The Modernist Archives Publishing Project (MAPP) and the archives of the Hogarth Press is looking for a Writer in Residence to start work this June in preparation for a major 2027 exhibition celebrating the University of Reading’s holdings relating to the Bloomsbury Group. The exhibit will be held March through May 2027.
About the Writer in Residence position
The person chosen will spend June through September 2026 drawing inspiration from MAPP archival materials to develop new creative work for an exhibit. From September to December 2026, they will build on this research to support community and youth engagement in Reading, leading monthly workshops with the Museum of English Rural Life’s Youth Panel.
The Writer in Residence will work with young people aged 14-18 to explore and connect with the publishing stories and materials in MAPP in imaginative and accessible ways, encouraging fresh perspectives and new interpretations.
These interpretations may engage with themes including, but not limited to:
Class
Colonialism
Gender, feminism and women’s authorship
LGBTQIA+ identities and experiences
Mental health and creativity
Modernism, publishing, and literary experimentation
Networks of writers and artistic collaboration
Print culture, letterpress, materiality, and book-making
Rural and country lives
Relationships between art, literature and landscape
Social inclusion and justice
Position sponsorship
This Writer in Residence has been made possible by the University of Reading’s Impact Accelerator Account, funded by the AHRC. The fee is £3,000, and the closing date for applications is 18 May 2026.
Roundtable participants from the MAPP project at the 2017 Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf sit below a screen showing a digitized ledger sheet from the Hogarth Press. Note the purple ink.
Stacks showing a portion of the Hogarth Press archives at University of Reading Special Collections.
Cecil Woolf, the nephew of Leonard and Virginia Woolf, cuts the cake designed by Cressida Bell for the 100th birthday party of the Hogarth Press in June 2017 in Reading, England. Cecil passed away June 10, 2019, at the age of 92. Read more.
Ben Majchrowicz at Charleston’s new exhibit, “Virginia Woolf and the Hogarth Press,” which runs through Sept. 9.
When I messaged Ben Majchrowicz last week, asking him for details about “Virginia Woolf and the Hogarth Press“ the new exhibit at Charleston in Firle, he was in the middle of the installation process. But true to form, he sent me everything he promised before the exhibition opened April 1.
Co-curated by Ben and Stephen Barkway, along with Charleston’s exhibition team, the exhibition is a major one. Running through Sept. 9 and created in partnership with the Gordon Square Society, Antwerp, it brings together for the first time the most complete collection to date of hand-printed books produced by the Hogarth Press.
While many know of Virginia’s role as a writer, and her husband Leonard ’s roles as a writer, editor, and Labour Party committee member, this new exhibit shows their pivotal roles as printers, publishers, and makers.
Multiple copies of Virginia Woolf’s “Kew Gardens”
The exhibition includes works loaned from several major private collections across Europe, including Ben’s.
It features more than 100 rare books alongside archival material, letters, and artworks. It also positions the Hogarth Press as a literary enterprise as well as a radical, handmade practice at the heart of British modernism, according to a Charleston media release.
According to Ben, one of the difficulties of putting the exhibit together was making choices. The co-curators had to decide which of multiple copies of Virginia’s Kew Gardens, R.C. Trevelyan’s Poems and Fables, and Fredegond Shove’s Daybreak they should include.
Founded as an independent printing venture in 1917 in the Woolfs’ own home, Hogarth House in Richmond, the press originally sat on the Woolf’s dining room table.
Later, when a larger Minerva platen printing press was purchased in 1921, it moved to the basement. And when the Woolf’s moved to 52 Tavistock Square, London, in 1924, the press made its home in the basement again.
The Minerva platen printing press is now housed at Sissinghurst Castle Gardens, Kent. And the dining table on which it sat is in the London kitchen of the late Cecil Woolf and Jean Moorcroft Wilson and has seen many dinner guests over the years.
The Hogarth Press and its writers
The Woolfs hand-set and printed many of their early works including their first book publication, Two Stories (1917) by the couple, Katherine Mansfield’s Prelude (1918), and T. S. Eliot’s Poems (1919).
Besides publishing the work of members of the Bloomsbury group, the Hogarth Press also published a diverse list of international writers, including 29 translations from Russian, German, and Italian between the two world wars.
According to the Modernist Archives Publishing Project, the press deliberately pushed to reshape the publishing landscape of interwar Britain, producing seminal texts. These included works by Nancy Cunard, Henry Green, Christopher Isherwood, the colonial novels of William Plomer and Laurens van der Post, and the English translations of Sigmund Freud.
As part of its literary history, the Hogarth Press championed a wide selection of otherwise popular, middlebrow writers, educational and political tracts, children’s literature, and medical and self-help manuals. In the 1930s it published many titles, including these: Vita Sackville-West’s The Edwardians (1930), William Plomer’s The Case is Altered (1932) and Virginia Woolf’s own Flush (1933).
The Hogarth Press also served as a diversion for Virginia. As Leonard put it in Beginning Again, the third volume of his autobiography:
It struck me that it would be a good thing if Virginia had a manual occupation of this kind which, in say the afternoons, would take her mind completely off her work . . . we definitely decided that we would learn the art of printing. (Beginning Again, 233)
About “Virginia Woolf and the Hogarth Press”
Five different covers of Fredegond Shove’s Daybreak
Bringing together hand-printed books, illustrated editions and works conceived through close collaboration between writers and artists, the exhibition reframes publishing as a creative practice shaped by intimacy, courage and control over one’s own voice.
The exhibition includes first editions of key modernist texts published by the Hogarth Press, including T. S. Eliot’sThe Waste Land and Hope Miralees’Paris. These classics, appear alongside lesser-known works and books of original visual prints that demonstrate the press’s commitment to new voices, ideas and creativity.
Displayed together, these books reveal the Hogarth Press as a place where literary innovation, political thought and artistic experimentation converged.
Six cover versions of “Poems and Fables” by R.C. Trevelyan
As handmade objects, the books bear the visible traces of their making: one-of-a-kind covers, typographical errors and inky fingerprints. These material details are central to the exhibition, emphasizing publishing as a form of iterative creative practice rather than industrial production.
The exhibition also highlights the contributions of Bloomsbury artists including Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant, Roger Fry and Dora Carrington, whose designs for book covers and illustrations helped craft the Hogarth Press’ distinctive visual identity. These collaborations underscore the close relationship between literature, art and design within the Bloomsbury group, and Charleston’s role as a centre for this interdisciplinary creative community.
Publications of the Hogarth Press blurred boundaries between art, craft and literature, treating the book itself as an art object.
About the co-curators
Ben Majchrowicz is co-founder of the Gordon Square Society, Belgium. Last November and December, he held a world premiere exhibition, sponsored by the Gordon Square Society, called “Letter by Letter (From the Woolfs’ Hands): Handprinted Books by Virginia & Leonard Woolf.” For the first time in Belgium, the public exhibition brought together all 34 books hand-set, printed, bound and published in limited editions by Virginia and Leonard Woolf themselves under their Hogarth Press imprint. These rarities came from Ben’s collection, as well as that of Pierre and Marie-Madeleine Coumans.
Stephen Barkway is co-founder of the Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain. Along with Stuart N. Clarke, he collected and edited a massive volume of The Uncollected Letters of Virginia Woolf, which was published last year. He co-edits and regularly contributes to the Virginia Woolf Bulletin.
Co-curators Ben Majchrowiczand and Stephen Barkaway at the Charleston exhibit “Virginia Woolf and the Hogarth Press
Publicity graphic distributed before the exhibition opened April 1. It runs through Sept. 9.
Untucking it from below his seat and unwrapping it tenderly, he revealed his recently purchased copy of a Hogarth Press edition of To a Proud Phantom, a book of poetry by Ena Limebeer.
This 1923 edition, handset and printed by Virginia and Leonard Woolf, was his most recent purchase for his notable collection of Hogarth Press originals.
Ben’s collection of such treasures is now part of a world premiere exhibition, sponsored by the Gordon Square Society, called “Letter by Letter (From the Woolfs’ Hands): Handprinted Books by Virginia & Leonard Woolf.” The exhibit is the first to present several titles with their variant covers.
About the exhibit
For the first time in Belgium, this public exhibition brings together all 34 books hand-set, printed, bound and published in limited editions by Virginia and Leonard Woolf themselves under their Hogarth Press imprint.
These rarities in the literary and bibliophile world with their original covers and illustrations designed by Bloomsbury artists come from the collections of Ben, co-founder of the Gordon Square Society, as well as Pierre and Marie-Madeleine Coumans.
Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant, Dora Carrington and Roger Fry are just some of the artists who created the cover designs for the highly sought after volumes.
The exhibition is complemented by the first “Bloomsbury” book and all the books published by The Omega Workshops.
Who: Sponsored by the Gordon Square Society
What: “Letter by Letter (From the Woolfs’ Hands): Handprinted Books by Virginia & Leonard Woolf” Exhibit
When: Nov. 30 and Dec. 4,5,6,7,11,12, 18, and 19 Where: The Splendid Nottebohm Room of the Hendrik Conscience Heritage Library – H. Conscienceplein 4, 2000 Antwerp Tickets:Check to see if any dates are available.
Recent talk on the VWoolf Listserv and a post here on Blogging Woolf involved Virginia Woolf and recent news about her use of purple ink. Both raised further comments — and questions.
Here is the background
Craft workshop participant at a Woolf conference using a manual typewriter but no purple ink.
The news was that Virginia’s writing in her trademark purple pen had been discovered by Esther Folkersma, a research internist for the digital Modernist Archives Publishing Project. Virginia used purple ink when writing on the stock cards of the Hogarth Press archives up to February 1940, Folkersma found.
That news raised the following questions — and probably more I haven’t yet heard.
The questions raised
Is Virginia the only one who wrote in purple ink on Hogarth Press documents?
Did Virginia ever use a purple typewriter ribbon?
All Woolf writers using purple ink please stand up
Is Virginia the only one who wrote in purple ink on Hogarth Press documents?
This is fascinating, but there is one small hiccup—much of that writing in purple ink is in Leonard’s hand. – Matthew Holliday
I would like to have more details about that claim, so I invite any one who knows more about Leonard’s use of purple ink to please chime in by posting a comment below.
What I do know is that Esther Folkersma’s post on the MAPP blog clearly states that she has identified the handwriting in purple ink that she found as Virginia’s.
Virginia’s purple typewriter ribbon
Did Virginia ever use a purple typewriter ribbon?
That question was posed to the list, and Bryony Randall, professor of modernist literature at Glasgow University, provided this information in reply:
Many of Woolf’s short stories – or early drafts thereof – were typed in purple ink, from as early as ‘[A Dialogue Upon Mount Pentelicus]’ to as late as what we previously knew as ‘Gypsy, the Mongrel’, but thanks to Stuart Clarke we now know was published as ‘The Little Dog Laughed’. So certainly a favourite colour in any writing medium! I’ve been able to verify the type colour of those typescripts held in the Monk’s House Papers, but not (yet) those at the NYPL, pending a research trip. – Bryony Randall
Catherine Hollis of UC Berkeley added this information:
“Friendship’s Gallery” (1907-8) was typed in violet ink and bound in violet leather (via Matthew Clarke’s recent essay “My Poor Intimate: Virginia Woolf and Violet Dickinson”).
Feel free to add to this discussion in the comments section below.
I have written about Virginia Woolf and fountain pens and her ink preferences before. But today I learned of a new discovery that links Woolf even more strongly to the everyday work of the Hogarth Press, thanks to her use of purple ink.
First page of The Hours notebook 2 (purple ink). Courtesy of SP Books
Nicola Wilson of the University of Reading and the Modernist Archives Publishing Project, a digital project that debuted at the 2017 Woolf Conference and focuses on the Hogarth Press, posted this note to the VWoolf Listserv:
We have recently found evidence of Woolf’s purple pen in the Hogarth Press archives up to Feb 1940 – on the stock cards! Taking account of the figures? This is very exciting as it gives a real indication of Woolf’s presence at the Press and corroborates the kind of information on figures she tracks in the diaries.
Purple ink and the Hogarth Press
Esther Folkersma made the discovery while working with Danni Corfield to clean, sort, and organize the Hogarth Press stock cards as part of her research internship with MAPP. The Hogarth Press stock cards indicate where the stock of a specific book was being held, when the entity received the stock and how many copies they received, how many copies were issued, the number of copies printed at what date, the number of bound copies, and the balance in sheets.
“As more and more purple appeared under our sponges, brushes, and scalpels, and as the colours became more pronounced, Woolf’s presence in these cards grew,” Folkersma wrote in a post on the MAPP blog.
“The scale of Woolf’s handwriting in these stock cards surprised me, as her presence in the press, at least in a material sense, is often difficult to find, even though the significance of her role in the press has always been undeniable, especially as seen through her own diary entries.”
Folkersma explains that “the abundance of Virginia Woolf’s purple ink readily found on a majority of the Stock Value Cards illustrates her involvement in the press to an extent beyond what I had even gathered from her diaries. These very utilitarian cards show how involved Woolf was in the more administrative operations behind the scenes.”
Purple ink and The Hours (Mrs. Dalloway)
According to Mark Hussey, Bloomsbury scholar and author, “most of The Hours (‘Mrs Dalloway‘) holograph is in Woolf’s favored purple ink, with some in black and a little in blue. Her corrections on the American proof are also in purple ink.”
In 2019, SP Books published a gorgeous edition of the handwritten manuscript of what would become Woolf’s famous 1925 novel, allowing anyone who could obtain a copy to see that many of the pages were written in purple ink. I did and wrote a post about it.
Purple ink a chapter, a letter, and a diary entry
Folkersma also recommends reading Ted Bishop’s chapter “Getting a Hold on Haddock: Virginia Woolf?s Inks” from Virginia Woolf and the World of Books (2018), the selected papers from the 2017 conference.
And she mentions two Woolf quotes — one from a letter and one from a diary
This ink is Waterman?s fountain pen ink. Cheap, violet, indelible. (Which sounds as if I were paid to write their advertisements). – from a 1923 letter to Dorothy Brett
The degradation of steel pens is such that after doing my best to clip & file one into shape, I have to take to a Waterman, profoundly though I distrust them, & disbelieve in the capacity to convey the nobler & profounder thoughts.” – from a 1918 Diary entry
Roundtable participants at the 2017 Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf sit below a screen showing a digitized ledger sheet from the Hogarth Press. Note the purple ink.
