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Travels with Virginia Woolf: from Greece to Leeds to London

Monday 13 June 2016 by Paula Maggio

Virginia Woolf is on the move — and she is posting her travel pics on Instagram and Twitter.

Last month she visited Greece, stopping off in Athens and Santorini. She toured Athens by bus, revisited the Acropolis on foot, was a guest at a Greek wedding on Santorini and spent some time near the water.

This month she is headed to the 26th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf: Woolf and Heritage at Leeds Trinity University in Leeds, England. If you’re going, too, and tweeting about your trip, use the conference hashtag #Woolf2016. Virginia will also be stopping off in London. And she may take some detours along the way.

You can follow her travels on Twitter by searching #travelswithvirginiawoolf. Meanwhile, here are her collected tweets from her trip to Greece.

Posted in 26th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, Travels with Virginia Woolf | Tagged , , | 2 Comments »

Musician Mike Posner inspired by Woolf

Friday 10 June 2016 by Kaylee Baucom

Musician Mike Posner

The chart-topping musician and songwriter, Mike Posner, famous for the singles “Cooler Then Me” and “I Took a Pill in Ibiza”, references Virginia Woolf in a new song, “Be As You Are” from his recently released album, At Night, Alone.

The song lyrics mention Woolf immediately:

Virginia Woolf and poetry
No one seemed to notice me
Being young was getting so old
Cheap beer and cigarettes
Life was like a movie set
And I seemed to be given no role

Posner composed annotations for this song over at Genuis.com, and he writes in detail about how Virginia Woolf’s work influenced his “life as a reader” and as a song writer:

So I read Mrs. Dalloway in high school, and this was probably the best class that I ever took, including all the classes I took at Duke. The teacher’s name was Mrs. Mundy, Susan Mundy, and her class changed my life. She taught me how to read. Like, I knew how to read before but I didn’t know how to read a novel – where if someone was saying that “the sun set and it was dark,” they weren’t just saying “the sun set and it was dark.” They were saying a million other things. And she taught us how to read that way. I am sure if you like Virginia Woolf then you know how to read that way. But that totally changed my life as both a writer and a reader.

20150625-mikeposner2-posillico

A still shot from Posner’s music video for “Be As You Are”.

Posner also writes about how he identifies with the character Septimus Smith from Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, and how he connects with and is inspired by this character’s depression:

So I have a kinship and a sort of affinity to anyone that felt sad and depressed, because I felt that way very much in my teenage years, especially in the winter time. And that is where this lyric about “poetry” comes from. Just the name Virginia Woolf reminds me of all those sort of depressed, nostalgic feelings. Now I will occasionally feel a hint of that depression and it is weird to say it but I actually sort of like it a little bit because there is a familiarity there. And all of my music to this day is either a reaction against that soil of sadness or it is nostalgic, against that soil of sadness.

You can read Mike Posner’s full annotations of his song lyrics for “Be As You Are” here, and you can listen to the song below.

Posted in Mrs. Dalloway, music, Virginia Woolf | Tagged , , , | Leave a Comment »

At Charleston, ‘The kitchen was always warm and smelt of fresh coffee.’

Wednesday 8 June 2016 by Paula Maggio

Here’s a post from The Charleston Attic blog on the kitchen at Charleston, Bloomsbury’s home in the country in Sussex.

For those who are regular readers of the The Charleston Attic blog, and have been following our progress as the newest Attic Interns through our work with the Angelica Garnett Gift, it may be of in…

Source: At Charleston, ‘The kitchen was always warm and smelt of fresh coffee.’

 

Posted in Charleston Farmhouse, Virginia Woolf | Tagged , , | Leave a Comment »

Documentary gem includes interviews with Woolf contemporaries

Saturday 4 June 2016 by Paula Maggio

Produced by BBC TV, this 1970 documentary, Virginia Woolf: A Night’s Darkness, A Day’s Sail, was unavailable for years but is now posted on YouTube.

It is a gem, including footage of Talland House, the Stephen family’s summer home, and Godrevy Lighthouse. It also includes interviews with Leonard Woolf (from 1967), Angelica Garnett, Quentin Bell, George Rylands, Elizabeth Bowen, Duncan Grant, Benedict Nicolson, Lord David Cecil, Dame Janet Vaughn, Raymond Mortimer, and Louie Mayer (the Woolfs’ cook at Monk’s House). They talk about Woolf’s character traits, as well as her genius, her writing habits and her love of London. And they discuss the Bloomsbury Group.

Portions of Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927) and A Room of One’s Own (1929) are also read on camera. And you’ll see the actual Hogarth press.

She always asked everybody, ‘What did you have for breakfast.’ – Angelica Garnett

 

Posted in Bloomsbury, films, Leonard Woolf, To the Lighthouse | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments »

Alice Lowe asks: But can she type?

Saturday 4 June 2016 by Paula Maggio

Here’s Blogging Woolf contributor Alice Lowe’s essay on the work world for women in the not too distant past. She’s the author of two monographs published by Cecil Woolf Publishers:

Alice Lowe

  • Virginia Woolf as Memoirist: “I am made and remade continually” – Bloomsbury Heritage Monograph #72, Cecil Woolf Publishers
  • Beyond the Icon: Virginia Woolf in Contemporary Fiction – Bloomsbury Heritage Monograph #58, Cecil Woolf Publishers, 2010

[This essay was originally published in Crab Creek Review, Vol. 2016, #1] But can she type? Back in the early 1970s, when my latent feminist consciousness was starting to awaken, I bought a poster, a 16 by 24-inc…

Source: But can she type?

Posted in 11th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, Alice Lowe | Tagged , | Leave a Comment »

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