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Archive for the ‘Virginia Woolf’ Category

Reading Woolf in Anna Solomon’s Leaving Lucy Pear       

Posted in To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf, Woolf in Contemporary Fiction, tagged , , , , , on Sunday 30 July 2017| Leave a Comment »

Cape Ann, Massachusetts, 1928. Bea is on the porch reading the book her cousin Rose has handed her, The President’s Daughter, which Bea describes as the trashiest book she’s ever read, though she can’t resist it. Rose, in turn, has picked up To the Lighthouse, and admits that she doesn’t understand it.

Bea had finished the book last week and had not stopped thinking about it but she did not think that understanding—the way Rose meant it—was its point. She understood that Mrs. Ramsay was her mother and that she, Bea, was “the sudden silent trout” pinned against the glass (if she read again she would see they were not pinned but “hanging,” but that was the difference between this kind of understanding and Rose’s), and Bea understood that the book as a whole was about her own life and that other people probably understood it to be about theirs. But her understanding in this way was vague—the book had stayed with her through the week like a glowing, invisible pet she could not risk touching. “I think it’s about memory,” she said. “And about how the present is always becoming the past, both in our consciousness of it and in reality. And about the confusion, or maybe the elision, between the two, and also between reality and a person’s vision of reality. Very little happens but a lot is happening. A character can stand with a foot on a threshold and her whole world shifts.”  Bea had not known how good it would feel to talk about the book. The only educated women she spoke with on a regular basis—club women she courted at benefits or after her speeches—talked about Virginia Woolf like Lillian and her friends fawned over Parisian silk. “Also, it’s about women and men,” Bea concluded, starting to worry that she was making little sense. “And whether or not the children will get to the lighthouse.”

Another sign of Anna Solomon’s homage to Woolf in Leaving Lucy Pear is the occasional appearance of references to a Nurse Lugton, who tended Bea when she experienced a mental breakdown. Oh yes, there’s a ceramic lighthouse too….

In an interview on NPR’s “Here and Now,” Anna Solomon said that Woolf was an important influence on her consciousness both as a writer and as a human being, that Woolf helped her find her own voice. She added that it gave her pleasure to have her character reading the work that she herself loved.

Woolf aside, I found this an interesting and well-written novel, an unusual and compelling slice of life.

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Here’s what Virginia Woolf is doing in Italy

Posted in 27th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, Italian Virginia Woolf Society, Virginia Woolf, tagged , , on Wednesday 26 July 2017| 1 Comment »

Virginia Woolf readers and scholars from all over the world attended the Woolf conference in Reading, England, earlier this month — and two of them were from Italy, representing the new Italian Virginia Woolf Society.

I was happy to meet Elisa Bolchi, president of the new society, along with member Sara Sullam. And when I mentioned at the Saturday evening banquet that I would love to have one of the society’s lavender buttons, Elisa readily removed hers from her sweater and gave it to me. It is now one of my prized mementoes from the conference, particularly since I am of Italian heritage and will always be in love with Italia.

Here’s an update about the group provided by President Elisa Bolchi.

Elisa Bolchi and Sara Sullam, two members of the new Italian Virginia Woolf Society who attended this month’s Woolf conference in Reading, England. Elisa is the society’s president.

The Italian Virginia Woolf Society now has 84 members. We had our ‘vernissage’ event 13 June (Dalloway’s day!), in the garden of the International House of Women in Rome. The title was ‘Virginia Woolf: the sense of community’, and it was meant to introduce the aims of the Society. The speakers were the founding members: Nadia Fusini, Liliana Rampello, Iolanda Plescia and I.

We now have several events scheduled:

  • 5 October: we will be in Turin to present the Society. We are also planning four events in Turin related to this first presentation: three encounters dedicated to Woolf’s novels and one regarding her essays. We don’t have the dates set yet. We have been invited by the Readers’ Club of Turin.
  • 21 October: We’ll be in Bologna to speak of the “Current relevance of Woolf” in the beautiful conference room of the Salaborsa, the main public library in Bologna.
  • I’ll be also giving a PhD. lecture on the above topic in Perugia, at the end of October or the beginning of November (I don’t have the dates yet).
  • 24-26 November: 2nd edition of the Literary Festival “Il Faro in una stanza”, dedicated to Woolf.
  • For next Spring (probably March) we are planning our first conference, and the theme will be “Woolf and Community”.

Taking a group photo of Italian — and half-Italian — attendees at the 27th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf banquet was a must. It includes Sara Sullam, Patrizia Muscogiuri, Paula Maggio, and Elisa Bolchi.

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New digital project–MAPP–energizes crowd on day 2 of #Woolf2017

Posted in 27th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, Hogarth Press, Hogarth Press centenary, Virginia Woolf, tagged , , , on Friday 30 June 2017| 7 Comments »

Conference days are long. And full. And draining. But on the afternoon of day two of the 27th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, one plenary session — a roundtable featuring five scholars — perked up the crowd.

It was the session introducing the Modernist Archives Publishing Project (MAPP), a new digital project that currently focuses on the Hogarth Press but plans to include more newly digitized material and information connected with additional publishers as time goes on.

“This is the first time in a long time I’ve wanted to be 22 again,” said Beth Rigel Daugherty of Otterbein University. “Last night [at the Hogarth Press 100th birthday celebration] there was this very strong sense of the past. And this project is moving toward the future.”

Visitors can navigate the site several different ways to locate works, authors, and publishers in which they are interested. They can read synopses of the work, brief bios of the authors, and download high-res images of the book covers. Images can be used under a Creative Commons license.

MAPP is a collaborative project among six scholars and their students and research assistants from several countries. It was spearheaded by Elizabeth Willson Gordon, The King’s University of Edmonton, Canada; Claire Battershill, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada; Alice Staveley, Stanford University; Helen Southworth, University of Oregon; Michael Widner, Stanford University; Nicola Wilson, University of Reading, Reading, England.

The group will be recruiting students to serve as research assistants to write additional book synopses and literary biographies. The site will eventually include pedagogical resources, including lists of syllabi and assignments using the digital resources available on MAPP.

The new Modernist Archives Publishing Project (MAPP) now available online.

Claire Battershill of Simon Fraser University led conference participants through the MAPP website.

Roundtable participants sit below a screen showing a digitized ledger sheet from the Hogarth Press.

 

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The story of the other boy at the Hogarth Press: Cecil Woolf

Posted in 27th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, Cecil Woolf, Cecil Woolf Publishers, Hogarth Press, Hogarth Press centenary, Virginia Woolf, tagged , , , , , on Thursday 29 June 2017| 8 Comments »

After decades of publishing other people’s books, Cecil Woolf has written a monograph of his own. Cecil Woolf: The Other Boy at the Hogarth Press, Virginia and Leonard Woolf as I Remember Them is being launched at the 27th Annual International Conference on Virgina Woolf in Reading, England this week.

To order this monograph and others in the Bloomsbury Heritage and War Poets series, visit Cecil Woolf Publishers.

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First (faux) Woolf sighting in Reading: The Three Guineas pub

Posted in 27th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, Virginia Woolf, tagged , on Wednesday 28 June 2017| Leave a Comment »

When I arrived in Reading, England by train for the 27th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf at the University of Reading yesterday, I was too tired to notice The Three Guineas pub right across from the train station. But others did and they clued me in.

So when I went out to explore a bit last evening, that’s where I landed, thanks to conference keynoter Ted Bishop and Elizabeth Willson Gordon, who graciously invited me to tag along with them. Bishop, of the University of Alberta, Canada, will talk about Virginia Woolf’s inks, and Willson Gordon, of The King’s University of Edmonton, Canada, is part of a roundtable on the Modernist Archives Publishing Project. Her colleagues on the project are Claire Battershill, Simon Fraser University; Alice Staveley, Stanford University; Helen Southworth, University of Oregon; Michael Widner, Stanford University; Nicola Wilson, University of Reading.

As it turns out, the Reading pub’s name is not connected to Virginia but to a railway prize. Oh, well. I enjoyed the food, my London Pride brew, the cozy setting on a chill, rainy night, and the company anyway.

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