Stephen Barkway shared this photo of how the series was displayed last month in Foyles bookshop in the Charing Cross Road.
Trouble is, all of them were negative.
The series includes Mrs. Dalloway, A Room of One’s Own, To the Lighthouse, The Waves, and Orlando and is available on Penguin Books U.K. site for 14 pounds (about $21) each.
The covers are modeled after the textile designs of the Omega Workshop, but subscribers to the list don’t see the resemblance.
Here are some of the comments shared by list members:
Ugh.
Yuck.
I am not a fan either. Whoever could have used Japanese prints to better effect. I actually tried to put the cover with book meaningfully. I failed. Wouldn’t want them on my shelves. I even preferred the mono-colored covers shown on the page. Woolf must be –well I wonder what snarky remark she would have, and rightly so.
Am I alone in finding these new book jacket cover designs rather – Harsh? Aggressive? Unsympathetic? The article claims that “They’re modeled after the textile designs of the Omega Workshop” but I don’t see much resemblance to what I know of the Omega designs.
no, Roy, you are so NOT alone. Let’s add HIDEOUS, grotesque, repellent, and vile. But that’s just an opinion, of course. Beauty is the eye, etc.
Fancy designing a cover for “A Room of One’s Own” that doesn’t mention that “Three Guineas” is also included! Could this be a CONSPIRACY — or just a cock-up? Of course, I may be wrong: it may just be printed in a *very* large typeface and so needs to run to 432 pages: http://www.penguin.co.uk/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780141198545,00.html?/A_Room_of_One’s_Own_Virginia_Woolf Aye, as we say in Edinburgh: All fur coat and nae knickers.
I am not a fan either. The covers seem not only to bear no resemblance to Omega designs, they also seem pretty arbitrary as to the contents of the books. The choice of covers for the new annotated Harcourts shows how you can choose appropriate (mostly) non-representational art for Woolf covers if you actually have a strong sense of their content. These look like a series of monoprints someone had lying around which they attached to the books pretty superficially (Orlando is a big O; The Waves has blue on it…) The one used for Room would have been more suggestive for Mrs. Dalloway (the sane and the insane side by side) though thinking of all the colors used in Woolf’s works, that muddy chartreuse is as far from her taste as I can imagine.
What do you think of the new cover designs? Cast your vote below.
It doesn’t rank up there with the 1937 cover of Time magazine, but Virginia Woolf appears on the cover of the Dec. 5 issue of The New Yorker—if you look carefully.
Titled “Black Friday,” the cover by Daniel Clowes shows a middle-aged bespectacled man entering a book store, apparently looking for . . . books. Hmm, go figure.
But all that meets the eye are sundry gadgets and tchotchkes, literary accessories and images: e-readers and reading lamps, t-shirts and lunchboxes. (I think that’s Emily Dickinson gracing the most visible one).
Bobblehead dolls of Shakespeare and Mark Twain sit on top of a bookcase. On a shelf below them, baseball caps are displayed, featuring Tolstoy, Kerouac, Poe and Bronte. And hanging on the wall above them are three tote bags, emblazoned with images of Hemingway, Joyce and Woolf.
The sales clerk assists the bemused customer by pointing to a narrow bottom shelf holding what appear to be the store’s selection of books.
The galleries, which are located in the lobby of Forbes Magazine’s headquarters, are open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. The Woolf material is exhibited in the Carrère Gallery.
The exhibition draws from an important collection of material documenting Woolf’s life and work. Included are:
an early, apparently unpublished photograph of 13-year-old Virginia Stephen in mourning for her mother;
a letter from Woolf refusing a marriage proposal;
a leaf excised from Woolf’s March 22, 1923, passport, signed and filled-in as “Mrs. A.V. Woolf”;
Gisèle Freund’s unpublished 1939 portrait of Woolf;
two unpublished love poems by Sackville-West for Woolf;
letters documenting Woolf’s professional career and personal relationships;
many inscribed copies of the books she wrote and published;
books from her library, spanning decades;
dozens of letters and books Woolf sent to her nephew, Julian Bell;
and a series of letters from Leonard and Virginia’s sister Vanessa to Sackville-West on Woolf’s disappearance and death.
The exhibit features color photographs by David Levinthal that incorporate elements from the collection.
An exhibition catalogue, featuring additional Woolf material and Levinthal photos, will be available in a limited trade issue and a deluxe issue that includes a signed Levinthal print, slip cased with a copy of the book.
The collection of Woolf material, built over the course of 30 years by William B. Beekman, is for sale en bloc.
Other Woolf-related materials from Glenn Horowitz:
What if Virginia Woolf were a food writer? What if she were a dog? This week’s Woolf sightings have a few “what-ifs” and a lot of other stuff too.
Sightings include inspiring new cover designs by Angus Hyland for a hardback series of Woolf’s major works. The covers are modeled after the textile designs of the Omega Workshop. The series includes Mrs. Dalloway,
A Room of One’s Own, To the Lighthouse, The Waves, and Orlando and is available on Penguin Books U.K. site for 14 pounds (about $21) each.
Wanted: A Virginia Woolf Series Designed By Pentagram’s Angus Hyland, Co.Design
What a shame that the thought and imagination inside of Woolf’s books aren’t reflected on the outside. So it’s with great relief that we bring you news of Angus Hyland’s designs for a fresh hardback series of Woolf’s major works. ..
The Best of British in the kitchen: CHRISTMAS COOKERY BOOKS,Daily Mail
In her tie-in cookbook, she quotes Virginia Woolf: ‘One cannot think well, love well and sleep well if one has not dined well.’ Lorraine’s take on easy fine dining includes salami-stick sausage rolls and a cake made of readymade chocolate ice-cream and …
Nightcaps: If famous writers had been food writers, San Francisco Chronicle (blog) [Tablehopper] What if Virginia Woolf was a food writer? “Looking back at the cherries, that would not be pitted, red polka dots on white, so bright and jolly, their little core of hardness invisible, in pity she thought of Mrs Sorley, that poor woman …
What We’re Reading, New York Times (blog) So beginneth an onion tart recipe as set down by Geoffrey Chaucer — and imagined by Mark Crick, who speculates how Chaucer, Virginia Woolf and Raymond Chandlerwould have written cookbooks. (Chandler on lamb with dill sauce: “Feeling the blade in my …
What Virginia Woolf might look like. As a dog., Houston Chronicle (blog) It’s like finding your other half. Needless to say, the temptation to upload every photo of every friend and family member is frighteningly strong. I’m proud to say I stopped at two: That’s Virginia Woolf, with her doggelganger. ..
In Praise of PG Wodehouse, TIME He was a comic writer in an age of serious aesthetes: he was of the generation of James Joyce and Virginia Woolf, and the toweringly serious works of his famous coevals have gone a long way towards obscuring Wodehouse’s enormous gifts as a stylist.
Board of Education Approves Search Contract, Discusses Book Purchases, Patch.com Most of those novels are being used in classrooms, though administrators told the board that they are working with a publisher to exchange hundreds of extra copies of Mrs. Dalloway, the Virginia Woolf classic. However, the updated version of the
Afternoon of Cakes & Conversation at Dimbola,Island Pulse Enjoy the atmosphere of Dimbola Lodge where Lord Tennyson and Charles Darwin, Lewis Carroll, Virginia Woolf and many other writers found inspiration. – Well known playwright John writes novels for children, BBC Radio plays and local dramas. …
How a Hangover Will Help you Achieve Huge Commercial Success, ChicagoNow The lyrics are equally strong; particularly striking are those in “What the Water Gave Me”, which evinces Virginia Woolf’s suicide with pockets full of stones. Each song on the album is different and memorable in its own right. …
Mac the Knife: On Dwight Macdonald, The Nation He also had a predilection, perhaps not surprising for a man of his time, for a certain type of virile authorial presence, which a “lady novelist” like Virginia Woolf failed to satisfy. (He said he preferred George Eliot, “whom I really don’t consider …
Beattitudes: On Ann Beattie, The Nation Wider questions are discussed, as well: what Katherine Anne Porter meant when she said that Virginia Woolf “ranged freely under her own sky,” what Louise Glück had in mind when she spoke of “the impossibility of connecting the self one is in the …
Woolf who turned his back on the pack – I, The Island.lk (subscription) Leonard was later to marry Virginia, the younger of the two sisters, whose fame as a writer eclipsed his, though he was himself a star in his own right in a combination of diverse other roles; Leonard Woolf was a prominent member of the Fabian Society, …
Biopic Pictures The Oscars, FemaleFirst.co.uk Other winners since 2000 include Julia Roberts as Erin Brockovich, Nicole Kidman as troubled Virginia Woolf, Charlize Theron as Aileen Wuornos and Reese Witherspoon for her portrayal of June Carter in Walk the Line. Similarly six of the last eleven …
OxStu Big Book Survey: The Results, Oxford Student In the ‘Favourite Author’ category Virginia Woolf edged to victory, ahead of a four-way tie for second place. Clearly opinion was divided between classic literature and more modern favourites, with JK Rowling and Terry Pratchett sharing the spoils with …
Don’t Miss: Nov. 26-Dec. 2, Wall Street Journal The William B. Beekman collection of memorabilia tied to novelist-essayist Virginia Woolf is up for sale and partly on view in “Virginia Woolf: The Flight of Time”—including a 1911 letter rebuffing her suitor Sydney Waterlow. …
Writing Middlesex, The Guardian Traditionally, literary characters who change sex have been mythical figures such as Tiresias, or fanciful creations such as Virginia Woolf’s Orlando. I wanted to write about a realistic person and be as accurate as I could with respect to the …
Going ‘Solo,’ plus one, The Boston Globe Others she seeks out, as a kind of pilgrim: gravesites (Shelley’s, Brancusi’s, Walt Whitman’s) or personal artifacts, again mundane, belonging to the famous (Robert Graves’s hat, Virginia Woolf’s cane, Hermann Hesse’s typewriter). …
Things Fall Apart, Wall Street Journal In its literary brilliance and evocative power, the diary is the equal of those of Virginia Woolf, Harold Nicolson and André Gide. Mr. Easton ranks it one of the greatest diaries ever. Many will agree. But if the journal is so significant as a literary ...
Cary Grant: Hollywood enigma was a devoted dad but a despicable husband, Daily Mail Perhaps he had what Virginia Woolf described as “an androgynous mind”. I’m sure he was sometimes a bit flirty with men. People can be so black and white. I’d like to think Dad greyed the line a bit. Not long ago, someone asked if I’d heard George …
Books of the year 2011, The Guardian As Virginia Woolf said: “The whole world is a work of art.” Non-fiction: I loved two very different books of criticism, Nicola Shulman’s beautifully lucid study of Thomas Wyatt, Graven with Diamonds (Short Books), and Owen Hatherley’s furiously …
Library Connection,Conway Daily Sun PWR (People Who Read) a discussion group for adults and teens gathers to discuss “Make Lemonade” by Virginia Woolf. Warning: this group tackles controversial issues and is not for the faint of heart. Teens must be in at least ninth grade. …
Woolf signature seals £10250 sale, Falmouth Packet The visitors’ book from Godrevy Lighthouse in St Ives, containing the childhood signature ofVirginia Woolf, was sold last week for £10250 at the Bonhams Books, Maps, Manuscripts and Historical Photographs Sale in London. …
Insider’s view, Chandigarh Tribune What is interesting is the frequent meetings of a small group consisting of James Strachey, Maynard Keynes, EM Forster, Bertrand Russell and Virginia Woolf who met in rooms in Neville’s Court with the conviction that they had found the answer to moral …
Jack Kerouac’s ‘first’ novel published, DigitalJournal.com The prose style utilizes a free-from style of writing and is in the tradition of the ‘stream of consciousness’ (that is a flow of thoughts and images) prose style (earlier employed by Virginia Woolf in “To The Lighthouse”). …
Pilgrimage by Annie Leibovitz: review, Telegraph.co.uk So she photographs the detail in Dickinson’s sole surviving dress; the books on Sigmund Freud’s shelf; a pigeon skeleton labelled by Darwin; Georgia O’Keeffe’s box of pastels; Virginia Woolf’s desk, covered in stains and scratches – the residue left by...
Leibovitz’s ‘Pilgrimage’ records photographer’s journey, Lincoln Journal Star Leibovitz has the former, regardless of subject matter, and her photos here, be they of the dark interior of Virginia Woolf’s home, Old Faithful or Annie Oakley’s boots, show her mastery in the capture of light. This is a true aside. …
Picture books hook the eye, San Antonio Express There are intimate shots of ghostly interiors —Eleanor Roosevelt’s bedroom — and meaningful objects — the hat Lincoln wore to Ford’s Theater — that tell us something about their owners — including John Muir, Virginia Woolf, Annie Oakley.
Hills & Gardens Photographer Leibovitz at BookCourt, Brooklyn Daily Eagle We see Virginia Woolf’s writing desk and the carpeted couch in Sigmund Freud’s London study. There is a section devoted to the New Mexican desert world of Georgia O’Keeffe — both the outdoor vistas that inspired her art and the collected rocks and …
Self-Knowledge: Identify Your Patron Saints., Huffington Post (blog) Virginia Woolf: intensely attuned to the power of the passing moment. Well, Julia Child and Winston Churchill are probably rarely paired together in the same discussion, but they both represent very powerful ideas to me. It’s interesting — the posts …
Tilda’s talking, New York Post Anyone hear she keeps her “Virginia Woolf” prosthetic nose? When it wrapped, producers gave her a permanent silver one. PRAYER heard out on the North Fork: “Dear Father: Please. For this year a thin body and a fat bank account. …
From the archives: Remembering Ken Russell, Film Journal “I think of Virginia Woolf and The Waves—on one page, she manages to convey the childhood of six people and you also get how they’re going to grow up, as well as an afternoon in an English country garden. There are so many layers that words can make. …
University Club, A.V. Club New York Instead of focusing on the food, let the spirits of luminaries who have supped at this 104-year-old establishment—many exchanging bon mots concerning Thomas Kuhn, Xenophanes, and Virginia Woolf—come alive as a collective ghostly presence. …
The Literary Cubs, New York Times Rachel Rosenfelt, right, reads a selection from Virginia Woolf at a literary salon held by the editors of The New Inquiry, an online journal she helped start. Also at the salon, from left to right, are Rebecca Chapman, Helena Fitzgerald and Tim Barker. …
Upheaval at the New York Public Library, The Nation Over the decades, the NYPL would acquire a spectacular range of materials: Thomas Jefferson’s draft of the Declaration of Independence, Walt Whitman’s personal copy of Leaves of Grass,Virginia Woolf’s cane, Man Ray’s portrait of Arnold Schoenberg, …
Paris paradox: The changelessness of change, Gadling You’ve seen these faces before: Malraux, Cocteau, Gide, Colette, Valéry, Zweig, Joyce, Virginia Woolf… But you’ve never seen them displayed and lit so skillfully. Another German Jew who fled the Nazis and transited through Paris was Walter Benjamin, …
A Spirit from the Past Moves the Present, Palisadian-Post I often think of Beryl as I while away the hours here at the coffee shop, plucking out poems and lesson plans for my students at Marquez Elementary and Palisades Elementary, ‘musing among the cauliflowers,’ as Virginia Woolf once put it. …
Art shows run gambit of elements, students, books, size, Tulsa World Meltzer writes that the images he builds feature “the most meaningful and representative passages” from writers as diverse as Henry David Thoreau and Friedrich Nietzsche, Virginia Woolf and Lewis Carroll. “I hope to encourage the viewer to experience …
This photo is identified on Bonhams website as the page of the Godrevy Lighthouse visitors book that contains Virginia's childhood autograph. However, it appears to be the later version that her father, Leslie Stephen, signed for the entire family on Sept. 17, 1894. Note that it does not include Hunt's signature.
Virginia Woolf did make it to the lighthouse. It was Sept. 12, 1892, and she was 10 years old. The Godrevy Lighthouse visitors book containing her childhood signature was sold today for £10,250 at Bonhams in London.
The value of the Trinity House Visitors Book for Godrevy Lighthouse, which contains 159 pages of signatures from 1859 to 1934, had been estimated at £3,000-5,000, but Woolf’s signature doubled its value. Bound in brown calf, the book contains blue pages with red rules with columns under “Date,” “Name” and “Residence.
The Pre-Raphaelite painter, William Holman Hunt, was with the Stephen family group that made the 1892 trip to Godrevy, and the book contains his signature as well. You can view that page here. Virginia’s signature reads “A.V. Stephen London.”
The photo at right shows the names of the Stephen family on their second visit, Sept. 17, 1894. On that occasion Leslie Stephen, Virginia’s father, signed the visitors book for all four family members, Virginia, Adrian, Thoby and himself. The book also records an earlier visit by Virginia’s father, on Aug. 24, 1887, together with Thoby, Gerald Duckworth and J. W. Hills.
The rubble stone lighthouse in St. Ives dates from 1859 and is an octagonal tower 86 feet high. It was designed by Scottish engineer James Walker.
Virginia Woolf’s signature doubles sale of visitor book, BBC News
The author Virginia Woolf visited Godrevy Lighthouse, near St Ives, when she was 10 years old in 1892. The structure and its landscape would go on to form the inspiration for the 1927 masterpiece, To The Lighthouse. The story is set in the Hebrides off …
Vega Cape Town students praised at opening of new campus, Bizcommunity.com
“Just as Virginia Woolf needed a room of her own in which to write her timeless novels, so to do creative thinkers need a space that is conducive to innovation.The Fringe, over the next few years, looks to completely transform the eastern part of the …
Paw Paw native named Rhodes Scholar, WWMT Spencer is studying history and literature and has won prizes for his work on Virginia Woolf. He intends on pursuing his masters degree in literature at Oxford, where he will start next October.
Paw Paw resident named 2012 Rhodes Scholar, Kalamazoo Gazette – MLive.com
At Harvard, Lenfield has won top distinction as a scholar of the humanities since his freshman year and has won prizes for his work on Flaubert and Virginia Woolf, according to the bio. He is an accomplished pianist and poet. …
Four Seniors Named Rhodes Scholars, Harvard Magazine
Winning top distinction as a scholar of the humanities since his freshman year, Spencer has won prizes for his work on Flaubert and Virginia Woolf, and has been editor-in-chief of a student literary magazine, arts columnist for the Harvard Crimson and …
Will Neuroscience Kill the Novel?, Big Think (blog) Virginia Woolf once wrote that “human character changed on or around December, 1910.” It’s a deliberately cryptic remark, but she was referring broadly to the wave of cultural modernism that blasted the relatively tidy world of late nineteenth-century …
Bios track literary giants, Poughkeepsie Journal
Book jack of “Virginia Woolf” by Alexandra Harris. Four major novelists — Kurt Vonnegut, Virginia Woolf, Leo Tolstoy and Charles Dickens — are the stars of the story in new biographies. Here is a look. Charles Shields now takes on Kurt Vonnegut. …
Will The Iron Lady make women want to dress like Margaret Thatcher?, The Guardian
A Strong Woman could mean anything from a political wife (Jackie Kennedy), to an actor (Marilyn Monroe), to a novelist (Virginia Woolf), to a family with dodgy political affiliations (the Mitfords), to a political tyrant (Eva Peron). …
Authors on their work, San Jose Mercury News
The theme linking its diverse images: They feature places important to Leibovitz, including theMassachusetts homes of Emily Dickinson, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Louisa May Alcott; Thoreau’s cabin at Walden Pond; the Virginia Woolf and Charles Darwin …
Leonard Woolf – A Life after Ceylon, The Island.lk (subscription)
Leonard’s marriage to Virginia Stephen was a turning point. Virginia Woolf in 1912 was unknown as a literary figure. She was fragile and subject to attacks of depression and mental breakdown over the next thirty years, until she finally committed …
A Naked Kate Moss, a Pouty Brigitte Bardot, and Virginia Woolf’s Mom Led …, ARTINFO … of Moss and Bardot, the top lot of the sale was a somewhat different glamor shot: Cameron’s 1867 portrait of Julia Jackson, Cameron’s young niece and favorite subject, who would later in life come to be known as the mother of Virginia Woolf. …
BOOK WISE — Prophecies and pickles, The Hindu
Some years ago I saw the haunting film “The Hours,” based on Michael Cunningham’s novel of the same name, in turn based on Virginia Woolf’s “Mrs Dalloway.” When I found “Michael Cunningham’s The Hours” listed on a bookseller’s website, I clicked and…
Maugham’s thoughtful corrective on the fultility of war, The Australian
This brilliant black comedy from director Gus Van Sant may be the best thing Kidman has done – and is a better film than The Hours (Thursday, 6.30 pm, Starpics), in which she plays writer Virginia Woolf, wearing a large prosthetic nose for the part. …
