A recent query to the VWoolf Listserv asked for sources regarding Virginia Woolf and Anton Chekhov. Here is a compilation of the responses that were sent round, along with several notes of my own:
- Roberta Rubenstein’s Virginia Woolf and the Russian Point of View (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). Rubenstein herself wrote to say that her work includes a full chapter on Woolf’s response to Chekhov as well an appendix that includes her own transcription of Woolf’s unpublished review, “Tchekhov on Pope.” “The review, written in 1926, was ostensibly of a new edition of Pope’s “Rape of the Lock” but is as much about Woolf’s interest in Chekhov and the Russian influence as it is about Pope’s poem,” Rubenstein wrote. See the Google preview.
- Christine Froula’s “‘The Play in the Sky of the Mind’: Dialogue, ‘the Tchekhov method’ and Between the Acts‘” in Woolf Across Cultures (Pace UP, 2004)
- Karen Smythe’s “Virginia Woolf’s Elegaic Enterprise” in NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction. Duke UP 26:1 (Autumn, 1992), pp. 64-79
- Anthony Domestico’s “The Russian Point of View” on The Modernism Lab at Yale University. Domestico is a graduate student in English at Yale.
- Darya Protopopova’s “Virginia Woolf and the Russians: Readings of Russian Literature in British Modernism,” doctoral thesis at Oxford University. The author is an alumnus of Oxford’s New College, and Hermione Lee supervised her work. See more information from Darya in her comment below.
- Virginia Woolf and Bloomsbury, an unannotated database of more than 28,000 records compiled and updated since the early 1970s, although Stuart N. Clarke, who compiled the database, wrote that it did not supply much more of significance on the topic.
Woolf herself wrote “The Russian Point of View,” in which she offers her assessments of three Russian writers: Chekhov, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. The essay can be found in The Essays of Virginia Woolf. Ed. Andrew McNeille. Vol. 4. London: Hogarth, 1994. 181-189.
In Translations from the Russian, Woolf and S.S. Koteliansky translated three works: Stavrogin’s Confession and the Plan of the Life of a Great Sinner, Tolstoi’s Love Letters and Talks with Tolstoi. This volume was edited by Stuart N. Clarke and includes an introduction by Laura Marcus.
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Dear Darya,
Thanks so much for the updated information about your article and other sources regarding Woolf and Russian writers. I made the change you noted and have directed readers to your comment.
Paula
Dear Paula,
Thank you for mentioning me in your blog. My Oxford thesis has a different title from the article to which you refer, it’s titled ‘Virginia Woolf and the Russians: Readings of Russian Literature in British Modernism’ (2009). I think your readers would find it more useful to know this exact title, in case they wish to trace it in the catalogue.
Also, the article that you mention was written long time ago and, as I later discovered, contains some minor mistakes. Moreover, it doesn’t feature Chekhov. I mention Chekhov in ‘Dostoevsky, Chekhov, and the Ballets Russes: Images of Savagery and Spirituality in the British Response to Russian Culture, 1911-1929’, The New Collection (Graduate Journal of New College, University of Oxford), ed. by Andrew McLennan. Vol. 3 (2008), 28-41. http://mcr.new.ox.ac.uk/journal/Contents2008.htm
Unfortunately, this article is not available online.
On Chekhov, Woolf also wrote
„The Cherry Orchard‟, in The Essays of Virginia Woolf, ed. by Andrew McNeillie, 4 vols (London: The Hogarth Press, 1986-1994), III, 246-9.
„The Russian Background‟ [review of Anton Tchehov, The Bishop and Other Stories, trans. by Constance Garnett (London: Chatto & Windus, 1919)], in The Essays of Virginia Woolf, ed. by Andrew McNeillie, 4 vols (London: The Hogarth Press, 1986-1994), III, 83-5.
„Tchehov‟s Questions‟ [review of Anton Tchehov, The Wife and Other Stories, trans. by Constance Garnett (London: Chatto & Windus, 1918), Idem., The Witch and Other Stories, trans. by Constance Garnett (London: Chatto & Windus, 1918), and Idem., Nine Humorous Tales, trans. by Isaac Goldberg and Henry Thomas Schnittkind (Boston: Stratford Publishing Company, 1918(?))], in The Essays of Virginia Woolf, ed. by Andrew McNeillie, 4 vols (London: The Hogarth Press, 1986-1994), II, 244-7.