“Woolf is one of the most important feminist theorists of the 20th century — in a class with Beauvoir and, really, probably no one else.
“Woolf is probably the greatest woman novelist writing in English in the 20th century. She is one of the great writers of English literature, period. Her position is really pretty unparalleled and I don’t see her stock dropping anytime soon.”
That is a quote from Anne Fernald of Fernham in response to the question, “What do you think Woolf’s place is in the history of literature?” The query was posedin “Seven Questions on Virginia Woolf”on the LA Times blog Jacket Copy.
In my opinion, Fernald’s answer was dead-on. Read her answers to the other six.
Woolfians can celebrate Virginia Woolf’s 127th birthday on stage from afternoon to evening on Jan. 25 with performances of Woolf’s own play Freshwater and a staged reading of Edna O’Brien’s award-winning play Virginia.
Virginia will be performed at 12:30 p.m. Jan. 25 at the Arthur Seelen Theater. Freshwater will begin at 7 p.m. at the at the Julia Miles Theater, 424 West 55th St. Both theaters are in Manhattan.
Get details of the performance of Freshwater, Woolf’s only play, here and here.
O’Brien’s play, Virginia, is a 90-minute exploration of Woolf’s inner life, as well as her relationships with husband Leonard, lover Vita and her writing. It is sponsored by the Drama Book Shop in association with the year-old Shakespeare’s Sister Company.
After the performance, Anne Fernald, author of Virginia Woolf: Feminism and the Reader and the literary blog Fernham, will be on hand for a question and answer session. Director Joannie Mackenzie and artistic director Kris Lundberg will join her.
The event is free to the public with a suggested $10 donation in support of the Shakespeare’s Sister Company.
The Arthur Seelen Theatre is located in the basement of the Drama Book Shop, 250 W. 40th St., in Manhattan.
Looking for a clever and free Woolf-related graphic for your office door? Look no further than the Web page for the National Arts Education Public Awareness Campaign.
The campaign of six print ads, featuring artists ranging from writer Woolf to singer Celia Cruz, uses clever puns on the artists’ names to encourage arts education. The Woolf ad is headlined, “Why Some People Think Virginia Woolf is the State’s Official Animal.”
Cecil Woolf is calling all Woolfians, both common readers and scholars!
The publisher and nephew of Leonard and Virginia has proposed a project for Blogging Woolf. And he plans to publish it as a monograph in his Bloomsbury Heritage series.
Cecil has asked us to collect “Virginia Woolf’s Likes and Dislikes” on this blog. Readers can submit their entries in the comments section on the Woolf likes and dislikes page, citing the source of the quote (Woolf’s Diary or Letters), volume, and page number.
Contributors should also include your name and academic affiliation, if appropriate, so you can be credited for your contribution in the Bloomsbury Heritage volume Cecil plans to edit and publish.
“I like printing in my basement best, almost: no, I like drinking champagne and getting wildly excited. I like driving off to Rodmell on a hot Friday evening and having cold ham, and sitting on my terrace and smoking a cigar with an owl or two” (Letters IV 189).
On the previous page of that volume of letters, I found the following:
“I don’t like [J. C.] Squire, but am doubtless jaundiced by my sense of his pervading mediocrity and thick thumbedness” (Letters IV 188).
Now it’s your turn, fellow Woolfians. Click here to post away. Then read more about Cecil on Anne Fernald’s blog, Fernham.
When Victoria Glendinning‘s Leonard Woolf: A Biography hit the bookshelves last September, opinions about the book formed quickly. And comments — both negative and positive — flew.
Anonymous reviewers posted brief but critical comments on the Amazon UK Web site. Glendinning’s husband, Kevin O’Sullivan, responded with his own glowing defense and signed the review with his own name. That generated more furor.
Comments on the Amazon U.S.A. Web site were overwhelmingly favorable. And other sites, such as Simon & Schuster’s, posted complimentary blurbs from reviews at large. John Gross wrote his own positive assessment for Commentary Magazine entitled “Mr. Virginia Woolf.”
At this year’s 17th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, I heard one or two negative remarks about the book, but Glendinning’s biography of Leonard wasn’t a topic of any of the conversations in which I was involved. I did wonder, though, what people found problematic.
Yesterday, Anne Fernald mentioned on her blog, Fernham, that she is reviewing the book for the Virginia Woolf Miscellany. She said she “found a lot to like” in Glendinning’s biography. I agree. I found sections helpful when I was looking for information about Leonard’s and Virginia’s wartime experiences.
The Whitbread-prize-winning biographer of Vita Sackville-West seems to have taken the furor in stride. At least that’s how it sounds in an interview conducted by Susan Johnson of the Sydney Morning Herald.
“`The whole thing was extraordinary but I suppose if you put your head above the parapet at all, there are some people who will decide they don’t like you, even if they don’t know anything about you,'” she says in the article published today.
She went on to explain that, “`Virginia Woolf has become so much more than she really was, you know, she’s become iconic and devotees almost worship her and impose upon her all sorts of attributes. They kind of feel they own her.
“`I’m the first to respect her work and I’m not trying to down Virginia but there’s this sort of cult … I gave a talk at a Virginia Woolf society in Birmingham before the book was published and at questions afterwards somebody asked if Woolf said something or thought something or other and I, in all innocence, asked, ‘Which Woolf are you talking about?’
“`There was this hoarse voice from the audience: ‘There is only one Woolf.’ And she did not mean Leonard,'” Glendinning told Johnson.
Glendinning has produced an impressive body of work. She is the award-winning author of Vita: The Life of Vita Sackville-West and Trollope, as well as Elizabeth Bowen, Edith Sitwell, Rebecca West, and Jonathan Swift. She has also written three novels: Flight, The Grown-Ups, and Electricity.
