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Archive for the ‘essays’ Category

Living in the U.S., I am not always able to listen to BBC broadcasts. But I could — and did — give a listen to a new one on the Radio 4 show “In Our Time.” It discusses Virginia Woolf and A Room of One’s Own (1929).

In the 42-minute program, Melvyn Bragg and guests Hermione Lee and Michele Barrett discuss Woolf’s classic and oft-quoted essay about women and literature that contains the famous line: “a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.”

The discussion also involves:

  • how Woolf’s views in A Room of One’s Own are reflected in her 1928 novel Orlando,
  • the precursors to Room, Woolf’s 1928 lectures at Newnham and Girton colleges, the latter of which she attended with Vita Sackville-West,
  • Woolf’s ideas about the lecture as a form,
  • women’s roles as figures in literature rather than writers of literature,
  • Woolf’s invention of Shakespeare’s sister,
  • Room’s humor,
  • Room’s legacy,
  • and more.

Hermione Lee is emeritus professor of English literature at the University of Oxford and Michele Barrett is emeritus professor of modern literary and cultural theory at Queen Mary, University of London.

Listen now.

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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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The Woolf Salon usually meets monthly on Zoom. Anyone can join the conversation.

After a four-month hiatus, the Woolf Salon Conspirators have announced that they are  starting up the 2023 Woolf Salon Project with Woolf Salon No. 23: “The Lives of the Obscure.”

Where and when

The discussion will take place on Zoom Friday, Feb. 17, at 3 p.m. ET (New York). Other time zones are listed below, but please double check them!

2 p.m. CT (Chicago)
12 p.m. PT (Los Angeles)
5 p.m. Brasilia
8 p.m. GMT (London)
9 p.m. CET (Paris)
11 p.m. MSK (Moscow)
7 a.m. AEDT Saturday (Sydney)

The essay and where to find it

The 23rd salon will feature a rich conversation about Woolf’s essay (from The Common Reader [1925]), “The Lives of the Obscure.”

You’ll find the essay in any copy of The Common Reader, in Vol. 4 of The Essays of Virginia Woolf (pp. 118–45), and on Project Gutenberg.

How to join

Anyone can join the group, which usually meets on one Friday of each month via Zoom and focuses on a single topic or text. Just 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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Interested in Virginia Woolf’s essays? Wondering how the lessons from her essays apply to teaching and learning? Then you won’t want to miss Beth Rigel Daugherty’s talk, “Learning and Essaying: From Adeline Virginia Stephen to Virginia Woolf” on Oct. 10, the 2022 International Virginia Woolf Society Fall Lecture.

The event will run from 1–2:30 p.m. ET (New York). See timezone adjustments below, but please doublecheck the times:

10–11:30 a.m. PT (Los Angeles)
2–3:30 p.m. (Brasilia)
6–7:30 p.m. BST (London)
7–8:30 p.m. CEST (Paris)
[Oct 11] 2–3:30 a.m. JST (Tokyo)
[Oct 11] 4–5:30 a.m. AEDT (Sydney)

Members of the International Virginia Woolf Socity will receive a Zoom link for this event closer to the date. If you are not a member, you can join now.

Learning and Essaying

In her talk, Beth will guide viewers through her newly published book, Virginia Woolf’s Apprenticeship: Becoming an Essayist, from the Edinburgh University Press and preview her sequel, Virginia Woolf’s Essays: Being a Teacher.  With the follow-up volume, Beth says, “I hope to clarify how her essays continue to teach and to encourage readers to join the literary conversation.”

Get a taste of Beth’s book, as well as her talk, in this interview posted on EUP’s website.

About Beth

Recently retired from Ohio’s Otterbein University, Beth Rigel Daugherty taught modernist English literature, Virginia Woolf, and Appalachian and Native American literature, along with many thematically focused writing courses, for 36 years.

Her plenary talk at the 31st Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, “On the Ethics of Teaching: Virginia Woolf’s Essays,” received accolades from everyone who heard it.

Beth fell in love with Virginia Woolf and her essays while at Rice University and has been presenting and publishing on both ever since. Her peer-reviewed articles have appeared in edited collections; editions of the “How Should Read a Book?” holograph draft and Woolf’s fan letters in Woolf Studies Annual; and, with Mary Beth Pringle, the Modern Language Association teaching volume on To the Lighthouse.

Beth Rigel Daugherty (at far left), Leslie Hankins and Diane Gillespie presented a panel on “Portraying and Projecting Age, Ageism, and Activism” at the 19th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, with its theme of social justice, at the University of Mount Saint Joseph in Cincinnati in June of 2019.

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Beth Rigel Daugherty is beloved in Virginia Woolf circles for both her scholarship and her down-to-earth approach to Woolf studies. Her latest book, Virginia Woolf’s Apprenticeship: Becoming an Essayist, out his month, is available at a 30 percent discount from the Edinburgh University Press. Just enter the code EVENT30 when you checkout and you can share her brilliance at a discount.

What’s in the book

  • The most comprehensive portrayal of Virginia Woolf’s education to date
  • Examination of the link between Virginia Stephen’s education and Virginia Woolf’s essays
  • A focus on Woolf’s nonfiction and her early work
  • Two holograph draft lectures by Virginia Stephen for the first time
  • A compilation and organization of archival material in appendices for future researchers.

According to the publisher:

This study takes up Woolf’s challenge to probe the relationship between education and work, specifically her education and her work as an essayist. It expands her education beyond her father’s library to include not only a broader examination of her homeschooling but also her teaching at Morley College and her early book reviewing. It places Virginia Stephen’s learning in the historical and cultural contexts of education for women, the working classes and writers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

About Beth Rigel Daugherty

Beth Rigel Daugherty (at far left), Leslie Hankins and Diane Gillespie presented a panel on “Portraying and Projecting Age, Ageism, and Activism” at the 19th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, with its theme of social justice, at the University of Mount Saint Joseph in Cincinnati in June of 2019.

Recently retired from Ohio’s Otterbein University, Beth Rigel Daugherty taught modernist English literature, Virginia Woolf and Appalachian and Native American literature along with many thematically focused writing courses, for 36 years.

Her plenary talk at the 31st Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, “On the Ethics of Teaching: Virginia Woolf’s Essays,” received accolades from everyone who heard it.

Beth fell in love with Virginia Woolf and her essays while at Rice University and has been presenting and publishing on both ever since. Her peer-reviewed articles have appeared in edited collections; editions of the “How Should Read a Book?” holograph draft and Woolf’s fan letters in Woolf Studies Annual; and, with Mary Beth Pringle, the Modern Language Association teaching volume on To the Lighthouse.

A review

Drawing on deep research into the social history of women’s lives and of education, Daugherty shows with superb attention to detail how Virginia Stephen’s early experiences of teaching and of being taught nourished the seeds that flowered as Virginia Woolf, “an essayist compelled to teach.” This is impeccable and important scholarship.

– Mark Hussey, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Pace University

 

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