Publication of the hardcover volume means that all of Woolf’s essays are available as an entire collection for the first time.
A review of that volume is now posted on The Independent’s website. Written by Michèle Roberts, it describes the volume as “beautifully and expertly edited by Stuart N. Clarke” and praises the intelligence and diversity of this collection of essays.
The Scotsmanreviewed the book more than a month ago. Reviewer Jane Shilling praised Woolf’s beautiful writing and her ability to write “tenderly about the humble, the overlooked, the unknown.”
The Irish Times published a review on April 2. In it, author Eve Patten focuses on Woolf’s honing of her essay writing technique.
Reviewer Frank Hill’s overwhelmingly positive response can be summed up by this statement: “A Good Day tackles a difficult subject, but with a strong cast and sensitive direction from Helen Perry this proved to be a reflective and thoughtful evening at the theatre, which, like the author’s work itself, raises as many questions as it answers.”
Stuart N. Clarke, regular poster to the VW Listserv, keeper of an extensive Woolf and Bloomsbury bibliography, and editor of volumes five and six of The Essays of Virginia Woolf, was in the audience. In an early morning message to the list, he complimented the poetic quality of the script and the fact that it presented Woolf as a great writer.
The new play, described as a dramatic love story that gives a mesmerising and compelling view of Woolf’s final hours, according to producers Brian M Clarke and Tom Elliott, was produced in honor of the 70th anniversary of Woolf’s death.
The play had a short run, April 14-16, and was promoted by Beat Productions.
The long-awaited fifth volume of The Essays of Virginia Woolf, which includes 59 of Woolf’s essays — three of them for the first time — is now out in the U.K.
You can read one of the essays, about the love of reading, on The Guardian Web site.You can also read 95 pages of the newly published 700-page volume, here. Included in the online excerpt is Clarke’s Introduction to the volume.
Clarke was interviewed by RTÊ 1 Radio’s “The Arts Show,” and you can listen to that interview here.
The Essays of Virginia Woolf was published Jan. 15 by the Hogarth Press, a member of the Random House Group. To order a copy, click here.
Thirty-four essays by Virginia Woolf will be reprinted for the first time when Stuart N. Clarke publishes Volume VI of Woolf’s essays, he reports via the VW Listserv.
The new essays, most of which Clarke describes as “fairly short,” will be among the 53 that will be included in the new volume. All date from 1906 to 1924 and were discovered since the publication of Vols I-IV of The Essays of Virginia Woolf.
Nearly all are listed in the fourth edition of A Bibliography of Virginia Woolf, 4th ed., by B. J. Kirkpatrick and Clarke, published in Oxford by the Clarendon Press in 1997.
Jean Guiguet is dead. But until I read about his passing on the VW Listserv, I did not know of his connection to Woolf. Neither did I realize that he was a man.
The clues to both facts were contained within several messages to the list from Woolf scholars.
First, Stuart Clarke wrote to share the news that Guiguet died Jan. 30 at the age of 94.
Then Karen Levenback weighed in with her tribute to the French professor as one “of the earliest to recognize and honor Virginia Woolf and her achievement.”
Levenback wrote that his 1960s book, Virginia Woolf and her Works, “was one of the very few critical studies of Woolf before the publication of Quentin Bell’s biography in 1972.”
What’s more, she wrote, it was written before Woolf’s extensive diaries and letters were available to scholars. The only such resource at the time Guiguet wrote his book was the relatively slim version of Woolf’s diaries, A Writer’s Diary, heavily edited by Leonard.
In Virginia Woolf: A-Z, Mark Hussey makes numerous references to Guiguet’s Virginia Woolf and Her Works in entries covering Woolf’s fiction and non-fiction — from The Voyage Out to Three Guineas.
For a price, the Sept. 22, 1966, review of Guiguet’s book in the New York Review of Books is available online, as is Guiguet’s 1966 essay on Orlando.
Another Guiguet article, “Virginia Woolf: A Multifaceted Brain, a Single Purpose,” was published in the May 2001 issue of the Virginia Woolf Bulletin.
Both Levenback and Denise Marshall spoke of Guiguet’s valuable involvement with the International Virginia Woolf Society. Levenback remembered him as the only French member of the group when she served as secretary-treasurer in the late 1980s. Marshall recalled that when she served in that position in the early 1990’s, the group had more international members, “but none as faithful or as communicative as Jean Guiguet.”
In memoriam, Marshall wrote, “His work helped me with my dissertation and later teaching, and his is one of those volumes I always reached for as needed. I am saddened to hear of his passing.”
“I hope that we remember him and his important contribution with esteem,” Levenback concurred.
