Reading the Skies in Virginia Woolf:
Woolf on Weather in Her Essays, Her Diaries and Three of Her Novels
by Paula Maggio
The synopsis below is reprinted from A Complete Catalogue of Bloomsbury Heritage Monographs 2009.
Virginia Woolf’s frequent discussion of weather in her essays and her use of weather in her novels has consistently and inexplicably been overlooked by scholars and critics.
In her non-fiction Woolf develops theories about the role weather could and should play in fiction. In her diaries, she discusses the part weather plays in her own day-to-day life. And in her novels, she utilizes her theories about the way weather influences and reflects her characters.
Why, then, if weather is so important to life and thought, particularly British life and thought, asks Paula Maggio, has it been neglected in analysis of Woolf’s writing?
In this important and highly readable monograph, Maggio explores the development of English thought about weather, and how those ideas influence Woolf’s theories about writing included in her essays. She discusses Woolf’s quintessentially English fascination with the vagaries of the nation’s weather on her own life as a diarist and reader, and shows how she uses her weather-related theories in three of her novels, Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse and Orlando.
Details: Demy 8vo. card covers, 48pp. ISBN 978-1-897967-99-7. Price: £7.50 from Cecil Woolf Publishers.Purchase a copy from Cecil Woolf Publishers
Contact Cecil Woolf at cecilwoolf@gmail.com or at 1 Mornington Place, London NW1 7RP, England, or tel/fax 0044 207387 2394 to purchase a copy of Reading the Skies in Virginia Woolf and other monographs in the Bloomsbury Heritage Series or the War Poets Series.
Alice Lowe
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Paula Maggio
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[…] Woolf and weather has been a subject dear to my heart since I enrolled in an interdisciplinary graduate program at Kent State University in 2001. The introductory course for the Master of Liberal Studies Program focused on weather. And when we read about England’s Great Frost, I immediately recalled those scenes from Woolf’s Orlando. […]
[…] Woolf, “Woolf and the Natural World,” in Georgetown, Ky, where we sat on a panel about Woolf and weather. Originally from Bangkok, she did her doctoral work at the University of St. Andrews and is now a […]
[…] who know me know that I am fascinated by the idea of how weather affects human behavior and human […]
[…] many readers of Woolf, I have read her 1925 stream of consciousness novel multiple times and have written about it as well. So I wouldn’t have thought that a staged adaptation of the novel could […]
[…] many readers of Woolf, I have read her 1925 stream of consciousness novel multiple times and have written about it as well. So I wouldn’t have thought that a staged adaptation of the novel could […]
Alas, the previous comment was garbled.
The last line (the quotation from Genesis) was proceeded, when I clicked on “Post Comment”, by a note saying there is indeed an appendix with quotations having to do with weather from a range of other books, ending with the quotation from Genesis.
You might find Mark Twain’s comment on weather in books amusing… (See http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3179/3179-h/3179-h.htm for this note before Chapter 1 of “The American Claimant”):
>>>
THE WEATHER IN THIS BOOK.
No weather will be found in this book. This is an attempt to pull a book through without weather. It being the first attempt of the kind in fictitious literature, it may prove a failure, but it seemed worth the while of some dare-devil person to try it, and the author was in just the mood.
Many a reader who wanted to read a tale through was not able to do it because of delays on account of the weather. Nothing breaks up an author’s progress like having to stop every few pages to fuss-up the weather. Thus it is plain that persistent intrusions of weather are bad for both reader and author.
Of course weather is necessary to a narrative of human experience. That is conceded. But it ought to be put where it will not be in the way; where it will not interrupt the flow of the narrative. And it ought to be the ablest weather that can be had, not ignorant, poor-quality, amateur weather. Weather is a literary specialty, and no untrained hand can turn out a good article of it. The present author can do only a few trifling ordinary kinds of weather, and he cannot do those very good. So it has seemed wisest to borrow such weather as is necessary for the book from qualified and recognized experts—giving credit, of course. This weather will be found over in the back part of the book, out of the way. See Appendix. The reader is requested to turn over and help himself from time to time as he goes along.
<< It rained forty days and forty nights.—Genesis.
[…] her doctoral thesis, Verita is writing about weather in The Years. In Reading the Skies, I cover Woolf’s use of weather in Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, and Orlando, and Harris […]
[…] weather,” I replied. And she immediately knew what I […]
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[…] link was sent by Stuart N. Clarke in response to the discussion on the VWoolf Listserv regarding Woolf and weather, a topic obviously dear to my […]