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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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Virginia Woolf’s own copy of The Voyage Out now online

Posted in books, The Voyage Out, Woolf discoveries, Woolf resources, tagged , , on Monday 24 July 2023| Leave a Comment »

The news that Virginia Woolf’s personal copy of The Voyage Out (1915), discovered in 2021 after mistakenly being housed in the science section of the University of Sydney’s Fisher Library for 25 years, is all over the internet. But the best news is that the volume has been digitized and is now available online.

It is one of just two copies of the novel that were annotated with her handwriting and with preparations to revise it for a U.S. edition.

A private collector based in London owns the other. It has typesetter’s marks and a greater number of revisions, including those to other chapters, but without the chapter 25 revisions, according to the library website.

The digitization of Woolf’s novel allows scholars and readers around the globe to study and consider Woolf’s edits from their own armchairs.

More background

In the 1996 article “Virginia Woolf’s Revisions of The Voyage out: Some New Evidence” by James M. Haule, published in Vol. 42, No. 3 of Twentieth Century Literature, Haule explains the story behind this rediscovered book, saying it was a working copy that appears to be one of two in which Woolf marked up revisions of her novel for the first U.S. edition, published in 1920.

It is thought that the Fisher Library copy was kept by Woolf as a record of the main revisions, with the other being sent for use in publication, according to the library website.

“With the possible exception of The Years (1937), none of her novels was as long in preparation or as difficult for her to complete,” Haule maintains.

About the edits

Inscribed by the author on the flyleaf, the volume includes handwritten revisions to chapters 16 and 25 made by Woolf’s own hand in pen and in blue and brown pencil.

In Chapter 25, whole pages are marked for deletion, although they were ultimately not removed for the first U.S. edition, published in 1920. The volume also includes pasted-in typewritten carbons in chapter 16.

The fact that Woolf signed on the volume’s flyleaf, not the title page, indicates that it was one of her personal copies, experts say.

Where the volume came from

The University of Sydney acquired the book in the 1976 through Bow Windows Bookshop in Lewes, East Sussex, near the Woolfs’ Monk’s House. The shop currently has some first editions of Woolf’s works on hand, including a copy of The Voyage Out, at least when this piece was written. The price? £600.

The Berg Collection at the New York Public Library holds a holograph draft of The Voyage Out.

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