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Archive for the ‘Woolf resources’ Category

The news that Virginia Woolf’s personal copy of The Voyage Out (1915), discovered in 2021 after mistakenly being housed in the science section of the University of Sydney’s Fisher Library for 25 years, is all over the internet. But the best news is that the volume has been digitized and is now available online.

It is one of just two copies of the novel that were annotated with her handwriting and with preparations to revise it for a U.S. edition.

A private collector based in London owns the other. It has typesetter’s marks and a greater number of revisions, including those to other chapters, but without the chapter 25 revisions, according to the library website.

The digitization of Woolf’s novel allows scholars and readers around the globe to study and consider Woolf’s edits from their own armchairs.

More background

In the 1996 article “Virginia Woolf’s Revisions of The Voyage out: Some New Evidence” by James M. Haule, published in Vol. 42, No. 3 of Twentieth Century Literature, Haule explains the story behind this rediscovered book, saying it was a working copy that appears to be one of two in which Woolf marked up revisions of her novel for the first U.S. edition, published in 1920.

It is thought that the Fisher Library copy was kept by Woolf as a record of the main revisions, with the other being sent for use in publication, according to the library website.

“With the possible exception of The Years (1937), none of her novels was as long in preparation or as difficult for her to complete,” Haule maintains.

About the edits

Inscribed by the author on the flyleaf, the volume includes handwritten revisions to chapters 16 and 25 made by Woolf’s own hand in pen and in blue and brown pencil.

In Chapter 25, whole pages are marked for deletion, although they were ultimately not removed for the first U.S. edition, published in 1920. The volume also includes pasted-in typewritten carbons in chapter 16.

The fact that Woolf signed on the volume’s flyleaf, not the title page, indicates that it was one of her personal copies, experts say.

Where the volume came from

The University of Sydney acquired the book in the 1976 through Bow Windows Bookshop in Lewes, East Sussex, near the Woolfs’ Monk’s House. The shop currently has some first editions of Woolf’s works on hand, including a copy of The Voyage Out, at least when this piece was written. The price? £600.

The Berg Collection at the New York Public Library holds a holograph draft of The Voyage Out.

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The Bulletin of the New York Public Library dating from 1897 through 1977 is now online and includes the Virginia Woolf Issue, Issue 2, Winter 1977.

This issue features the Stephen family on the cover, along with multiple articles on The Years and essays that examine Three Guineas.

A special treat in the issue is Woolf’s hand-drawn genealogy of the Pargiter family that appears on the reverse of the Contents page, Page 155 in the PDF. Issue 2 begins on page 152 in the PDF numbering.

Thanks to Vara Neverow and the VWoolf Listserv for news of this online resource.

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If you haven’t joined the site Academia.edu, you may want to sign up. A number of papers on Virginia Virginia WoolfWoolf are uploaded there and can be downloaded free of charge. Some of them were shared at recent Woolf conferences. You can also search the site for additional Woolf resources.

Recently uploaded papers include:

Academia.edu is a platform for academics to share research papers.

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The British Library’s Discovering Literature: 20th-century website offers a number of resources to Virginia Woolf’s work. They include:

You can also find these links to other Woolf collection materials in the right sidebar of this page on the site:

  • Letter from Virginia Woolf to Frances Cornford about A Room of One’s Own, 1929
  • “Monday or Tuesday” by Virginia Woolf
  • Three Guineas by Virginia Woolf
  • Vanessa Bell dust jacket for The Years
  • “Kew Gardens” by Virginia Woolf, 1919
  • “Kew Gardens” by Virginia Woolf, 1927
  • ‘Hyde Park Gate News’, a magazine by Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell
  • ‘The Messiah’ by Quentin Bell and Virginia Woolf
  • ‘The Dunciad’ by Quentin Bell and Virginia Woolf
  • ‘Eminent Charlestonians’, with illustrations by Quentin Bell and text by Virginia Woolf

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A recent article from English Studies is now available free on the Taylor and Francis untitledwebsite to coincide with the 75th anniversary of Virginia Woolf’s death.

The article, by Martin Ferguson Smith, is titled Virginia Woolf and “the Hermaphrodite”: A Feminist Fan of Orlando and Critic of Roger Fry, and will be free for any reader until 31 July 2016. The article can be found at http://bit.ly/Woolf_Smith.

Here’s the abstract for the article, which is available for download as a PDF.

After Virginia Woolf’s biography of Roger Fry was published in 1940, she received a letter from Mary Louisa Gordon strongly critical of her portrayal of Roger’s wife, the artist Helen Coombe, and even more critical of Roger’s character and conduct. Mary and Helen had been friends before the latter married in 1896 and went on to develop severe mental health problems. In 1936 the Woolfs had published Mary’s historical novel, Chase of the Wild Goose, about the Ladies of Llangollen. The article is in four sections. Section 1 is introductory. Section 2 is about Mary. It discusses Chase of the Wild Goose, its relationship to Orlando, and Virginia’s comments on it and its author, whom, in letters to Ethel Smyth, she calls “the Hermaphrodite”. It goes on to describe Mary’s life and career as medical doctor, suffragist, first female Inspector of Prisons in England and Wales, and scathing critic of the prison system. Section 3 presents Mary’s letter to Virginia, with significant corrections of the text published by Beth Rigel Daugherty. Section 4 focuses on Helen, and on Mary’s assessments of her and Roger.

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