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Coming in June: the ‘unexpurgated’ Diaries of Virginia Woolf

Posted in books, diaries, tagged , , , on Wednesday 22 March 2023| Leave a Comment »

This June, Granta Books will publish new ‘unepurgated’ editions of Virginia Woolf’s complete diaries, each introduced by a noted contemporary writer.

The five volumes of Woolf’s Diary edited by Anne Olivier Bell, along with A Passionate Apprentice: The Early Journals 1897-1909, edited by Mitchell E. Leaska

They are based on Anne Olivier Bell’s 1977–84 editions. But since Olivier Bell promises in her “Editor’s Preface” to The Diary of Virginia Woolf, Vol. II: 1920-1924 that “nothing has been omitted” from the edition she edited (ix),  I have to wonder what makes the Granta Books editions “unexpurgated.”

What are these new editions including that the previous editions did not? I guess we will have to wait until June to find out.

The volumes and their forewords

The volume divisions of the new editions remain the same. However, each volume will contain a foreword by a different writer.

  • Vol. 1: 1915–19: Virginia Nicholson
  • Vol. 2: 1920–4: Adam Phillips
  • Vol. 3: 1925–30: Olivia Laing
  • Vol. 4: 1931–5: Margo Jefferson
  • Vol. 5: 1936–41: Siri Hustvedt

Each of the five new hardbacks features a modern black and white photograph on the cover and will be priced at £30.

The back story of the diaries

Olivier Bell, wife of Woolf’s nephew Quentin Bell, gave an account of her work editing Virginia’s diaries in the Bloomsbury Workshop publication, Editing Virginia Woolf’s Diary (1990).

In that volume and in the “Editor’s Preface” to The Diary of Virginia Woolf, Vol. I: 1915-1919, she shares the fact that before Quentin started researching his biography of Virginia, Leonard Woolf had Virginia’s 30 volumes of diaries and journals, which were written between 1915 and 1941, transcribed and typed up by Kathleen Williams (D1 viii).

However, because Leonard had used scissors to cut out the sections that he included in A Writer’s Diary (1954), Olivier Bell had to type up the missing sections and piece the transcripts back together (Editing, p. 10) for use in establishing a note card chronology for Quentin’s Virginia Woolf: A Biography (1972).

After Leonard’s death and the settling of his estate, Virginia’s diaries were taken from the Westminster Bank in Lewes in 1970 and sent to the Berg Collection in the New York Public Library, where they now remain.

More than four-fifths of her diary entries had not been included in A Writer’s Diary. Thus, “an unabridged publication of the complete series of diaries was decided upon” and Olivier Bell would edit them (Editing 16). She was a natural because, she argues, after helping Quentin with his biographical research and marrying into the family, she was already familiar with the material — all 2,317 pages worth — along with many of the characters, the country, the houses, and more.

The project became “too much to accomplish single-handed,” so she enlisted the help of Andrew McNeillie of Oxford to help her. Some of the editing work involved detection — ferreting out Woolf’s vague references to to such things as “this old manor house” at Hounslow or “Miss Arnold who used to lie drunk” (Editing 18-19).

Near the end of her account in Editing Virginia Woolf’s Diary, Olivier Bell writes:

After some twenty years working with her diaries I still find them wonderfully enjoyable — brilliant, funny, informative, moving, a record of her life and observations set down with unsurpassed felicity of language by a woman of extraordinary intelligence, courage, humour and imagination: in short, a genius (23).

More on the new editions

For further information on the new editions of Woolf’s diaries, see pages 26–7 of Granta’s online catalogue:

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Virginia Woolf on aging

Posted in books, diaries, essays, Virginia Woolf, tagged , , , , on Friday 10 March 2023| Leave a Comment »

Virginia Woolf didn’t get old—not what we call old—but she brooded about aging,VW Diary Vol. 5 increasingly so in middle age.

Shortly before her 50th birthday, she wrote in her diary:

Can we count on another 20 years? I shall be fifty on 25th and sometimes feel that I have lived 250 years already and sometimes that I am still the youngest person on the omnibus” – Diary 4, 1/13/32)

Her ambivalence was predicated on her writing. When it was going well, she was contented and high—“divinely happy & pressed with ideas” (D4, 1/16/34). If it wasn’t, she was “so old, so ugly, & can’t write” (D5, 3/11/39).

The clock ticks for us all

Woolf’s experience isn’t unique. After 40 or 50, we hear the clock ticking, feel age creeping up on us. We fend it off, stay active and engaged, but we can’t deny the inevitable. We get old, and as we do, our creativity and productivity become increasingly challenged. We face and fear disability, dementia, decline, death. We’re subjected to increasing ageism from without and self-doubt from within. How can we sustain a positive mindset?

In the recently published Dancing with the Muse in Old Age (Coffeetown Press, 2022), Priscilla Long proposes looking at creativity in old age “as a potentially dynamic and productive time full of connections to others and deeply satisfying work.”

Our advantage is experience, the skills we’ve learned and exercised over time, not just technical and craft skills but also the attitudes and ways of working that Long calls meta-skills.

In her own case, she says, “I have learned how to learn. I have learned how to focus, how to break a problem down into its component parts, how to encourage myself, how to take my time when venturing into new territory.”

Continuing to create

Dancing With the Muse reinforces extensive research and scientific findings with examples of women and men, most in the arts, who continued to be creative and productive well into old age. Long cites more than 100 artists and musicians, scientists and athletes, and writers, including Margaret Atwood, Maya Angelou, Iris Murdoch, and Doris Grumbach (a Woolf enthusiast who died last year at 104). And Leonard Woolf!

Among those whose creative output in their later years included “looking back, remembering, and articulating one’s life and its meanings,” Leonard Woolf wrote his five-volume autobiography in his last decade. Had she lived to old age, I believe Virginia Woolf would have expanded her self-writing, extending the autobiographical work in Moments of Being.

This is Priscilla Long’s sixth book, including two volumes of poetry, an essay collection, and a writing manual. At 79, she has several works in progress, her goal to publish ten more books while making sure to clock her 10,000 steps every day. Virginia Woolf didn’t have a Fitbit, but her miles over the Downs and around London were conducive to her physical and mental health and stimulated her creativity.

Poised to shoot forth arrows

The painter Robert Motherwell said at age 71 that “to retire from painting would be to retire from life.” I’m certain that “old Virginia,” as she liked to refer to her future self in her early diaries, would have concurred and would have continued to write. At 50, she declared herself “poised to shoot forth quite free straight and undeflected my bolts whatever they are. I don’t believe in ageing. I believe in forever altering one’s aspect to the sun” (D4, 10/2/32).

When an acquaintance worried that his creative well would run dry, she observed that her concern was quite the opposite; she wondered if she would have enough time to write everything that was in her head.

Days before her death at 59, she reminded herself to “Observe perpetually. Observe the oncome of age. I insist upon spending this time to the best advantage. Suppose I selected one dominant figure in every age and wrote round and about. Occupation is essential” (D5, 3/8/41).

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Virginia Woolf wrote of spring, moods 100 years ago today

Posted in diaries, quotes, Reading the Skies in Virginia Woolf, tagged , , , , on Friday 10 February 2023| 3 Comments »

In my little corner of Ohio, it is unseasonably warm today. And while I haven’t walked around my garden to see what spring blossoms might be coming up early, I did peruse Virginia Woolf’s diary entry made one hundred years ago today. In it, she does something like that.

On Feb. 10, 1923, while living in Richmond, Woolf wrote a long diary entry. On that day, she included her observations of the first signs of spring and the weather as she walked to the local cemetery, along with details of her recently developed daily schedule:

The spring the spring, I sing in imitation of Wagner, & saw a gorze bush set with soft yellow buds. Then we got into the Park, where the rain drove dogs & humans home, & so back on the stroke of three. It is now our plan (a day old) to walk from 2 to 3; print from 3 to 5; delay our tea; & so make headway. – Diary: Volume 2, pg. 233.

She also relates an earlier conversation with Mary* in which she discussed her mood that winter, which she thought had been affected by the genre of writing in which she had been involved:

But I suppose I talked most, & about myself. How I’d been depressed since Jan. 3rd. We ran it to earth, I think, by discovering that I began journalism on that day. Last Thursday, I think, I returned to fiction, to the instant nourishment & well being of my entire day. – Diary: Volume 2, pg. 234.

*Mary is not identified in this entry in Volume 2 of the diary, although she is likely Mary Hutchinson, as Alice Lowe mentions in the comments below.

Early spring blooms picked and arranged by my granddaughter when she was just 10.

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How Virginia Woolf celebrated her birthdays — 1897-1941

Posted in diaries, Happy birthday, tagged , , on Wednesday 25 January 2023| Leave a Comment »

Today is Virginia Woolf’s birthday. She would have been 141. And as is customary at this time, I am poring over the eight published diary entries she wrote on or near her birthday between 1897 and 1941.

In 2016, I shared all of the published diary entries she made on her birthday, a post so popular I reposted it the following year.

Last year, I parsed her 1941 entry, comparing her mood during wartime to my mood as the second year of the pandemic came to a close.

This year, though, I am looking at details — the gifts she received, the places she went, what she was reading, and what she was writing. Read on for all that.

But first I share a happy quote — with the kind of twist customary for Woolf — from her diary entry written in 1915, on the day she turned thirty-three and she and Leonard decided to rent Hogarth House and buy a printing press, an endeavor that would come to be known as the Hogarth Press.

I don’t think I’ve had a birthday treat for 10 years; & it felt like one too—being a fine frosty day, everything brisk & cheerful, as it should be, but never is. – The Diary of Virginia Woolf, Vol. I: 1915-1919, p. 28.

What she got

At age 15 in 1897: “a gorgeous Queen Elizabeth — by Dr Creighton,” “Lockharts Life of Scott,” an arm chair, £1, a holder for her stylograph,* a diary, a pocket book – A Passionate Apprentice: The Early Journals 1897-1909, pp. 21-2.

At age 23 in 1905: “a huge china inkpot” – A Passionate Apprentice: The Early Journals 1897-1909, pp. 227-8.

At age 33 in 1915: “a beautiful green purse,” a first edition of The Abbot, and  “a packet of sweets” – The Diary of Virginia Woolf, Vol. I: 1915-1919, p. 28.

At age 36 in 1918: “a fine cow’s horn knife” and a pair of red handknit socks that tied at the ankle – The Diary of Virginia Woolf, Vol. I: 1915-1919, p. 113.

Her diary entries around her birthday after 1918 do not mention gifts.

What she did, what she read, what she wrote

At age 15 in 1897 – What she did: “I went out for a walk round the pond after breakfast with father, it being Nessas drawing day. Went out with Stella to Hatchards about some book for Jack, and then to Regent St. for flowers and fruit for him; then to Wimpole St. to see how he had slept, and then to Miss Hill in Marylebone Rd. Jo [Fisher] was there discussing the plans for Stellas new cottages with Miss Hill. All three learnedly argued over them for half an hour, I sitting on a stool by the fire and surveying Miss Hills legs — Nessa went back to her drawing after lunch, and Stella and I went to Story’s to buy me an arm chair, which is to be Ss present to me — We got a very nice one, and I came straight home, while Stella went on to Wimpole St.” – – A Passionate Apprentice: The Early Journals 1897-1909, pp. 21-2.

At age 23 in 1905 – What she did and what she read:  “Another lazy morning — read however the greater part of my review book, so that will be written tomorrow with luck — & then? . . . Violet to lunch . . . Georges motor after lunch, in which we did various long distance jobs — then home, read my review book, & dinner at 7.30 as we went with Gerald to Peter Pan, Barries play — imaginative & witty like all of his, but just too sentimental — However it was a great treat.” – A Passionate Apprentice: The Early Journals 1897-1909, pp. 227-8.

At age 33 in 1915 – What she did and what she read: “I was then taken up to town, free of charge, & given a treat, first at a Picture Palace, & then at Buszards . . . But to make up, we exactly caught a non-stop train, & I have been very happy reading father on Pope, which is very witty & bright—without a single dead sentence in it.” – The Diary of Virginia Woolf, Vol. I: 1915-1919, p. 28.

At age 36 in 1918 – What she did and what she read: “Barbara came, & together we “dissed” 4 pages, & L. printed off the second 4 at the printers—altogether a fine days work . . . before 7.30 came Clara [Woolf] & the Whithams . . . Writing all the morning, reading & walking the rest of the day.”  – The Diary of Virginia Woolf, Vol. I: 1915-1919, p. 113.

At age 39 in 1921 – What she did and what she wrote: “had tea, & calculated the costs of printing Tchekov; now L. is folding the sheets of his book, & Ralph has gone, & I having taken this out of the press proceed to steal a few minutes to baptise it . . I’m at a crisis in Jacob: want to finish in 20,000 words, written straight off in a frenzy. And I must pull myself together to bring it off.” – The Diary of Virginia Woolf: Volume II: 1920-1924, p. 86.

At age 48 in 1930 – What she did and what she read: “on my birthday we walked among the downs [at Rodmell] . . . At night I read Lord Chaplin’s life.” – The Diary of Virginia Woolf: Volume III: 1925-1930, p 285.

At age 49 in 1931 – What she wrote: “have returned to Waves: & have this instant seen the entire book whole, & how I can finish it–say in under 3 weeks.” – The Diary of Virginia Woolf: Volume IV: 1931-1935, p. 7.

At age 59 in 1941- What she did, what she read, and what she wrote: “A battle against depression, rejection (by Harper’s of my story & Ellen Terry) routed today (I hope) by clearing out kitchen; by sending the article (a lame one) to N.S.: & by breaking into PH 2 days, I think, of memoir writing . . . a good hard rather rocky book–viz: Herbert Fisher . . . . Now to write, with a new nib, to Enid Jones.” – The Diary of Virginia Woolf: Volume V: 1936-1941, pp. 354-5.

Read the full quotes from Woolf’s diaries regarding her birthdays.

*a fountain pen

Twitter celebrates Virginia Woolf’s birthday in advance

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New Year’s Eve advice from Virginia Woolf: “Stay, this moment”

Posted in diaries, tagged , , , on Saturday 31 December 2022| Leave a Comment »

On Saturday, Dec. 31, 1932, Virginia Woolf wrote a relatively long entry in her diary. I include a portion of that entry here:

This is in fact the last day of 1932, but I am so tired of polishing off Flush–such a pressure on the brain is caused by doing ten pages daily — that I am taking a morning off, & shall use it here, in my lazy way, to sum up the whole of life. By that phrase, one of my colloquialities, I only mean, I wish I could deliver myself of a picture of all my friends, thoughts, doings, projects at this moment . . .

For example, with Julian & Lettice Ramsay last night — why not simply become fluid in their lives, if my own is dim? And to use ones hands & eyes; to talk to people; to be a straw on the river, now & then — passive, not striving to say this is this. If one does not lie back & sum up & say to the moment, this very moment, stay you are so fair, what will be one’s gain, dying? No: stay, this moment. No one ever says that enough. — Diary 4, pp. 134-5.

Read on for Woolf’s New Year’s resolutions for 1931 and 1936.

 

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