A charming little volume of Carlyle’s House and Other Sketches was published by Hesperus Press in 2003, and Dr. Roy Johnson has reviewed it on the Mantex Web site.
Doris Lessing wrote the foreward for the volume, and she describes the seven sketches it contains as being “like five-finger exercises for future excellence.”
When I brought the volume home with me from England back in 2004, it wore an enticing black band of paper that pronounced it the “First ever publication” of the sketches it contained.
The book still sits unread on my shelf, along with other exciting purchases I made as I traveled to Woolf sites from London to Cornwall.
I have no excuse save the usual one: Too many books, too little time.
You can also read more about the history of the volume here.
New Yorkers had the opportunity to celebrate Virginia Woolf’s birthday two ways today — both of them on stage. Those of us who live elsewhere can do our celebrating vicariously.
Here are some links to birthday wishes for Virginia in cyberspace:
NPR broadcast a six-minute program Sunday morning on the premier of the first full production of Freshwater, Woolf’s only play. The piece included an interview with producer Julie Crosby of The Women’s Project and audio from the play itself, which is now on stage in New York. Read and listen to “In `Freshwater,’ a Lighter Side of Virginia Woolf.”
The New York Times published a review affirming Woolf’s light side too. And Newsday published a blurb.
A staged reading of Edna O’Brien’s award-winning play Virginia was held at the Arthur Seelen Theater today. The play, a 90-minute exploration of Woolf’s inner life and relationships, was followed by a question and answer session with the director and artistic director and Anne Fernald, author of Virginia Woolf: Feminism and the Reader. Anne has promised to blog about the event on Fernham, and her impressions would enhance our off-site celebration. Here is her first installment. And here is her second.
Vara Neverow posted her birthday message to the VW Listserv, informing us all that we could read a post celebrating Woolf’s life on the blog nonsuchbook, where readers were invited to post a comment about their favorite Woolf novel along with a favorite quote. Read the report of the online birthday bash, including the name of the winner of a copy of Mrs. Woolf and the Servants.
Finally, Woolf is included among notable individuals born on Jan. 25 in an online almanac listing of events that took place on this date.
Organizers of Woolf and the City, the 19th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, have put together some exciting events for the June 4-7 event, which will be held at Fordham University in New York City.
Here is the latest news from Anne Fernald, conference organizer:
Registration
Registration will be available in a few weeks. The fee will be $150 for fully employed participants with a concession rate of $100. The banquet will be an additional $50.
Accommodations
The conference Web site will soon offer details on how to reserve a room at the Hudson Hotel at the reduced rate of $259/night. There are many other options, all the way down to hostels at $30 a night and “couch surfing.”
Keynote address
Rebecca Solnit is a progressive journalist and essayist who is the author of numerous books, including Hope in the Dark (2004), Wanderlust: A History of Walking (2001), and As Eve Said to the Serpent: On Landscape, Gender, and Art (2001), which was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism. She is a recipient of the Lannan Literary Award and a grant from the Guggenheim Foundation.
Plenary talks
Tamar Katz, Brown University, author of Impressionist Subjects; Gender, Interiority, and Modernist Fiction in England, published by Univeristy of Illinois Press in 2000. She is a member of the Urban Studies Program Committee at Brown, as well as the associate editor of the Modernist Journals Project. She is now at work on a book about modernism’s use of the city and contemporary urban nostalgia.
Anna Snaith, Kings College London, author of several books including Virginia Woolf: Public and Private Negotiations,published in 2000. She is currently editing The Years for the Cambridge University Press Edition of Virginia Woolf and working on a monograph titled Colonial London: Nation, Gender and Modernity 1890-1945, which will be published by Cambridge University Press.
Jessica Berman, of the University of Maryland in Baltimore County, is the author of the 2000 book Modernist Fiction, Cosmopolitanism and the Politics of Community. She is currently at work on a book tentatively titled From Ought to Is: Modernism, Ethics, Politics, which will be published by Columbia University Press.
Special events
Before the banquet, Katherine Lanpher, host of Barnes and Noble’s acclaimed Upstairs at the Square at the Union Square B&N, will moderate a conversation with Susan Sellers, author of the new novel Vanessa and Virginia, and Dr. Ruth Gruber, feminist and activist and the author of Virginia Woolf: The Will to Create as a Woman.
A theater performance is also being planned. Stay tuned for details. ($15 supplement)
The conference book exhibit will be run by Bluestockings, the Lower East Side feminist collective bookstore. This year’s silent auction will benefit Girls Write Now, a local nonprofit that pairs NYC high school girls with women writers as mentors. Some of the girls and their mentors will be reading at a concurrent session.
Woolfians can celebrate Virginia Woolf’s 127th birthday on stage from afternoon to evening on Jan. 25 with performances of Woolf’s own play Freshwater and a staged reading of Edna O’Brien’s award-winning play Virginia.
Virginia will be performed at 12:30 p.m. Jan. 25 at the Arthur Seelen Theater. Freshwater will begin at 7 p.m. at the at the Julia Miles Theater, 424 West 55th St. Both theaters are in Manhattan.
Get details of the performance of Freshwater, Woolf’s only play, here and here.
O’Brien’s play, Virginia, is a 90-minute exploration of Woolf’s inner life, as well as her relationships with husband Leonard, lover Vita and her writing. It is sponsored by the Drama Book Shop in association with the year-old Shakespeare’s Sister Company.
After the performance, Anne Fernald, author of Virginia Woolf: Feminism and the Reader and the literary blog Fernham, will be on hand for a question and answer session. Director Joannie Mackenzie and artistic director Kris Lundberg will join her.
The event is free to the public with a suggested $10 donation in support of the Shakespeare’s Sister Company.
The Arthur Seelen Theatre is located in the basement of the Drama Book Shop, 250 W. 40th St., in Manhattan.
The news comes from Genevieve Brassard of the University of Portland, vice-president of the society.
This year’s conference theme is “Sound and Silence in the Space Between.” It will be held at the University of Notre DameJune 11 to 13. Read more here.
