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.
website to coincide with the 75th anniversary of Virginia Woolf’s death.
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