The blogger at sub rosa plans “to spend 2012 in companion with Virginia Woolf” in an effort to become a better writer. She chose Woolf because of her brilliant writing as well as her ability to speak with wisdom about practical things.
The Woolf works included in sub rosa’s2012 bibliography list are A Room of One’s Own, Three Guineas, To the Lighthouse, Mrs. Dalloway and Moments of Being.
This week, sub rosa posted a piece about Alexandra Harris’s biography of Woolf. The post, “Woolf & the Ramsays,” includes musings about Woolf’s relationship to her parents and to her different selves.
Of course, sub rosa is not the first to recognize Woolf’s expertise as a writing mentor and life advisor. Danell Jones wrote the book on that topic — The Virginia Woolf Writers’ Workshop: Seven Lessons to Inspire Great Writing. Read more about that here: Take a writing workshop from Virginia.
Many musicians have been inspired by Virginia Woolf. Here are two more.
Right here in the U.S. of A., the Seattle band Modest Mouse got its name from a passage in Woolf’s story “The Mark on the Wall.” Here’s how it reads: “I wish I could hit upon a pleasant track of thought, a track indirectly reflecting credit upon myself, for those are the pleasantest thoughts, and very frequent even in the minds of modest, mouse-coloured people, who believe genuinely that they dislike to hear their own praises.”
Modest Mouse
And in Italy, the eclectic band Talismanstone counts Woolf as one of many inspirations for its lyrics. The group hails from Ravenna.
Here are links to other music with a connection to Woolf. They are also listed in the right sidebar under the heading “Music.”
She had the will to write as a woman. And I had read that in no other book.
—Ruth Gruber on Virginia Woolf
Ruth Gruber’s groundbreaking study of the work and legacy of Virginia Woolf—an enduring feminist analysis pairing two of the twentieth century’s most extraordinary writers is now out as an ebook published by Open Road Integrated Media.
Here’s the back story. In 1932, Ruth Gruber earned her Ph.D.—the youngest person ever to do so—with a stunning doctoral dissertation on Virginia Woolf. Published in 1935, the paper was the first-ever feminist critique of Woolf’s work and inspired a series of correspondences between the two writers. It also led to Gruber’s eventual meeting with Woolf, which she recounted six decades later in Virginia Woolf: The Will to Create as a Woman.
Described by Gruber as “the odyssey of how I met Virginia Woolf, and how her life and work became intertwined with my life,” Virginia Woolf is a clear and insightful portrait of one of modern literature’s most innovative authors, written by one of America’s most remarkable journalists.
Ruth Gruber at Woolf and the City
Gruber is the author of 19 books, including the National Jewish Book Award–winning biography Raquela (1978). She also wrote several memoirs documenting her astonishing experiences, among them Ahead of Time (1991), Inside of Time (2002), and Haven (1983), which describes her role in the rescue of 1,000 refugees from Europe during World War II, and their safe transport to America. Gruber lives in New York City.
• An illustrated biography in each ebook, including never-before-seen photographs and documents from Gruber’s personal life and distinguished career
The ebook is available from Amazon.com, Apple iBookstore, Barnesandnoble.com, Google eBookstore/IndieBound, Kobo Books, Sony Reader Store, and OverDrive.
