Helen Southworth‘s edited volume, Leonard and Virginia Woolf, The Hogarth Press and the Networks of Modernism, will be published in paperback at the end of this month. The price is $32.50.
The hardback versionwas published by Edinburgh University Press in October of 2010. Read a review.
Southworth is associate professor of literature at the University of Oregon. Her other books include:
Pegana Press announces a limited edition of Paris: A Poem by Hope Mirrlees that was originally printed by Virginia Woolf.
Mirrlees was a friend of Woolf, who described her as “a very self conscious, wilful, prickly and perverse young woman, rather conspicuously well dressed and pretty, with a view of her own about books and style, an aristocratic and conservative tendency in opinion and a corresponding taste for the beautiful and elaborate in literature.”
The edition is limited to 50 numbered copies, hand printed on French paper, with a new afterword and gallery of Parisian images. Pegana Press has duplicated the unique typography and punctuation that Mirrlees insisted Woolf follow when the Hogarth Press published it in 1919 as one of its earliest offerings. The cover, however, is different from the original.
The price is $375, and it appears that there are only 20 copies remaining.
In her 2006 book, Reading Virginia Woolf, critic Julia Briggs called Paris “modernism’s lost masterpiece, a work of extraordinary energy and intensity, scope and ambition.” According to Mike Tortorello of Pegana Press, Paris influenced Eliot, Pound, and Woolf.
Hope Mirrlees website showing scan of original cover of "Paris"
See scans of the front cover and title page of the Hogarth Press edition of Paris. Download a PDF of the 600-line poem as it was originally published. Tortorello used this scan to produce his letterpress version.
…behind the ramparts of the Louvre
Freud has dredged the river and, grinning horribly,
waves his garbage in a glare of electricity,
Taxis,
Taxis,
Taxis,
They moan and yell and squeak
Like a thousand tom-cats in rut.
The whores like lions are seeking their meat from God :
An English padre tilts with the Moulin Rouge…
Time is running out to see “A Room of Their Own: The Bloomsbury Artists in American Collections” exhibit. The largest collection of Bloomsbury art to have been shown in the states for almost a decade, the exhibit will be in the U.S. through Sept. 26.
Virginia and Leonard Woolf lived in Richmond, a suburb just 15 minutes from central London by train, from 1915 to 1924.
They occupied two houses during their years there. The first was rooms in number 17 on the east side of The Green, which is still considered “one of the most beautiful urban greens surviving anywhere in England.”
The second was Hogarth House on Paradise Road. According to Julia Briggs in Virginia Woolf an Inner Life, the Woolfs took the lease on the property on Virginia’s 33rd birthday. Hogarth House was part of the present Suffield House, which at that time was divided into two separate homes. The Woolfs occupied half of the Georgian brick home, moving there in early March of 1915.
One of England’s famous blue plaques, added in 1976, is affixed to the house to commemorate the Woolfs’ residency. The plaque is one of 15 in Richmond.
The Hogarth Press
The Hogarth Press began publishing at Hogarth House in July 1917. Woolf published Two Stories, Kew Gardens, Monday or Tuesday and Jacob’s Room between 1917 and 1924. Woolf could see Kew Gardens from the rear windows of Hogarth House.
When German air raids during World War I disturbed the sleep and the safety of the Woolfs and their servants, they moved to the basement at night. And when peace came, Woolf celebrated along with other Richmond residents. On July 20, 1919, she wrote her diary entry about the “peace” celebrations:
After sitting through the procession and the peace bells unmoved, I began after dinner to feel that if something was going on, perhaps one had better be in it…The doors of the public house at the corner were open and the room crowded; couples waltzing; songs being shouted, waveringly, as if one must be drunk to sing. A troop of little boys with lanterns were parading the Green, beating sticks. Not many shops went to the expense of electric light. A woman of the upper classes was supported dead drunk between two men partially drunk. We followed a moderate stream flowing up the Hill.
Richmond makes its way into Woolf’s novels as well. In The Waves, for example, the reunion dinner at the end takes place at Hampton Court, which is located in Richmond. In the novel, Bernard calls it the “meeting-place” for the group of six longtime friends.
Like most things in life, though, Woolf wavered between liking and disliking Richmond. Briggs says that even though Woolf described Hogarth House in one of her diaries as “a perfect house, if ever there was one,” by June of 1923 she was anxious to move back to London. In a diary entry that month, she wrote, “we must leave Richmond and set up in London.”
In March of 1924, the Woolfs left Richmond to move back to London. They set up housekeeping and publishing at 52 Tavistock Square.
The exhibit is free and open to the public. Hours areMonday through Friday, noon-4:30 p.m. and by appointment. Special hours during the conference weekend are June 3, 6:30-8:30 p.m.; June 4 and 5, noon-5 p.m.; and June 6, 11 a.m.-1 p.m. For an appointment, contact the gallery via e-mail at galleries@georgetowncollege.edu or by phone at 502-863-8173.
The exhibition of fine art, rare books and other printed material has been curated by Dr. Juilee Decker, chair of the art department at Georgetown College. The juried show features 32 pieces, many for sale, by regional, national and international artists.
Free exhibition events include:
Opening reception on June 3, 6:30-8:30 p.m.
Closing reception and keynote address by Diana Swanson of Northern Illinois University on June 6, 11 a.m.-1 p.m.
The art on exhibit
Virginia Woolf bust by Valentina Mazzei
A range of works include representations of Woolf in the following media:
a drawing of the author created in one sitting and using more than 20 pencils
a digital print from several perspectives
an oil on panel.
Artwork responding to Woolf’s writing and the conference theme include:
a visual tribute to The Waves
abstract and representational mixed media on panel
acrylic and graphite on paper
watercolor landscapes
digital prints that blend word and image
several finely woven works that incorporate white oak, reed, maple, macaw and copper
a six-foot wide installation of carved wooden leaf-like forms arranged in a circle on the floor with a 12-inch opening in the center that subtly suggests the void from where a tree trunk might emerge.
The artists
Artists whose work was selected for the exhibition are: Bill Andrus (Lexington, Ky.), Jennifer Barnett Hensel (Altadena, Calif.), Ashley Bell (Baton Rouge, La.), Diana S. Brennan (Greenville, R.I.), Herb Goodman (Richmond, Ky.), Mille Guldbeck (Bowling Green, Ohio), John Higdon (Pensacola, Fla.), Cynthia Kukla (Bloomington, Ill.), Lauren Garber Lake (Gainsville, Fla.), Liz Lee (Fredonia, N.Y.), George Lorio (Brownsville, Texas), Valentina Mazzei (Rome, Italy), Linda Stein (New York, N.Y.), and Kim Rae Taylor (Cincinnati, Ohio).
In addition, two works by Isota Tucker Epes (1918-2009) have been lent from the collection of J. J. Wilson.
The printed work on display
The Hogarth Press housed at Sissinghurst
Printed material will be on view from private and public collections, including the Special Collections Library at the University of Kentucky, the Ekstrom Library at the University of Louisville and the Cincinnati Public Library.
First editions published in London and New York will be displayed, including a number of works printed by the Woolfs and at the Hogarth Press:
Woolf’s Common Reader (Hogarth Press, 1925)
Monday or Tuesday with woodcuts by Vanessa Bell (Hogarth Press, 1921)
the sketch of Kew Gardens, number 12 in an edition of 500 copies decorated by Vanessa Bell.
The publications disclose, further, the range of activity printed by the Woolfs on behalf of the Bloomsbury Group, including Roger Fry (The Artist and Psycho-Analysis, 1924). Works by a larger circle of intellectuals will be included in this exhibition. Included are the work of John Carl Flugel, whose The Psychology of Clothes was published by the Institute of Psycho-Analysis in 1930.
Of special mention is the collection of Victorian photographs taken by Julia Margaret Cameron and printed by Leonard and Virginia Woolf at their press in 1926.
Noted scholars Bonnie Kime Scott of San Diego State University, Carrie Rohman of Lafayette College and Christina Alt of the University of Ottawa will offer keynote addresses.
The deadline for advance registration is April 25. After that date, the registration fee will increase $30. Individuals interested in hearing conference talks may take advantage of daily, on-site registration at $55 per day.
