Information about John Lehmann and other Bloomsbury Group figures has been newly posted to the Mantex site.
Roy Johnson of Mantex Information Design wrote Blogging Woolf to say he has added half a dozen new resources connected to Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group to the site. Here they are, with links:
New work from Virginia Woolf will be out this summer. The work appeared in The Charleston Bulletin, a family newspaper founded by her nephews, Quentin and Julian Bell, in the summer of 1923.
The vignettes, written or dictated by Woolf between 1923 and 1927 and published in The Charleston Bulletin’s Supplements, describe incidents and individuals of Woolf’s family and household, including servants and members of the Bloomsbury Group. Quentin Bell provided the illustrations.
An article in The Guardian says Woolf’s writing in these supplements shows her “affectionate, mischievous side.”
Helen Melody, curator of modern literary manuscripts at the British Library, says the work is likely the last unpublished work of Woolf.
Yet Stuart N. Clarke, editor of The Essays of Virginia Woolf, Vol 5. and a member of the Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain, maintains that each issue of the Virginia Woolf Bulletin includes at least one previously unpublished letter by Woolf. They include letters to Lady Aberconway, Mrs Easdale and Winifred Holtby. Clarke says the Bulletin will soon include a number of letters written by Woolf to Lady Colefax.
The British Library, which acquired the works in 2003, will publish The Charleston Bulletin Supplements for the first time this June.
“The Painted Home” by Dena Fishbein has a section with a Woolf influence. It’s titled “A Room of One’s Own” and features decorating tips for hallways and bedrooms. A former student of mine, Katie Stancil, sent me this Woolf sighting via text. She found it while “flipping through a book” at a local bookstore.
My ongoing search for literary magazines as potential vehicles for my essays yielded a captivating title this past year: Middlebrow. How could any Woolfian resist?
Established in the U.K. in 2010, as best I can tell, the journal’s vision starts with an attention-getting quote from Susan Sontag: “Art is seduction not rape.” The editor, Harriet Williams, elaborates: “A highbrow quotation, it’s true, but nevertheless one that aptly sums up the point of our magazine. Middlebrow is a magazine dedicated to the principles of art for enjoyment.”
But wait a minute. Whence this praise? Virginia Woolf, in her essay, “Middlebrow,” castigates it as “the bloodless and pernicious pest who comes between” the highbrow and the lowbrow, “the bane of all thinking and living.” She ends her essay by saying that “If any human being, man, woman, dog, cat, or half-crushed worm dares call me ‘middlebrow’ I will take my pen and stab him, dead.”
But the fearless Ms. Williams stands firm in defense of her journal and its place in the world of art. She seeks to reclaim the positive connotations of the term “middlebrow,” claiming it as the best of both worlds, “the intelligence of the highbrow and the guilty enjoyment of the lowbrow things we all like but pretend we don’t.”
She even dares to poke at Woolf in damning praise: “Virginia Woolf’s own essays are middlebrow, despite her hatred of the word and style, and let her come and stab me if she wants to. While they deal with so called highbrow subjects, they are insightful, clear, concise, even funny.”
The current issue includes an essay about Abraham Lincoln–surely a middlebrow himself–and another on writer’s block (do we get it because it exists, or does it exist because we get it?). It’s been said that the U.S. is or was a society of mostly middlebrows / middle class (buried within the so-called 99 percent under the wing of the Occupy movement). So as a middlebrow Woolfian, I’m delighted to see the banner flying boldly. I’ll be even happier if they publish one of my pieces.
The Guardianreports on the cooking exploits of writers, including Virginia Woolf, by quoting a post published on thePaper and Salt blog on Woolf’s 131st birthday that provides some detail about her experiences in the kitchen.
Bread, particularly the traditional British double-decker cottage loaf, was her specialty. And even her cook knew it. Cook Louie Mayer is quoted describing how Woolf taught her how to make the dough, knead it, shape it and bake it. Her memories are included in Recollections of Virginia Woolf.
Was Woolf’s baking advice helpful or snobbish? Was Woolf’s interest in cooking and baking a relaxing diversion from writing or a betrayal of her feminism?
The Guardian article gives Angela Carter‘s views on both issues. Post your thoughts in the Comments section below.
