The Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain offers many member benefits. One of them is a reading group for those who want to talk about the works of Virginia Woolf and some of her Bloomsbury friends and contemporaries.
Discussions, which take place either online or face to face, allow members to find connections, influences and similarities among the works read. Members discuss their experiences of reading the work, whether it’s their first or hundredth time, as well as what themes or motifs they notice and what they liked best or least and why.
Night and Day up next
Night and Day (1919) is the next Woolf work up for discussion. Date: Friday, August 30, 2024 Time: 5 p.m. BST or noon EST. Where: online
How to join the society
Email membershipvwsgb@gmail.com to join the society, or onlinevwsgb@gmail.com for further information and queries about the reading group.
This year marks the 100th anniversary of the publication of Virginia Woolf’s second novel, Night and Day. It also marks the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment in the U.S.
Fittingly enough, both deal with women’s struggle to obtain the right to vote.
While Woolf’s novel has often been overlooked, it is currently receiving the recognition it deserves. Nowadays it is described as “a remarkable story of two women navigating the possibilities opened up by the struggle for women’s suffrage.”
Reading and discussing Night and Day
In September of last year, Anne Fernald, professor of English and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Fordham University, led a reading group on Virginia Woolf and E. M. Forster at the Center for Fiction in Brooklyn that featured novelists Julie Orringer and Michael Cunningham discussing Night and Day.
According to Restless Books, the new edition of Woolf’s novel is part of a “series of beautifully packaged, newly introduced and illustrated great books from the past that still speak to our time, our place, and, especially, our restlessness. In addition to their original artwork and fresh introductions, Restless Classics brings the classroom experience to the reader with linked online teaching videos.”
Night and Day in conversation
You can also sit in on last year’s discussion of the novel held at the Brooklyn Center for Fiction by watching the video below.
Panel organizers have issued a call for papers on Virginia Woolf’s novel in the centennial year of its publication that address the question: What is the twenty-first century legacy of Woolf’s “nineteenth-century” novel?
Please send 250-word abstracts to Mary Wilson at mwilson4@umassd.edu by March 12. Wilson, associate professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, is the author of The Labors of Modernism and Rhys Matters.
Amanda Ann White creates collages, using paper clipped from old magazines. And sometimes the subject of her collages is Monk’s House.
Night and Day, Monk’s Househer collages is Monk’s House.
White emailed Blogging Woolf to share her collages of Virginia Woolf’s Sussex home, which are sold in the home’s new shop.
“The images of Monk’s House were the first things that went into the new shop incorporated into Monk’s House. In fact they were on sale before it was installed. They sell as cards and small prints there. Visitors to Monks House do seem to like them,” White wrote.
She also sells the collages at her Etsy shop. Larger high quality art prints are available on her website in the Giclee section.
White says she will offer new cards based on details from a long picture of the house and garden, which is a design for a bookmark, later in the year.
Collage is a not a new topic for Woolfians. The subject came up on the VWoolf Listserv in 2012.
Being able to download Virginia Woolf novels to Apple’s sleek little iPod means we can now carry her words with us anywhere we go. Because so far, I haven’t found a pocket that the gizmo — stocked with Woolf novels — doesn’t fit in.
Here’s my story. I bought an IPod touch a few weeks ago. Since then, I have spent way too much time searching for and downloading fun, interesting and useful iPod Apps.
I won’t bore you Woolfians with my love for the AP Stylebook App that set me back $29 but is worth every penny. Nor will I discuss the free Italian lessons I’m taking on my iPod or the Rachel Maddow shows I’m watching or the multiple Twitter accounts I’m following via TweetDeck.
But I will gladly tell you about the Apps I found that are related to Virginia:
The Virginia Woolf Collection – Nine of Woolf’s novels. Cost: $2.99
“Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” Study Guide and Quiz. Cost: 99 cents
Three versions of Night and Day at a cost of 99 cents each
Mrs. Dalloway. Cost: $17.99
Vanessa and Virginia by Susan Sellers. Cost: $9.99
Orlando Study Guide and Quiz. Cost: 99 cents
To the Lighthouse Study Guide and Quiz. Cost: 99 cents
The best news is that if you want to get Woolf novels for free, and you have an iPod touch or an iPhone, you can. Here’s how:
