgebrook and Lynne Varner’s column about the retreat published in The Seattle Times.

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Picture Woolf in Ireland

Posted in a blog of her own, Blogging Woolf, Ireland, Leonard Woolf, Virginia Woolf, Woolf diary, Woolf Travel on Sunday 5 August 2007| Leave a Comment »

It took a few days, but I finally posted my photos of sites Virginia and Leonard Woolf saw when they made their sole trip to Ireland in 1934. Follow Woolf to Ireland to see them all. You’ll also find excerpts from Woolf’s Diary that describe the sites pictured.

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Woolf and “the rocks and the desolate bays” of Ireland

Posted in a blog of her own, Blogging Woolf, Ireland, Jan Morris, Leonard Woolf, Virginia Woolf, Woolf blog, Woolf diary, Woolf Travel on Friday 3 August 2007| Leave a Comment »

Two years ago, just as my husband and I were packing for an upcoming trip to Ireland, a question popped into my head. Did Virginia Woolf ever visit the island?

Determined to find out, I searched Woolf’s diaries. I felt like an archaelogist uncovering a rare find when I discovered several entries that mentioned the holiday in Ireland she and Leonard took in late April and early May of 1934.

Just before we headed out the door to catch our flight to Dublin, I jotted down a few scrappy notes and stuffed the paper into my carryon bag.

Woman on a mission
On the afternoon of our first day on the isle, I pulled the crumpled paper out of my pocket. I was a woman on a mission.

“Shelbourne Hotel,” I announced, as we wandered unknown streets just blocks away from our small but charming hotel, where we had dropped our bags and napped briefly before heading out to explore. “We have to find the Shelbourne Hotel. Woolf had lunch there in 1934.”

A block later we looked up, and there it was. My excitement was so great that while I was snapping tipsy-looking photos of the Shelbourne, I gestured too exuberantly. My digital camera flew out of my hand, landed hard, and skidded across the pavement.

Undaunted, we dashed across the street and into the still posh 1824 Shelbourne. So posh in fact that it’s known as Dublin’s largest five-star luxury hotel. Inside the Lord Mayor’s Lounge, we ordered afternoon tea.

A moment later, when I failed in my attempt to take a surreptitious photo of the well-appointed lounge, I began my lamentations. My camera was dead. Interior photos of the grand Shelbourne Hotel, where Woolf had lunched on 6 May 1934, were not to be.

The photo of the Lord Mayor’s Lounge posted above is from the hotel’s Web site, as is the photo at right, which pictures the Heritage Lounge across the hall. My guess is that Woolf lunched in one of the two rooms on the day of her visit.

A mission of his own
After tea, my husband had a mission of his own. Determined to soothe the troubled soul of his distraught and stymied shutterbug, he escorted me into the first camera store we saw on Grafton Street, where we bought a functioning replacement.

And as we traveled through Dublin and Galway, two cities on our itinerary as well as Woolf’s, we used our purchase to capture the 2004 versions of some of the places mentioned in her 1934 diary entries.

Follow Woolf to Ireland
I’m sharing our Woolf-related photos from that trip on a new page titled, Follow Woolf to Ireland. The link appears on the In her steps page.

The photos aren’t the best — I hadn’t yet learned the features of my new emergency camera — but they are a visual representation of some of what Woolf mentions in her diary about her only trip to Ireland. Accompanying the photos are appropriate snippets from her diary.

Another traveling resource
After our trip, I found an invaluable resource for anyone interested in following in Woolf’s traveling footsteps. Travels with Virginia Woolf, edited by Jan Morris, follows Woolf as she journeys through England, Ireland, Wales, Greece, Spain, Italy, France, Germany, and Turkey.

Morris combines pertinent entries from Woolf’s diaries with her own commentary about the places mentioned. Reviewers have found Morris’s book worth a look, too.

Now sit back and follow Woolf to Ireland.

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Woolf takes the hits

Posted in a blog of her own, Blogging Woolf, Virginia Woolf, Woolf blog on Thursday 2 August 2007| 2 Comments »

I have exciting news for Woolfians everywhere: In less than 24 hours, Blogging Woolf was number three on the WordPress list of fastest growing blogs. This is the list that shows up on the Dashboard page of bloggers who use WordPress.