Blogging Woolf

Dealing with a plagiarism case in one of my classes recently reminded me of how Mrs. Dalloway was examined for plagiarism when it was first published.

While I was heavily immersed in researching Mrs. Dalloway in graduate school, I discovered that, almost immediately, Woolf was accused of plagiarizing James Joyce’s novel Ulysses. Some of the critics who jumped in to attack Woolf included William Jenkins, Kelly Anspaugh and Hugh Kenner.

The most well known, at least to me, critic to accuse Woolf of stealing from Joyce was Wyndham Lewis, who wrote in 1934 that parts of Mrs. Dalloway were “exact and puerile copies” of Joyce’s novel. From what I saw, the majority of these attacks seemed to be more about personal issues with Woolf than any kind of intellectual criticism. In The Pseudo Homeric World of Mrs. Dalloway, Molly Hoff has more details about plagiarism accusations against Woolf and the history of plagiarism.