Blogging Woolf

Two free events will celebrate the centenary of Virginia Woolf’s Jacob’s Room (1922) this week. And organizers Rachel Crossland and Alice Wood invite readers to join them online in marking 100 years since its first publication.

Free online seminar

What: Virginia Woolf’s Jacob’s Room: Centenary Reflections
When: Wednesday, Oct. 26, 2:30–4:30 p.m. BST, 9:30-11:30 a.m. ESTfree online seminar
Who: Charlotte Taylor Suppé (independent scholar): “Women Must Weep: Betty Flanders and the Perils of Nationalistic Mothering;” Chris Wells (University of Sheffield): “Sexology, Bisexuality and Experimentation in Jacob’s Room;” and Vara Neverow (Southern Connecticut State University): “Tracing Patterns in the Critical Reception of Jacob’s Room from 1922 to 2022″
More information: Get abstracts and speaker biographies.
Registration: Register by noon BST on Oct. 26 to receive a link to join the seminar.

A readathon

What: Virginia Woolf’s Jacob’s Room: Centenary Readathon
When: Thursday, Oct. 27
How: Follow and tweet to @VWoolf100 on Twitter. Hasthag: #JacobsRoom100

One hundred years to the day from the novel’s first publication, Rachel Crossland and Alice Wood invite readers of Jacob’s Room to join in a collective reappraisal of this text. Woolf’s Jacob’s Room is one of the key works of modernism’s annus mirabilis of 1922, but still attracts much less attention than T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land or James Joyce’s Ulysses.

Whether reading the novel for the first time or returning to it, organizers encourage students, scholars, and, in Woolf’s phrase, “common readers” to dive into this short book (or a portion of it) on Oct. 27, then tweet thoughts and reflections to @VWoolf100 with the hashtag #JacobsRoom100.

What fresh light can today’s world shed on Jacob’s Room and how can this novel speak to us today, organizers ask.

100 years & 2 days ago #VirginiaWoolf wrote to Garnett: ‘But how far can one convey character without realism? That is my problem – one of them at least.’ 2 days later she wrote to Roger Fry: *Jacob’s Room* ‘has *some* merit, but its too much of an experiment.’ #JacobsRoom100 https://t.co/PLjlrTn2sQ

— Virginia Woolf 100 (@VWoolf100) October 22, 2022