Today is Virginia Woolf’s birthday. It is now 131 years since she was born on Jan. 25, 1882, at 12:15 p.m., in
Kensington, London, and birthday wishes are coming to her from around the globe, courtesy of the Web.
In honor of her special day, the Christian Science Monitor has put up this post: Virginia Woolf: 10 quotes on her birthday. The piece credits her for having made a “major impact on the shaping of the modern novel” and being “an early advocate of women’s rights.”
And the New York Public Library has selections of Woolf’s novels that you can read online in celebration. Just add cake.
HuffPost Books has the Woolf quote graphic at top right, which I found thanks to my friend Margaret of Kent State University, posted on its Facebook page.
Bloggers who have posted birthday wishes include the Book Riot and this blog. And Lifelounge has put together a Virginia Woolf mixtape in honor of her 131st, along with this note of thanks, “Hey VW, thanks for writing all kinds of things we didn’t know how to say! Also, how did you live to 131?”
If you live near London or Wilton, Conn., you can also attend one of these celebrations:
- The Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain is holding a Burns Night/Woolf Supper: Birthday Thoughts on Virginia Woolf and Scotland. The 14th Annual Virginia Woolf Birthday Lecture will be given by Jane Goldman on Saturday, Jan. 26, at 2 p.m. in the Tiffany Room of the Tavistock Hotel, Tavistock Square, London WC1. For society members only. Blogger Amber Regis attended last year’s lecture, given by Michael Whitworth, and wrote about it.
- A marathon reading of the 114 pages of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own Saturday, Jan. 26., at the Wilton Library’s Brubeck Room, 137 Old Ridgefield Rd. in Wilton, Conn.
Here is what sounds like a birthday wishes, as articulated by Woolf in her short story, “The String Quartet,” which is included in Monday or Tuesday (1921):
Iwant to dance, laugh, eat pink cakes, drink thin, sharp wine. Or an indecent story, now—I could relish that. The older one grows, the more one likes indecency.
Read more about past birthday celebrations for Virginia:
- Around the Web on the occasion of Virginia’s 130th birthday
- Marking Virginia Woolf’s birthday
- Happy birthday, dear Virginia, in music
- Tea party and book swap celebrate Virginia’s birthday
- Come to belated NYC birthday tea for Virginia
- Happy birthday, dear Virginia
- Celebrate Virginia’s birthday with Freshwater
Alice Lowe
Catherine
Kaylee Baucom
Paula Maggio
Stefano Rozzoni
seanmcphail
suzannebellamy1
veronikakra
Vara Neverow
William Patrick Wend
Zoe Wolstenholme
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