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Archive for the ‘diaries’ Category

Tracking Virginia & Leonard Woolf on Dec. 28 over the years

Posted in diaries, quotes, tagged , , , on Sunday 28 December 2025| 1 Comment »

One hundred years ago today, on Dec. 28, 1925, Virginia Woolf headed to London to join her husband Leonard after spending Christmas at Charleston.

“Monk’s House Welcome Home” by Amanda White

The Woolfs were at Charleston to avoid the inconvenience of alterations being made at Monk’s House, and they celebrated the Christmas holiday with Vanessa Bell and her children.

While there, they “spent a fascinating evening reading VW’s diary recalling early days at 46 Gordon Square” (Diary 3, pg. 53).

The Woolfs: where they were and what they did on Dec. 28

Except for 1925 and 1926, the Woolfs spent their Christmas holiday at Monk’s House from 1925 through 1940. As noted in Virginia’s diaries, here is where they were and what they did on Dec. 28 of those years.

1925: 52 Tavistock Square, London

1926: The Woolfs return to 52 Tavistock Square, London after spending Christmas with Ka and Will Arnold Forster at Eagle’s Nest, Zennor in Cornwall (D3, 119).

1927: Monk’s House

1928: No mention

1929: Monk’s House, where the Keynes’ arrive in their Rolls Royce to pay a visit and stay overnight, wrecking Virginia’s “perfect fortnight of silence” (D3, 276).

1930: Monk’s House, where Virginia suffers from influenza and is in bed “with the usual temperature, & cant use my wits or, as is visible, form my letters” (D3, 340).

1931: Monk’s House, where Virginia notes that their “3 black swans came” to visit (D4, 57).

1932: Monk’s House, where Virginia is working on Flush (D4, 134).

1933: Monk’s House, where Virginia’s writing lodge is ready for her use (D4, 266).

1934: No mention

Virginia Woolf’s Writing Lodge at Monk’s House in Sussex

1935: Monk’s House, where Virginia begins a new book for her diary, after finishing the “last revision of the last pages of The Years” and wonders if she will “ever write a long book again–a long novel that has to be held in the brain, at full stretch–for close on 3 years?” (D4, 360).

1936: Monk’s House, where Virginia works on the proofs — “the galleys” — of The Years (D5, 44).

1937: Monk’s House, where Leonard took to his bed with a temperature before heading to London to see his doctor (D5, 122).

1938: Monk’s House, where she is writing Pointz Hall and keeps track of the reception of Three Guineas (D5, 193).

1939: Monk’s House, with snow and a hard frost on the 28th, allowing Virginia to skate on Dec. 31 (D5, 252).

1940: Monk’s House, where on the last Dec. 28 of her life, Virginia “rode across the downs to the Cliffs. A roll of barbed wire is hooped on the edge. I rubbed my mind brisk along the Newhaven road. Shabby old maids buying groceries, in that desert road with the villas; in the wet. And Newhaven gashed. But tire the body & the mind sleeps” (D5, 347).

More on the Woolfs and Christmas

Read on for more details about Virginia Woolf and Christmas and the Virginia Woolf word portrait by Akron, Ohio, artist John Sokol, which is pictured below.

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Virginia Woolf’s 1931 New Year’s resolutions

Posted in diaries, tagged , , , on Tuesday 31 December 2024| 1 Comment »

In a Diary entry dated Friday, Jan. 2, 1931, Virginia Woolf wrote the following New Year’s resolutions, prefacing them with this remark:

Here are my resolutions for the next 3 months; the next lap of the year.

First, to have none. Not to be tied.

Second, to be free & kindly with myself, not goading it to parties: to sit rather privately reading in the studio.

To make a good job of The Waves.

To care nothing for making money.

As for Nelly, to stop irritation by the assurance that nothing is worth irritation: if it comes back, she must go . . .

Then — well the chief resolution is the most import — not to make resolutions. Sometimes to read, sometimes not to read. To go out yes – but stay at home in spite of being asked. As for clothes, I think to buy good ones.”

– Diary 4, pg. 3

All of them seem particularly appropriate for me, except one: I don’t have a Nelly to let go if I find her irritating.

If you want more, read this post that includes Woolf’s resolutions for 1933, and this one includes those for 1936.

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Join Woolf Salon #30: “Season’s End” on Dec. 6

Posted in diaries, events, letters, tagged , , on Monday 2 December 2024| Leave a Comment »

Join the Woolf Conspirators Friday, Dec. 6, for its thirtieth Woolf Salon, this one a community reading of a selection of Woolf’s diary entries and letters written at the turn of the year.

The selection of readings is idiosyncratic, with early entries from A Passionate Apprentice and letters from the late 1930s. During the follow-up discussion after the readings, readers will share their own favorite “season’s end” diary entries or letters.

The details

Hosts: Salon Conspirators
Date: Friday, Dec. 6
Time: 2–4 p.m. ET (New York) / 11 a.m.–1 p.m. PT (Los Angeles) / 4–6.p.m. Brasilia / 7–9.p.m. GMT (London) / 8–10 p.m. CET (Paris) / 10 p.m.–midnight Ankara / Sat 4 a.m.–6 a.m. JST (Tokyo) / Sat 6 a.m.–8 a.m. AEDT (Sydney). Please check time conversions.
Where: On Zoom
Homework: Selections of Woolf’s diaries/letters. Or bring your own.
How: Contact woolfsalonproject@gmail.com to sign up for the email list and receive the Zoom link.

Background on the Salon

The Salon Conspirators — Benjamin Hagen, Shilo McGiff, Amy Smith, and Drew Shannon — began the Woolf Salon Project in July 2020 to provide opportunities for conversation and conviviality among Woolf-interested scholars, students, and common readers during and beyond the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Watching #SolarEclipse2024 with Virginia Woolf

Posted in diaries, tagged , , , on Wednesday 10 April 2024| 2 Comments »

I watched Monday’s total solar eclipse with Virginia Woolf. Well, not really. But because I had read her description of the 1927 solar eclipse — and because I had written about it — her words were circling my head as I watched Monday, making me feel as though she was with me.

The total solar eclipse of April 8, 2024, as captured completely unprofessionally by Blogging Woolf in Akron, Ohio.

I did not watch the eclipse high on a “boggy, heathery” rural moor, “walking out to what seemed the highest point looking over Richmond” in Bardon Fell, North Yorkshire, with “[v]ales and moor stretched, slope after slope, round us,” as Woolf did (Diary 3, 142).

Instead, I watched it while sitting in a folding lawn chair set up on a concrete driveway in an Akron, Ohio, development, with the carefully manicured lawns of ranch and colonial homes built 30 years ago stretched along a crescent in front of us.

And while we waited, watching the moon’s slow movement across the sun, I read Woolf’s words aloud to my companion. Her words overwhelmed us with their power. They also prepared us — somewhat — for the awe we were to feel.

But could anything truly prepare us for the sight of the moon slowly sliding along overhead, blotting out the sun in a blue sky lightly whitewashed with clouds? Could anything, even Woolf’s poetic words, prepare us for three minutes of total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024 — an incredible luxury when I consider that Woolf only had 24 seconds on June 29, 1927?

To steal Woolf’s words, “Now I must sketch out the Eclipse” I saw Monday (142):

The sky went dark. The birds went silent. The street lights came on. The solar lights in the garden shone. The wind kicked up. The air grew cold. And for three minutes, we sat. We sat unmoving. We sat unable to look away from this perfect vision in the sky, as we breathed out the simplest of words in a vain attempt to share our wonder.

Everyone around me is talking about the power of that three minutes — of the energy they felt, the peace they experienced, the indescribable spiritual “something” that sank into their hearts, into their souls. None of us seems to know quite how to describe it. I understand that.

And that makes me all the more grateful to Woolf for trying — and succeeding — so beautifully.

The sky with a light whitewash of clouds as the April 8, 2024, total solar eclipse begins in Akron, Ohio.

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Eclipse 2024 and Virginia Woolf’s eclipse of 1927

Posted in diaries, Virginia Woolf, tagged , on Monday 8 April 2024| 3 Comments »

Today is April 8, 2024, a much-hyped eclipse day where I live in Ohio. To view it, all I have to do is step outside my door and put on the cardboard glasses I picked up for free at my local library.

Virginia Woolf’s total solar eclipse was June 29, 1927, and she traveled more than 300 miles to experience something that had not been visible in England for more than 200 years, pulling out her “smoked glasses” to view it (Diary 3, 143).

Carrying luggage and a china box filled with sandwiches, Virginia was one of a party that included Leonard Woolf, Vita Sackville-West, Harold Nicolson, Eddie Sackville-West, Quentin Bell, Saxon Sydney-Turner and Ray (Rachel) Strachey.

By train to North Yorkshire

They boarded a special overnight train at London’s King’s Cross station that departed for Richmond in North Yorkshire at 10 p.m. on June 28. Richmond was one of the locations within the belt of totality, which would initially follow a path across North Wales and the north of England. London, on the other hand, was

Upon arrival at 3:30 a.m. the next day, they boarded an omnibus, becoming part of “a train of 3 vast cars, one stopping to let the others go on” while noticing “many motor cars . . . [that] suddenly increased as we crept up to the top of Bardon Fell” (142).

There, they noticed “people camping beside their cars,” and they joined those who had already staked out their viewing positions. Virginia noticed that “Leonard kept looking at his watch” and that they were surrounded by “[f]our great red setters” and “sheep feeding” (143).

Meanwhile, Virginia worried that due to the unpredictable weather, they would not be able to view the eclipsed sun during its 24 seconds of totality. “The moments were passing. We thought we were cheated; . . . The 24 seconds were passing” and still no blackout of the sun (143).

The above observations are included in Virginia’s two-and-a-half-page diary entry about her experience of the 24-second eclipse on June 30, 1927, which began with the sentence,

“Now I must sketch out the Eclipse” (Diary 3, 142).

The portion that describes the eclipse itself is written in prose but has the kind of poetic language and reflective tone that marks Virginia’s work. It links the exterior event with the powerful interior effect it had upon her. Her description follows:

At the back of us were great blue spaces in the cloud. But now the colour was going out. The clouds were turning pale; a reddish black colour. Down in the valley it was an extraordinary scrumble of red & black; there was the one light burning; all was cloud down there, & very beautiful, so delicately tinted. The 24 seconds were passing. Then one looked back again at the blue: & rapidly, very very quickly, all the colours faded; it became darker & darker as at the beginning of a violent storm; the light sank & sank; we kept saying this is the shadow; & we thought now it is over — this is the shadow when suddenly the light went out. We had fallen. It was extinct. There was no colour. The earth was dead. That was the astonishing moment: & the next when as if a ball had rebounded, the cloud took colour on itself again, only a spooky aetherial colour & so the light came back. I had very strongly the feeling as the light went out of some vast obeisance; something kneeling down, & low & suddenly raised up, when the colours came. They came back astonishingly lightly & quickly & beautifully in the valley & over the hills — at first with a miraculous glittering & aetheriality, later normally almost, but with a great sense of relief. The colour for some moments was of the most lovely kind — fresh, various — here blue, & there brown: all new colours, as if washed over & repainted. It was like recovery. We had been much worse than we had expected. We had seen the world dead. That was within the power of nature…. We were bitterly cold. I should say that the cold had increased as the light went down. One felt very livid.Then — it was all over till 1999. What remained was a sense of the comfort which we get used to, of plenty of light & colour. This for some time seemed a definitely welcome thing . . . How can I express the darkness? It was a sudden plunge, when one did not expect it: being at the mercy of the sky: our own nobility: the druids; Stonehenge; & the racing red dogs; all that was in one’s mind (143-4).

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More on Woolf, astronomy, eclipse

It should not be a surprise that Virginia would travel overnight to view a total solar eclipse. She had a lifelong passion for telescopes and astronomy. Her diary and writing journals record her observations of the stars and planets.

After all, an eclipse is a special event. Only one or two eclipses per century are visible from anywhere in the UK. The last solar eclipse in the UK was in 1999. The next one will occur in August 2026.

For more on the topic of Woolf and the total solar eclipse, see The Feminist Aesthetics of Virginia Woolf (1998). In it, Jane Goldman offers a detailed study of Woolf’s eclipse accounts appearing in both her diary and in an essay titled “The Sun and the Fish” published in Time and Tide (1928). That essay is included in The Captain’s Death Bed: And Other Essays and in Essays Of Virginia Woolf, Vol. 4, 1925-1928 (2008).

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