The live online course will run from Thursday, July 9, to Monday, July 13 (including the weekend). The in-person in Cambridge course is set for Sunday, Aug. 2 to Friday, Aug. 7, with an optional trip to Monk’s House and Charleston on Saturday, Aug. 8.
All of Woolf’s books are deeply interested in the natural world. This year’s course will explore her writing about the sea, woods, clouds, trees, gardens, birds, and much else in five of her great novels.
As always, there will be a rich program of lectures, supervisions, talks, and discussions, plus extra sessions for open discussion. In Cambridge, students will visit places of interest with talks by specialists.
Lecture list
Alison Hennegan, Women and Nature in Jacob’s Room (1922)
Karina Jakubowicz, Gardens in To the Lighthouse (1927)
Kate Eliot, Land and Sea in The Waves (1931)
Trudi Tate, The Weather in History: The Years (1937)
Ellie Mitchell, Earth and Sky in Between the Acts (1941)
Provisional list of talks
• Ann Kennedy Smith on “Woolf, Rupert Brooke and t
• Harriet Baker on “Nature writing in Woolf’s Diary”
• Bonnie Lander Johnson on “Vanishing Landscapes: Saffron”
• Claudia Tobin on “Monk’s House garden”
• Launch of Karina Jakubowicz’s book on Gardens in the Work of Virginia Woolf (2026)
…and more
Links for additional information
• Day trip to Monk’s House and Charleston
