Blogging Woolf

Happy 92nd birthday to Cecil Woolf, nephew of Leonard and Virginia Woolf who still runs Cecil Woolf Publishers, a small London publishing house in the tradition of the Woolfs’ Hogarth Press.

At dinner with Cecil Woolf at the London home he shares with wife Jean Moorcroft Wilson after the 2018 Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf.

As the oldest living relative of Virginia and Leonard, Cecil attends annual Woolf conferences as often as possible, where he displays his most recent volumes in the Bloomsbury Heritage series. He is often featured as a speaker at those events. And the reminiscences about his famous aunt and uncle and the time he spent with them are treasured by conference-goers.

In 2017, Cecil published his reminiscences about Leonard and Virginia. Cecil Woolf: The Other Boy at the Hogarth Press, Virginia and Leonard Woolf as I Remember Them debuted at the 27th Annual International Conference on Virgina Woolf in Reading, England.

Always generous with his time and the ever-gracious host to international guests, Cecil gave me a personal tour of Bloomsbury 2016 Woolf conference. After the 2017 event, he and wife Jean Moorcroft Wilson hosted a post-conference party at their London home. And after the 2018 conference in Canterbury, the couple hosted a dinner for Woolf conference attendees still in London.

Cecil also plays a more public role. He is often called upon to assist at ceremonies honoring his Uncle Leonard. In 2014, he planted a Gingko biloba tree in Tavistock Square garden to commemorate the centennial of the arrival of his uncle Leonard in Colombo, Ceylon. In 2014, he spoke at the unveiling of a Blue Plaque commemorating his uncle’s 1912 marriage proposal to Virginia at Frome Station.

And at the Woolf conference in New York City in 2009, he was interviewed by The Rumpus

Cecil Woolf in his London garden the evening of a dinner party he and wife Jean Moorcroft Wilson hosted after the 2018 Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf.

Hostess Jean Moorcroft Wilson with Patricia Lawrence at the post-conference dinner party in London in 2018.

Dinner is served on the Hogarth Press table at the London home of Cecil Woolf and Jean Moorcroft Wilson.