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Archive for the ‘Virginia Woolf’ Category

Woolf takes the hits

Posted in a blog of her own, Blogging Woolf, Virginia Woolf, Woolf blog on Thursday 2 August 2007| 2 Comments »

I have exciting news for Woolfians everywhere: In less than 24 hours, Blogging Woolf was number three on the WordPress list of fastest growing blogs. This is the list that shows up on the Dashboard page of bloggers who use WordPress.

That means hundreds of hits are coming Woolf’s way.

I think this shows the power of Woolf and her worldwide network of friends, lovers, and common readers. The Woolf circle rocks!

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The links that bind us

Posted in a blog of her own, Blogging Woolf, Blogroll, Virginia Woolf, VWoolf Listserv, Woolf blog on Thursday 2 August 2007| 1 Comment »

Ah, the links — and the e-mails — that bind us to each other.

Woolf lover Lisa Guidarini of Bluestalking Reader received our announcement of the birth of this blog via the VWoolf Listserv. When she visited this site, she was happily surprised to find a link to her literary blog.

She then repaid the unwitting favor by writing about our newborn blog. And she christened it with our first comment.

Woolf and her circle — both past and present — thank her.

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Is Virginia Woolf going to the dogs?

Posted in a blog of her own, Blogging Woolf, dog, Flush, Helen Southworth, Virginia Woolf, VWoolf Listserv, Woolf blog on Wednesday 1 August 2007| 6 Comments »

Recent news about Virginia Woolf connects her to the animal companion she held most dear — the dog.

First, there’s a book. Shaggy Muses: The Dogs Who Inspired Virginia Woolf, Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Edith Wharton and Emily Bronte features a photo of Woolf and one of her beloved cocker spaniels on the cover.

In the book, Adams, a psychologist and former English professor, tells the story of five exceptional women writers — including Woolf — who obtained emotional support from their canine pets. In Woolf’s case, Adams suggests that her depiction of a dog’s trauma in her biography Flush dealt with her own childhood molestation.

Adams’s argument may be skewed by its limited focus. But the tome, which Publisher’s Weekly calls a “sweet, quirky book” is still worth a look. Read a review.

Woof sighting
Then there’s a doggie daycare. Helen Southworth  shared her latest find, a Web site advertising Virginia Woof Dog Daycare, with the Virginia Woolf Listserv.

A quote posted at the top of the Portland, Oregon, doggie daycare’s Web site leaves us no doubt about the Woof establishment’s intentional connection to Woolf. The quote from the author reads: “Dogs are not our whole life, but they make our lives whole.”

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Blogs as literary devices

Posted in a blog of her own, A Room of One's Own, Anne Fernald, Blogging Woolf, Hogarth Press, Virginia Woolf, Woolf blog, tagged on Friday 27 July 2007| 3 Comments »

Are blogs the modern day version of the Hogarth Press? Can they be the great equalizer that allows women an equal voice with men in the world?

I ponder these questions on a drizzly summer day, with a slow-falling rain returning a fresh green color to grass turned brown by drought in Northeast Ohio.

I turn to Virginia Woolf for the answers. In particular, I turn to Chapter 1 of  A Room of One’s Own:  “I thought of how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse perhaps to be locked in.”

As I read, a tingling feeling takes hold of me. It is a feeling of excitement, the excitement of recognition that 78 years after Woolf’s words were first published, they become true for me in a new way.

Blogging, Woolf’s words tell me, allows us access to what the world holds on both sides of the locked door. We can enter a room of our own, where we can create what we imagine. And we can share those creations with the world at large.

Has blogging on the Web not only unlocked the door for women writers, but also thrown away the key?

Thoughts from another literary blogger

 Ann E. Fernald, author of Virginia Woolf: Feminism and the Reader and assistant professor at Fordham University, has an interesting take on what Web blogs add to the literary discussion.

In a recent post on Fernham, her literary blog, she says blogs can provide new voices that appeal to niche audiences. These fresh voices — that would often be locked out of the academic or media mainstreams — are able to influence others while soliciting feedback and building community.

So perhaps the Web in general — and blogs in particular — have unlocked the door for women.

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A blog of her own

Posted in a blog of her own, A Room of One's Own, Blogging Woolf, Monk's House, Virginia Woolf, Woolf blog on Thursday 26 July 2007| 2 Comments »

Virginia Woolf’s writing lodge at Monk’s House

I think of this blog as a place similar to Virginia Woolf’s writing Lodge at Monk’s House in Sussex. She created that space as a room of her own where she could write undisturbed. We create this bit of cyberspace as a place of our own where we can post our own words about Woolf, her work, and their continuing relevance to the world at large.

Blogging, in fact, seems an ideal forum for the writing of women, when one looks at what Woolf predicted. For in A Room of One’s Own, she says that fiction written by women in the future will be “shorter, more concentrated…framed so that they do not need long hours of steady and uninterrupted work. For interruptions there will always be” (78). Blogging certainly fits that description.

So here’s to you, Virginia — a blog of your own. Interruptions notwithstanding.

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