View of Porthminster Beach while walking to Talland House, June 2004
Last September Ratha Tep, a contributing writer for the New York Times Footsteps column, emailed me. She was looking for answers to questions and names of people to contact concerning Virginia Woolf and St. Ives.
Her piece, “In Search of Virginia Woolf’s Lost Eden in Cornwall,” appeared online today and will be in the March 4 print edition. It is marvelous, full of history, love for Woolf as a literary and feminist pioneer, and touring tips for St. Ives and Cornwall that connect us to Virginia’s experiences there.
It also provides an optimistic update about the apartment complex to be built below Talland House that threatened the view and elicited protests from Woolfians around the globe nearly three years ago.
Connecting to the Tate exhibit
Tep’s travelogue is quite timely as well, connecting to the Tate St. Ives exhibit, “Virginia Woolf: An Exhibition Inspired by Her Writings.” Sadly, that show ends April 29, nearly two months before many of us will be in England for the 28th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf.
I visited St. Ives in 2004, taking the six-hour train ride on the Great Western Railway, visiting Talland House — where we were invited in by the woman who occupied the first floor flat — and traipsing around the charming town.
I have not been back since then. After reading Tepp’s piece, my desire to return is stronger than ever.
Long an admirer of this modernist literary pioneer, not only for how Woolf redefined the possibilities of the novel but, for the simple reason that no other writer has given me, sentence for sentence, such pleasure, I decided to go in search of Woolf in her early years. – Ratha Tep, NYT
Porthminster Beach, June 2004
St. Ives Bay, with Godrevy Island and lighthouse in the distance, June 2004
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