Blogging Woolf

It’s official. Dalloway Day is the third Wednesday in June on both sides of the pond.

After years of discussion and advocacy for a day that gives Virginia Woolf’s Clarissa Dalloway equal weight with James Joyce’s Leopold Bloom, both the Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain and the International Virginia Woolf Society have designated the third Wednesday in June as #DallowayDay.

Finally, we have an officially recognized day for celebrating Clarissa Dalloway’s walk across London in Woolf’s 1925 novel Mrs. Dalloway to “buy the flowers herself.”

This year it’s June 20

This year the third Wednesday falls on June 20, and events are already being planned on the official date and those surrounding it. Here are those we know about so far.

• The Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain is getting together with Waterstones, as it did last year, to arrange a walk, discussion and talk on Saturday, June 16. It will be announced on the new VWSGB website and Facebook page, and by Waterstones as well.
• Many members of the International Virginia Woolf Society will be together and on their way to Knole House and Sissinghurst Gardens for the pre-conference outing on June 20, the day before the 28th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf begins. I imagine we will celebrate the day in some way and I welcome your ideas.
• Places and Paces: Walking with Mrs. Dalloway, June 20, 4-5 p.m., at the British Library. Sponsored by the library and its Royal Society of Literature. Hermione Lee will discuss the novel’s walks and follow its paths into dreams, memories, and moments of revelation. Ticket prices range from £5 to £8 and can be booked online.
• Dalloway Day with Sarah Churchwell, Alan Hollinghurst, Hermione Lee and Elaine Showalter, June 20, 7-8:30 p.m. at the British Library. Sponsored by the library and its Royal Society of Literature. The event will include a discussion on the significance of the novel and its effect on literary culture with Woolf’s biographer Lee; novelist Hollinghurst; literary critic Showalter, author of the seminal A Literature of their Own, and Churchwell, chair of public understanding in the humanities at the School of Advanced Study. Ticket prices range from £10 to £15 and can be booked online. Check out the RSL’s Dalloway Day page.
• Monk’s House is holding an event on June 20, and the details will appear on the Monk’s House page of the National Trust website once they are settled.
• The Italian Virginia Woolf Society is organizing an event dedicated to Woolf in June called “Una giornata tutta per lei” (A Day of Hers Own) on June 9 at the Casa Internazionale delle Donne, the International House of Women, the society’s home base.

Tell us about your #DallowayDay event

We urge you to add your own events in the comments section below or by sending an email to bloggingwoolf@yahoo.com, whether they are on the official date or another date. And please use the hashtag #DallowayDay in your social media posts so we can track them.

Watch out for The New Yorker

After June 20, keep your eyes out for The New Yorker magazine. A writer and editor for that publication has been in touch with Woolf societies and Blogging Woolf to discuss our plans for Dalloway Day. It turns out he is interested in traveling to England in time for Dalloway Day celebrations so he can cover it for the magazine.

His piece, if the idea is given the go-ahead, would appear in both the print and online editions, with photo coverage online. If so, this would make 2018 a banner year for dear Virginia — a Google Doodle and an official day of Clarissa’s own, covered in The New Yorker!