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Archive for the ‘Woolf Courses’ Category

Join Literature Cambridge September 2025 to June 2026 for a live online season of lectures and seminars on the major works of Virginia Woolf on the theme of Woolf’s Rooms.

A table and six painted chairs with needlework panels designed by Vanessa Bell dominate the dining room at Monk’s House.

Rooms are important in all of Woolf’s novels. The seminars in this season, season six, will explore the ways in which rooms shape, or contain, the human lives within them.

  • How do people connect (or not) in Mrs Dalloway’s party room?
  • Why is the dining room so important in To the Lighthouse (1927)?
  • What happens in the many rooms in The Waves (1931) and The Years (1937)?
  • And why is it so important for a woman to have a room of her own?

Woolf’s Rooms Schedule

Woolf’s Rooms sessions are all at 18.00-20.00 p.m. British time and are offered live online via Zoom. Most are on Saturdays, but please note that the first session* is on a Sunday.

Summer Time and Greenwich Mean Time: Please note that clocks in Britain are on Summer Time in September 2025, and change to Greenwich Mean Time on 26 October 2025. In spring 2026, the clocks change from GMT to Summer Time on 29 March 2026.

• *Sunday 21 September: Lecture 1, Trudi Tate, To the Lighthouse (1927): The Dinner Party.

Saturday 18 October: Lecture 2, Frances Spalding, A Walk Around A Room of One’s Own (1929).

Saturday 15 November: Lecture 3, Natasha Periyan on Rooms in Woolf’s Short Fiction (Set reading: KewGardens and Other Short Fiction).

Saturday 6 December: Lecture 4, Alison Hennegan on Rooms for Women in A Room of One’s Own (1929).

Saturday 10 January 2026: Lecture 5, Beth Daugherty on Room to Think in Woolf’s Essays.

Saturday 21 February 2026: Lecture 6, Karina Jakubowicz on Jacob’s Room (1922).

Saturday 21 March 2026: Lecture 7, Claire Davison on Orlando’s Rooms (1929)

Saturday 18 April 2026: Lecture 8, Angela Harris on Rooms in Mrs Dalloway (1925).

Saturday 16 May 2026: Lecture 9, Trudi Tate on Rooms in The Years (1937).

Saturday 13 June 2026: Lecture 10, Ellie Mitchell on Rooms in The Waves (1931).

Prices and how to book

Book all 10 sessions for the price of nine. Offer closes Sunday 21 September at 16.00 British Summer Time (just before the first lecture).

Individual lectures

£33.00 full price
£28.00 Students on a low income
£28.00 CAMcard holders
£28.00 Members of the VWSGB

Full season

£297 Full price for all 10 sessions (save £33)
£252 Students and CAMcard holders for all 10 sessions (save £28)
£252 Members VWSGB for all 10 sessions (save £28)

All prices include VAT at 20%

Recordings available

Each lecture will be recorded live and will be available to participants after the live event for 48 hours. Literature Cambridge hopes this will be helpful to participants in various time zones, and to those who want to hear the lecture again. The recordings are available only to people who have booked the session. The seminars are not recorded.

Virginia Woolf’s bedroom at Monk’s House in Sussex

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Mark Hussey with his latest book Mrs. Dalloway: Biography of a Novel

This month, Literature Cambridge is repeating four popular lectures from previous Virginia Woolf Seasons. And you can catch up with those you missed online.

The sessions are mainly at 6-8 p.m. British Summer Time. However, two lectures are at 10 a.m. BST, for the benefit of those living in Japan and Australia.

Each session includes a two-hour live online lecture and seminar. Book as few or as many sessions as you please.

Members of the Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain can book at a discount price.

Woolf in August lectures

Sunday 10 August 2025
Women in A Room of One’s Own
(1929) with Trudi Tate. 10 a.m. – noon British Summer Time.

Sunday 17 August 2025
War Trauma in Mrs Dalloway
(1925) with Trudi Tate. 10 a.m. – noon British Summer Time

Sunday 17 August 2025
War Trauma in Mrs Dalloway
(repeat session) with Trudi Tate. 6-8 p.m. British Summer Time.

Sunday 24 August 2025
Mrs Dalloway and Politics with Mark Hussey. 6-8 p.m. British Summer Time.

Sunday 31 August 2025
Sapphic Love in Orlando (1928) with Alison Hennegan. 6-8 p.m. British Summer Time.

Get more information

For further details and booking, visit Literature Cambridge.

 

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It has been a cold January, and the last few days have plunged us into a deep freeze in Ohio, where I live. So there is no better time to think about summer and to begin making plans to attend Literature Cambridge’s Virginia Woolf Summer Course 2025 with its theme of “Virginia Woolf: Writing Life.”

Register for this summer’s Literature Cambridge course on Virginia Woolf: Writing Life, either live online or in person in Cambridge.

The course will run twice — live online first, then in person in Cambridge, England, later. Here are the details from Trudi Tate of Lit Cambridge.

About the course

How does one write a life — a fictional life or a real life? The 2025 summer course will look at the real and imaginary lives in five of Woolf’s most brilliant novels.

Literature Cambridge summer students at a lecture.

We will explore how Woolf writes the lives of her great fictional characters: Clarissa Dalloway, Septimus Smith, Mrs. Ramsay, the six characters in The Waves (1931). We will study how she uses, and challenges, the traditions of biography in Orlando (1928) and Flush (1933). We will think about Woolf’s own life as a writer, and what that meant. And we will do a reading of her only play, Freshwater, which takes a comical look at the lives of her Victorian forebears.

The course is based on five books which we will study in close detail, one book per day. Each day, there is a lecture and a supervision (tutorial), plus talks and discussions. In Cambridge there are also visits to colleges, two communal dinners, and more.

Lectures

• Trudi Tate, Life and Death in Mrs. Dalloway (1925)
• Ellie Mitchell, To the Lighthouse (1927): Writing from Life, Writing to Life
• Karina Jakubowicz, The Life of Orlando (1928)
• Claire Davison, The Ripple of Life in The Waves (1931)
• Alison Hennegan, Writing Flush (1933)

Talks and readings

  • Marielle O’Neill on Leonard Woolf: Reflections on a Political Life
  • Claire Davison on Leslie Stephen: Life Force, Life Writer
  • Group reading of Woolf’s only play, Freshwater, led by Ellie Mitchell
  • Karina Jakubowicz, reading aloud from Woolf’s writing
  • Beth Rigel Daugherty on Woolf’s essays on biography (tbc)
  • Ann Kennedy Smith on the life and memoir of Jane Harrison, Fellow of Newnham College and friend of Virginia Woolf

Visits

In Cambridge, students  will visit Newnham College (est. 1871) and Trinity Hall (est. 1350), with a talk and tour of both colleges.

Live and in-person course dates

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Join Literature Cambridge for its fifth Woolf Season of lectures and seminars, all live online with leading Woolf scholars. The next session in the current “Woolf and Politics” season is Saturday, Dec. 7. The season includes one session per month until June 2025.

Here’s the schedule

  • Saturday, 7 Dec. 2024, Ellie Mitchell on Woolf’s War Diary
  • Saturday, 11 Jan. 2025, Danell Jones on A Room of One’s Own (1929) and Black Britain
  • Saturday, 8 Feb. 2025, Natasha Periyan on Education in The Years (1937
  • Saturday, 8 March 2025, Trudi Tate on Mrs Dalloway (1925) and the Vote
  • Saturday, 12 April 2025, Varsha Panjwani on The Politics of Orlando (1928)
  • Saturday 10 May 2025, Angela Harris on The Politics of Jacob’s Room (1922).
  • Saturday 14 June 2025, Claire Davison on Body Politics and Clothing in Three Guineas (1938)

All sessions are at 6 p.m. British Time and last a maximum of two hours.

Prices and booking

Book online for each session you wish to attend.

Prices for individual lectures are:

£32.00 full price
£27.00 Students and CAMcard holders
£27.00 Members of the Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain

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Woolf and Childhood is the theme for Literature Cambridge’s 2024 summer course, which runs twice: once live online and once in person at Cambridge University.

The course will explore the theme of childhood in Woolf’s fiction, and her own experience of childhood. How do her memories of childhood inform her fiction; and how does she think about children and childhood in her novels? Participants will study one work per day:

  • A Sketch of the Past (1939)

    Godrevy Lighthouse, St. Ives, Cornwall

  • Jacob’s Room (1922)
  • To the Lighthouse (1927)
  • The Waves (1931)
  • The Years (1937)

Live online and in person

Live online: The live online course runs 8-12 July for five days of intensive lectures, tutorials, talks, and more.

In person: The in person course will take place 4-9 August, with five days’ intensive study in person in Cambridge. There will be lectures, tutorials, talks, plus visits to places of interest in Cambridge, such as the Wren Library at Trinity College. As a sidenote, Woolf’s brothers studied at Trinity and she visited the college many times as a teenager and young adult.

The in person course will include a special performance of the play Vita and Virginia, a talk and recital of the music Woolf loved as a child and young adult, and more.

Accommodation is booked separately from the course. Literature Cambridge has reserved rooms at Robinson College, next to Clare Hall, the teaching venue. Bookings for Robinson are open. See details on Terms and Conditions for the link to Robinson and the code you need to use.

Attendees can also book a hotel, Air BNB or other accommodation. Please note that accommodation fills very quickly in Cambridge; do book as early as you can.

The in person course is filling up, so those interested are urged to sign up soon.

For more information

Contact info@literaturecambridge.co.uk with any questions.

Wren Library at Trinity College

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