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Archive for the ‘Jean Moorcroft Wilson’ Category

Woolf walking & writing in London in advance of #DallowayDay

Posted in Dalloway Day, events, Jean Moorcroft Wilson, Virginia Woolf, tagged , , , , , , , , , on Saturday 16 June 2018| 2 Comments »

Gower Street Waterstones

About 25 Virginia Woolf fans gathered at Gower Street Waterstones this afternoon to talk about ”Woolf, Walking & Writing” in advance of the official #DallowayDay this Wednesday.

The walk

The bookstore and the Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain sponsored the event, which began with an hour-long tour of Bloomsbury guided by Jean Moorcroft Wilson, author of Virginia Woolf’s London.

Jean began the walk with the suggestion that we think about it as a shopping expedition, one Woolf would have taken in her day. She then led us around the Bloomsbury squares where Woolf and other Bloomsbury Group members lived, putting each in context by adding quotes from Woolf’s diaries and references to her 1925 novel Mrs. Dalloway.

The talks

Back at the shop, the event included a panel discussion about writing with two writers — Francesca Wade and Farah Ahamed. Wade is writing a book about interwar women and Mecklenburgh Square and Ahamed writes fiction and essays.

The event concluded with wine and a presentation about Woolf’s photographs by Maggie Humm, author of Snapshots of Bloomsbury.

Here are some photos from the day.

The Woolf crowd gathers at Waterstones for the tour led by Jean Moorcroft Wilson.

Jean Moorcroft Wilson on the doorstep of 46 Gordon Square, Woolf’s first Bloomsbury home.

Our next stop was the Tavistock Hotel, where this blue plaque honoring Virginia and Leonard Woolf was installed this spring. The hotel is located on the site of their former home at 52 Tavistock Square, which was destroyed in World War II.

At Waterstones, ready for the #DallowayDay talks

A display of books by and about Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group available at the shop.

Panel discussion on Woolf and writing with M.L. Banting, Farah Ahamed and Francesca Wade.

Maggie Humm talks about Woolf’s photography and how it relates to her writing.

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Day 1 of the conference says happy birthday to the Hogarth Press

Posted in 27th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, Cecil Woolf, Cecil Woolf Publishers, Hogarth Press, Hogarth Press centenary, Jean Moorcroft Wilson, tagged , , , , , on Thursday 29 June 2017| 11 Comments »

The Hogarth Press is 100 years old this year, and the 27th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf marked the centennial with a birthday party that turned out to be a family affair.

Cressida Bell, granddaughter of Vanessa Bell, designed the cake, which was loaded with chocolate chunks and fruit. Cecil Woolf, nephew of Leonard and Virginia Woolf, shared his memories of working at the Hogarth Press starting in 1931, as well as the history of the business.

The Woolfs’ printing business began with their purchase of a small hand printing press in March of 1917. The couple spotted the press in a printer shop’s window, Cecil said, and purchased it for 19£, five shillings and five pence. It came with a 16-page instruction book, type, cases, and other equipment.

Book and art treats, too

Conference participants who attended the party at the Reading, England Museum of English Rural Life were treated to more than cake and Cecil’s charming talk. They were also able to purchase specially printed keepsake editions of  Virginia’s 1924 article “The Patron and the Crocus.” Included in the slim volume is a facsimile reproduction of a reader’s report from the Hogarth Press archives at the University of Reading.

Party-goers were also able to print their own woodcut of the Roger Fry design “The London Garden.”

The publication of “Cecil Woolf: The Other Boy at the Hogarth Press, Virginia and Leonard Woolf as I Remember Them” by Cecil Woolf Publishers also marks the centennial, as does a new Hogarth Chatto & Windus version of the first book published by the Hogarth Press, the Woolfs’ Two Stories.

Cecil Woolf, accompanied by his wife Jean Moorcroft Wilson, talks about being “A Boy at the Hogarth Press” at its 100th birthday party

The Hogarth Press 100th birthday cake, designed by Cressida Bell.

Clara Farmer, publishing director of Hogarth Chatto & Windus, and Cecil Woolf slice the cake.

The Hogarth Press centenary keepsake of “The Patron and the Crocus” offers two different colored letterpress covers.

Martin Andrews of Typography and Graphic Communication at the University of Reading patiently helped guests print their own woodcut copies of Roger Fry’s design, “The London Garden.”

Woodcuts hanging to dry at the Hogarth Press 100th birthday party.

Party guests enjoying Cecil Woolf’s reminiscences.

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Order new books by Cecil Woolf Publishers

Posted in 21st Annual Internation Conference on Virginia Woolf, books, Cecil Woolf Publishers, Jean Moorcroft Wilson, Mark Hussey, tagged , , , , on Saturday 18 June 2011| 1 Comment »

Cecil Woolf Publishers, 1 Mornington Place London NW1 7RP, UK Tel: 020 7387 2394 or +44 (0)20 7387 2394 from outside the UK, cecilwoolf@gmail.com

Each year at the Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, Cecil Woolf Publishers introduce several new monographs in their Bloomsbury Heritage Series and distribute a new catalogue of their publications.

Here are the three new titles that debuted at the 21st Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, held June 9-12 at the University of Glasgow, and the two that were reissued:

  • Virginia Woof and the Thirties Poets by Emily Kopley
  • How Vita Matters by Mary Ann Caws
  • `I’d Make It Penal’, the Rural Preservation Movement in Virginia Woolf’s “Between the Acts” by Mark Hussey
  • Virginia Woolf, Life and London: Bloomsbury and Beyond by Jean Moorcroft Wilson, a revised reissue available in both paperback and casebound editions
  • Virginia Woolf: A to Z  by Mark Hussey, a reissue available in both paperback and casebound editions

Download Cecil Woolf Publishers Bloomsbury Heritage Series 2011 Catalogue and Order Form.

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Remembrance Day coverage features Cecil and Jean

Posted in Cecil Woolf, Cecil Woolf Publishers, Jean Moorcroft Wilson, tagged , , , on Friday 19 November 2010| 4 Comments »

Cecil Woolf and Jean Moorcroft Wilson

Jean Moorcroft Wilson and Cecil Woolf are featured in an article about World War I poet Edward Thomas posted today on the Islington Tribune website.

Wilson, who is writing a biography of Thomas, spoke about him at an event at the Imperial War Museum on the eve of Remembrance Day. She is the author of biographies of World War I poets Isaac Rosenberg (2005) and Siegfried Sassoon (2009).

Churchill biographer Martin Wilson also spoke at the event, describing the conditions on the Western Front during the Great War.

Wilson serves as editor for many monographs in the Bloomsbury Heritage Series and the War Poets Series published by her husband, Cecil Woolf of Cecil Woolf Publishers, which is based in London.

She also wrote the text that every Woolfian consults when planning a trip to England in the hopes of following in Virginia Woolf’s footsteps. It’s titled Virginia Woolf, Life and London: A Biography of Place.

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Pondering differences between writing fiction and letters

Posted in Bloomsbury, books, Cecil Woolf, Jean Moorcroft Wilson, Woolf Letters, tagged , , , , on Sunday 7 February 2010| Leave a Comment »

I love getting post from abroad. Everything about it is charming: the feel of the envelope, the look of the stamps, even the fact that “U.S.A.” is included in the address.

I never rip it right open. I usually hold the letter in my hands for a minute, thinking about the long distance it has come, the water it has crossed, the person on the other end who has taken the time to sit down and put pen to paper.

Sometimes I have to wait for the right moment before I can open it. I never want to read a letter from abroad when I am agitated or in a hurry or distracted by some mundane matter.

But when the moment is right, I settle down on my favorite sofa, the one where the late afternoon sun slants across my shoulder. In that calm and quiet spot, I carefully slit open the envelope. I sip the words slowly, letting them swish around in my mind. I savor their flavor and their meaning. I note their nuances and subtleties. I picture the person who wrote it and the place where he wrote.

A letter, an old-fashioned handwritten letter from abroad, is something I can tuck in my book and read again later. It is something I can take with me wherever I go. It is something I can save forever, tied up with others like it, bound together and stored in a drawer.

So where is the Virginia Woolf connection in all of this? Well, we all know she wrote and received lots of letters — volumes in fact. Five of them sit on my bookshelf.

But two other things have made me think about letters. The first was a note I received from Cecil Woolf, nephew of Leonard and Virginia, who wrote to say that he and his wife Jean Moorcroft Wilson had spent 12 days in South Africa, where they spoke at the University of Capetown. Cecil’s talk was titled “As I Remember Them: Virginia and Leonard Woolf.” His missive was dated Jan. 26, and I thought about the significance of that date as well.

Cecil Woolf

The second thing that made me think about letters was the much-discussed news that Angelica Garnett has published a new volume of short stories, The Unspoken Truth: A Quartet of Bloomsbury Stories. These stories are not letters. But Garnett has been quoted as saying that the stories are autobiographical, not invented, for the most part.

Those things led me to ponder the similarities between real life and fiction and the differences between real life stories and the lives we share via letters. Both are edited, either formally or informally. Both alter the realities of our daily lives. Both stay true to those realities.

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