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Archive for August, 2023

Charleston bringing Bloomsbury to Lewes

Posted in Bloomsbury, Charleston Farmhouse, events, tagged , on Friday 11 August 2023| 1 Comment »

Charleston is coming to Lewes, Sussex.

In September, the venerable location of Bloomsbury in the country will open a new venue in the former district council offices in Southover Road in Lewes that will feature a shop, a pop-up café pop-up café operated by Lewes-based Caccia & Tails, and a free program of co-produced community projects, artist-led workshops, gallery activities, and a learning program.

Charleston, 2019

The effort is the first step in bringing 100 of the most important Bloomsbury works back to Sussex and providing a growing Bloomsbury archive in a central location that is accessible to researchers and visitors.

Two free exhibitions will be featured during the venue’s first season, which will run Sept. 13 through Jan. 7, 2024:

Transforming the cultural life of Lewes

Here is what Nathaniel Hepburn, director of Charleston, has to say about the project:

“Since Charleston reopened after the pandemic, we have been working in partnership with the council and community groups in Lewes to develop a bold and ambitious vision which could transform the cultural life of Lewes and replicate the ‘Rodin effect’ from 1999 when Tate lent the famous Kiss sculpture to the town.

“It is exciting to be able to announce plans to launch this space in time for a major cultural season happening across Sussex to coincide with the largest contemporary art prize in the world – Turner Prize – being hosted in Eastbourne. It’s a great moment to put Lewes on the map as an important part of the region’s cultural offer.”

According to the Charleston website:

It is not a new idea for the Bloomsbury group to explore creating a cultural centre in Lewes. During the Second World War, the economist John Maynard Keynes, alongside Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, worked on a project for the precursor of the Arts Council, making designs for a theatre and art gallery – with a café – for small towns across the country, using Lewes as a model.

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Woolf sightings from Ann Patchett & Brian Dillon

Posted in books, essays, Woolf sightings, tagged , , , , , , on Wednesday 9 August 2023| Leave a Comment »

I can’t take credit for these non-fiction Woolf sightings. That goes to Benjamin Hagen, president of the International Virginia Woolf Society, who posted them on Facebook.

From Ann Patchett

First comes Ann Patchett’s “Eudora Welty: An Introduction,” in which Patchett describes her encounters with Welty in writing and in person.

It begins with Woolf and with Welty’s foreword to To the Lighthouse (1927) and leads into a reflection on first encounters and later returns.

The piece is included in These Precious Days, a 2021 collection of Patchett’s essays.

From Brian Dillon

Second is critic and essayist Brian Dillon’s “Vagueness” in Affinities, just out in paperback (2023), which includes a chapter on the proto-modernist photographs of Julia Margaret Cameron, Woolf’s Victorian great-aunt.

Hagen wrote that he was “Surprised to find this lengthy essay on Julia Margaret Cameron, which begins with her stunning photograph of Julia Jackson (later Stephen), Virginia Woolf’s mother. Woolf gets some attention here too.”

Thanks for being on the lookout, Ben.

Ben Hagen’s Aug. 6, 2023, Woolf sightings Facebook post, complete with photos of pertinent pages from the two books he mentions.

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Graphic novel story that invokes Virginia but cries Woolf

Posted in books, contemporary fiction, Virginia Woolf, Woolf in Contemporary Fiction, tagged , , , on Monday 7 August 2023| Leave a Comment »

In his full-color graphic novella, Athos in America, Norwegian cartoonist Jason include the story “The Brain That Wouldn’t Virginia Woolf,” a mash-up of The Brain That Wouldn’t Die and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, told in reverse chronological order.

Described as the volume’s “most heartbreaking tale” and as the peak of the artist’s “love of classic cinema and genre-bending,” the story may be a disappointment as a Woolf sighting. That is because it connects with the film made from Edward Albee’s play rather than Woolf herself, either as an author or a person.

The 2012 volume also includes five other stories, with the  title story providing a prequel to Jason’s 2008 graphic novel,  The Last Musketeer.

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Book briefs: Woolf Studies, Shakespeare in Bloomsbury

Posted in books, tagged , , , , on Sunday 6 August 2023| Leave a Comment »

New issue of Woolf Studies Annual now out

The most recent volume of Woolf Studies Annual, No. 29 (2023), edited by Benjamin Hagen, president of the International Virginia Woolf Society, is now available.

To purchase the journal, follow this link and click “Add to Cart.” At checkout, enter the discount code WSA2023 for 20% off. You do not have to create an account in order to make a purchase.

This issue features the research of Celia R. Caputi, Danielle N. Gilman, Lingxiang Ke, John Pedro Schwartz, and Kathryn Van Wert.

In addition to several new book reviews, Part 2 of the WSA Index, and an updated guide to scholarly collections, the volume also includes a forum on Mark Hussey’s 2021 biography of Clive Bell.

Contributors to the forum include Elizabeth Berkowitz, Claire Davison, Diane Gillespie, Maggie Humm, Christopher Reed, and Mark Hussey (in response).

Woolf Studies Annual is a refereed journal publishing substantial new scholarship on the work of Woolf and her milieu. Each volume includes several articles, reviews of new books, and an up-to-date guide to library special collections of interest to researchers. The Annual also occasionally features edited transcriptions of previously unpublished manuscripts.

Shakespeare in Bloomsbury coming next month

Yale University Press will publish Marjorie Garber’s new book Shakespeare in Bloomsbury in September. It’s billed as “The untold story of Shakespeare’s profound influence on Virginia Woolf and the rest of the Bloomsbury Group.”

Garber is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Research Professor of English and Visual and Environmental Studies, emerita, at Harvard University.

She is the author of several books on Shakespeare, as well as of books on cultural topics ranging from dogs and real estate to bisexuality and cross-dressing. Her most recent book is Character: The History of a Cultural Obsession.

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Looking for a Virginia Woolf first edition? Here are 2 sources

Posted in books, tagged , , , , , , on Wednesday 2 August 2023| Leave a Comment »

Shopping online for books devoted to Virginia Woolf, the Bloomsbury group, and the Hogarth Press? I have two sources for you. One, I have written about before. The other is new to me, although its proprietor is not.

York Harbor Books

Jon and Margaret Richardson are not newcomers to the world of Woolf. They have made hunting down the works of Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury group their mission since opening York Harbor Books in Maine more than 25 years ago.

The shop does not have its own website, but you can search the Jon S. Richardson Rare Books offerings on AbeBooks. You can also reach the shop at yorkharborbooks@aol.com or at 207-752-1569.

The Richardson duo put out a list of “Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group” offerings each summer. This August’s list includes 27 pages of items, including the following:

  • First edition of Virginia’s The Common Reader (1925) with the Vanessa Bell cover,
  • Signed copy of the first American edition of Leonard’s Downhill All the Way, An Autobiography of the Years 1919-1939 (1967),
  • Julie Singleton’s A History of Monks House and Village of Rodmell, Sussex Home of Leonard and Virginia Woolf (2008) from Cecil Woolf Publishers,
  • First edition of Vita Sackville-West’s Passenger to Teheran (1926),
  • Very scarce first edition of David Garnett’s Never Be a Bookseller (1929).

Second Wind Books

Second Wind Books is the brainchild of Leslie Arthur, who is also not a newcomer to the world of Woolf. Leslie and I met at past Woolf conferences when she was in the midst of learning the craft of bookselling at the William Reese Co.

She now has an online shop of her own. Recently she has been “off buying new stock and furiously cataloguing it” and attending a rare books seminar in Minnesota and Rare Books School in California, according to emails to Blogging Woolf that announce her new site.

Current finds listed in such categories as Bloomsbury, the Hogarth Press and more, include the following:

  • First edition of A Writer’s Diary (1955) with Vanessa Bell dust jacket,
  • First edition of The Years (1937) with Vanessa Bell dust cover,
  • First edition of The Common Reader Second Series (1935),
  • First edition of Jacob’s Room (1922),
  • First edition of The Death of the Moth and Other Essays (1942).

Some featured items on the Second Wind Books website

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