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Archive for the ‘women’ Category

We all know the gender gap exists in the publishing world. For example, one study shows that books by female authors make up only a small percentage of collectible books priced at $500 or more. Nevertheless the work of Virginia Woolf is highly collectable. She is among the 10 most collectible female authors at AbeBooks.

Here is the list of the 10 most collectible female authors posted on the AbeBooks website:

  • Jane Austen
  • Virginia Woolf
  • Ayn Rand
  • Harper Lee
  • Agatha Christie
  • Mary Ann Evans/George Eliot
  • Beatrix Potte
  • Toni Morrison
  • Mary Shelley
  • J.K. Rowling

The data

AbeBooks.com analyzed a random sample of their sales for collectible books priced $500 or more. The company was dismayed to learn that only 4.8 percent of those books had been written by women.

“We had expected to see an imbalance but not one of such significance,” noted the website.

The reason for the imbalance is the long history of male privilege that gives men priority for the public sphere, including publishing, while women are relegated to the domestic sphere.

“There are simply fewer female authors of significance across the past 500 years of publishing. Many female writers wrote anonymously or privately published their work. Most simply did not even have the opportunity to become published authors,” according to AbeBooks.

Woolf broke the rules to become an important figure in modernist literature and feminism in general. Her novels –Mrs Dalloway(1925), To the Lighthouse (1927) and Orlando (1928) – are landmarks in 20th century literature. Her success is all the more remarkable since she struggled with mental illness for most of her lifeA Room of One’s Own (1929) might be her most important work, this essay argues that women writers need their own space in a literary world dominated by men. -AbeBooks

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Proposals are invited for chapters of previously unpublished and original work to be included in an edited collection, Modernist Continuities: Virginia Woolf and Women in Turkey.

Papers are welcome that engage with Virginia Woolf’s reception by women writers in Turkey, literary networks built between Woolf’s works and works by women writers in Turkey, and her influence on the women’s movement.

The book will form a picture of how Woolf’s writing has served as an inspiration for women in Turkey.

Possible topics

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• Virginia Woolf’s comments on or about Turkey
• Bloomsbury Group’s connection to Turkey
• Woolf’s legacy in women’s literature in Turkey. Of particular interest might be
• Halide Edip Adıvar, Tomris Uyar, Sevgi Soysal, Leyla Erbil, Tezer Özlü, Erendiz Atasü, Nilgün Marmara, Mina Urgan
• The influence of Virginia Woolf’s writing on women’s movement in Turkey
• Translations of Virginia Woolf’s works.

Who can submit

Submissions from scholars of all backgrounds and levels of experience exploring Virginia Woolf’s connection to women writers and women’s movement in Turkey are encouraged. Particularly welcome are interdisciplinary contributions aiming at investigating Woolf’s influence on different aspects of literary, political and cultural life in Turkey.

Authors are invited to submit a short bio and a 500-word abstract by May 31. Full drafts between 7,000 and 9,000 words (including notes and bibliography) written in MLA format will be due on Aug. 31.

The collection is due to be published in 2024, and editors have received positive interest for publication from Bloomsbury Publishing.

Deadline and contacts

Send abstracts and queries to: virginiawoolfandwomeninturkey@gmail.com
Deadline for submissions: 31 May 2023
Contact email: virginiawoolfandwomeninturkey@gmail.com

 

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Elizabeth Bowen

Literature Cambridge’s season on brilliant women writers of the early twentieth century continues through December, with four more online sessions scheduled.

The Women Writers Season focuses on writers in English, with most based in Britain. It provides the opportunity to discover some wonderful writers who are not read today, and to study them with leading scholars.

Each online study session has a live lecture with a leading scholar and a seminar on Zoom.

Here are the details:

  • Trudi Tate on Elizabeth Bowen, The House in Paris (1935). Saturday, 18 September 2021, 10 a.m. BT. Please note that this time is different than those of the other sessions. Lit Cambridge hopes to repeat this lecture at 6 p.m. at a later date. Book here.

    Katherine Mansfield portrait by Anne Estelle Rice

  • Claire Davison on Winifred Holtby, Land of Green Ginger. ‘Life’s Adventure’: Winifred Holtby and Post-Suffrage Feminism. Saturday, 23 October 2021, 6 p.m. BT. Book here.
  • Isobel Maddison on Katherine Mansfield and Elizabeth Von Arnim: Complementary Cousins. Saturday, 13 November 2021, 6 p.m. BT. Book here.
  • Claire Davison on Katherine Mansfield and the Russians. Saturday, 11 December 2021, 6 p.m. BT. Book here.

Cost

The cost of each session ranges from £26 at full price to £22 for students and members of pertinent societies.

 

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This Christmas day, I unwrapped a present from my landlady and, completely unexpectedly, a small purple hardback book with gold lettering and a beautiful portrait of Virginia Woolf fell onto my lap. I was delighted, and proceeded to read it cover to cover amidst wrapping paper and ended up holding back tears to prevent myself being utterly embarrassed in front of my in-laws.

virginia woolf life portraits

© Zena Alkayat and Nina Cosford

Virginia Woolf (Life Portraits) by Zena Alkayat and Nina Cosford poetically weaves the story of Woolf’s life with Alkayat’s considered text and Cosford’s illustrations, a fresh response to the Bloomsbury aesthetic. It opens with the following quote from Mrs Dalloway:

She sliced like a knife through everything; at the same time was on the outside, looking on.

This liminality, both the relation between work and life and Woolf’s psychological flux, is represented thoughtfully throughout the biography.

street haunting in life portrait

© Zena Alkayat and Nina Cosford

Alkayat focuses on the personal details of life: how Vanessa Bell’s sheepdog Gurth accompanied her “street haunting”, how Leonard and Virginia Woolf spent nights during the First World War in their coal cellar sitting on boxes, and that they later named their car “the umbrella”. She also puts us on a first name basis with Virginia, Vanessa and Duncan, et al. – a choice which made me feel closer to their world.

charleston in woolf life portrait

© Nina Cosford

Cosford’s illustrations are both sensitive to the Bloomsbury style and offer a fresh perspective. Her bold lines and patterns used to illustrate the pages about Vanessa Bell’s cover designs for Virginia Woolf’s novels, for example, are edged with mark-making in the mode of Bell. Her use of colour also seems emotive, following the waves of high and low that punctuate the narrative. Her illustrations capture the paraphernalia of every-day life, from the objects atop Woolf’s writing desk – diary, hair grips, photo of Julia, sweets – to the plants in the garden at Monks House, bringing Virginia’s life closer to home.

monks house plants

© Nina Cosford

Illustration and text come together beautifully in this miniature autobiography and would provide any reader with a poetic and surprising escape into the life of Virginia Woolf.

 

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The passing of noted scholar Julia Briggs

Julia Briggs, noted Virginia Woolf critic and biographer, died at about 6:30 a.m. Aug. 16 in the Royal Marsden Hospital in London, England. She had been in a coma for a week.

She was the author of Virginia Woolf: An Inner Life, the groundbreaking 2005 biography of Woolf that focused on her writing life. Read a BBC interview with Ms. Briggs in which she discusses An Inner Life. She also wrote a volume of criticism called Reading Virginia Woolf, which was published in 2006.

Ms. Briggs was the general editor of the highly successful Penguin Virginia Woolf, which included Three Guineas and A Room of One’s Own. She edited Night and Day for the series. 

Ms. Briggs also wrote Night Visitors: The Rise and Fall of the English Ghost Story, A Woman of Passion: The Life of E. Nesbit, 1858–1924, and This Stage-Play World, about the Elizabethan theatre. She was an expert on children’s literature and co-edited Children and Their books : a Celebration of the Work of Iona and Peter Opie.

She was a contributor to Cambridge Collections Online as well.

Ms. Briggs was a professor of English literature and women’s studies at De Montfort University in Leicester, England.  She served as chair of the faculty higher degrees committee and taught courses on Shakespeare, Virginia Woolf, twentieth-century and post-colonial literature.  Her research interests included Shakespeare and contemporary dramatists, women’s writing in early modern England and late-nineteenth and twentieth century literature.

Read obituaries in The Guardian and  The Independent, a story updated Sept. 21 in the Telegraph, and a thoughtful tribute by Anne Fernald on her blog Fernham.

6 February 2009 Update: Read more about Woolf Online, a Web resource conceived of and organized by Ms. Briggs before her death and launched this year.

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