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Archive for the ‘Blogging Woolf’ Category

More than thirteen years after starting Blogging Woolf, I realized that several important components were missing. First off, the blog was missing an “About” page, a rationale for how and why the blog came to be. So I have added one. I introduce it here.

It includes the story of how I came to Woolf — something most Woolfians enjoy sharing. It also includes how I first met Woolf in the classroom and how I came back to Woolf many years later.

Most important of all, I think, it also tells the tale of my friendship and publishing experiences with the beloved Cecil Woolf and his brilliant wife Jean Moorcroft Wilson.

This new page also encourages Woolf readers and scholars everywhere to join the Woolf circle by attending a Woolf conference or signing up for the Woolf Listserv.

Cecil Woolf and Jean Moorcroft Wilson

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Kathleen Dixon Donnelly, blogger at Such Friends, organized a customized, three-day Virginia Woolf trip for two American visitors last year and is willing to do it again — or a similar trip — for those with a literary jaunt on their wish list.

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Kathleen Dixon Donnelly (right) of Such Friends stopped off in Ohio to visit Blogging Woolf last summer. We met for lunch at an iconic Akron restaurant, Bob’s Hamburg.

The trip through Sussex and Kent involved visits to:

  • Sissinghurst Castle, once owned by Virginia’s friend and lover, Vita Sackville-West,
  • Monk’s House, where Virginia and Leonard lived for many years, and
  • Charleston farmhouse, where Virginia’s sister, painter Vanessa Bell hosted the Bloomsbury group.

Feedback from her guided travelers included this quote:

Kathleen was a wonderfully competent guide who made sure that every aspect of the trip was beautifully organized but also allowed for the serendipitous surprises that made our trip so special. We thoroughly enjoyed her company and hope to join her and Tony (her charming husband, and gallant driver) for another adventure in the future.

Dixon-Donnelly has also put together an audio walking tour of the Bloomsbury section of London, which is available from VoiceMap at Bloomsbury Group audio walking tour.  

If you’re going to be in London, you can download it to your mobile and her voice will guide you through the streets using GPS and VoiceMap’s software.

This year, Dixon-Donnelly may also plan a literary walking tour of Paris.

To learn more about her tours, email her at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

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Virginia Woolf“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 posed in “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.

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Weekly Standard coverHere is another Woolf sighting, and this one is most distressing. Virginia is featured on the cover of the Dec. 3 issue of the neo-conservative Weekly Standard magazine.

As if that is not bad enough, she is pictured playing ice hockey wearing an ugly uniform that features a sports logo made up of her first name and the head of a wolf.

On the original Web page, which has now moved into the black hole of cyberspace, her image appeared with a story titled “Not Your Father’s Tories,” by Reihan Salam. But in the hard copy version, the Woolf cover art doesn’t appear with any article.

However, upon closer perusal of the print edition, the Woolf graphic seems to have been inspired by a book about Woolf’s era: The Perfect Summer: England 1911, Just Before the Storm by Juliet Nicolson, which we wrote about back in August.

Written by Tracy Lee Simmons, the review is titled “On the Brink: England’s Indian Summer Before the Great War.”

Woolf, in fact, is mentioned in the opening lines of the review: “Perhaps posing a bit for pithy immortality, Virginia Woolf famously declared that human nature changed somewhere in the leafy neighborhood of 1910.” 

The magazine, considered the bible of right-wingers, is owned by Robert Murdoch, which means Blogging Woolf is not a subscriber.

However, my kind husband — who tipped me off to the Woolf cover — braved the cold and snow of Northeast Ohio to bring me a borrowed copy of the issue, just so I could satisfy my curiosity regarding the unlikely connection between Virginia and The Weekly Standard.

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Why some people think vw isLooking 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.”

Anne Fernald, of Fordham University, newly announced site of the 2009 Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, sent the link to the Virginia Woolf Listserv this morning. Along with the link, she sent the news that she spotted the ad in two issues of Newsweek.

Madelyn Dentoff of Miami University of Ohio, site of this year’s conference, chimed in minutes later to report that she was surprised to see the ad in Sports Illustrated.

Report your sightings of the ad in the comments section on this post. Or send them to bloggingwoolf@yahoo.com

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