The grey stone, ancient as it is, changes like a live thing under the incessant ripple of changing light
Another polish is simply named after the author and is described as “dark garnet red bursting with blazing hologram.”
More about the Woolf collection
The website describes Woolf’s interest in color this way: “Colour was central to Woolf’s writing, allowing her to seamlessly enhance imagery and represent characters and settings.”
Here are the other colors in the Woolf collection.
Mrs. Dalloway
Orlando
The Waves
To the Lighthouse
Shakespeare’s Sister
Of the six Woolf-inspired nail polish colors listed on the company website, only two seem to be available for purchase. “The London Scene” is priced at £5 and “Virginia Woolf” at £11.50.
For the first time since 2019, Literature Cambridge will hold an in-person summer course this year, along with a live online course. The topic for both will be Woolf’s Women.
Trudi Tate welcomes students to the Virginia Woolf’s Gardens course at Wolfson College at the University of Cambridge in July 2019.
The course will cover some of the fascinating women in Woolf’s life and writing, including Julia Stephen, Vanessa Bell, Ethel Smyth, Pernel Strachey, and Vita Sackville West.
It will focus on five novels: Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, Orlando, A Room of One’s Own, and Between the Acts.
Lecture topics and field trips
These will include:
Ellie Mitchell, Mrs. Dalloway and her Daughter (1925)
Trudi Tate, Women in To the Lighthouse (1927)
Alison Hennegan, What is a Woman?: Orlando (1928)
Karina Jakubowicz, Women in A Room of One’s Own (1929)
Claire Davison, Between the Acts (1941): Virginia Woolf and Ethel Smyth
Topics will include Mrs. Ramsay, Lily Briscoe, Orlando (as both man and woman), Miss La Trobe, and the idea of “Woman,” women’s education, and more.
The course in Cambridge is filling fast. Members of the Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain may book the conference at the student price. See fees and book the in-person conference here.
Overnight accommodations are booked separately from the course. Organizers have reserved bedrooms at Robinson College. To book, use the code in the Terms and Conditions. However, when I checked today, all accommodations at Robinson were booked up, but that may change.
On Saturday, Dec. 31, 1932, Virginia Woolf wrote a relatively long entry in her diary. I include a portion of that entry here:
This is in fact the last day of 1932, but I am so tired of polishing off Flush–such a pressure on the brain is caused by doing ten pages daily — that I am taking a morning off, & shall use it here, in my lazy way, to sum up the whole of life. By that phrase, one of my colloquialities, I only mean, I wish I could deliver myself of a picture of all my friends, thoughts, doings, projects at this moment . . .
For example, with Julian & Lettice Ramsay last night — why not simply become fluid in their lives, if my own is dim? And to use ones hands & eyes; to talk to people; to be a straw on the river, now & then — passive, not striving to say this is this. If one does not lie back & sum up & say to the moment, this very moment, stay you are so fair, what will be one’s gain, dying? No: stay, this moment. No one ever says that enough. — Diary 4, pp. 134-5.
The Sea Blazed Gold is Louisa Albani’s latest illustrated pamphlet featuring Virginia Woolf, and its publication coincided with the Sept. 11 unveiling of the plaque at Talland House that commemorates Woolf’s connection with the seaside town of St. Ives in Cornwall.
Talland House was Woolf’s summertime home in St. Ives from 1882-1894. Her father, Leslie Stephen, had the lease on Talland House from 1878-1895.
Third featuring Woolf
The Sea Blazed Gold is the third of Albani’s pamphlets to feature Woolf. The first, A Moment In The Life Of Virginia Woolf, explored how the author created her vivid seascapes while living in Tavistock Square in London. The second, The Journey to my Sister’s House, focused on her time in the South Downs, where her sister Vanessa Bell lived.
The Sea Blazed Gold takes its title from a passage in Woolf’s 1931 novel The Waves. In it, Albani weaves her artwork with excerpts from Woolf’s diaries, letters and novels to celebrate Woolf’s time in St. Ives and its impact on her life.
The artist uses mixed media, including collage, metallic stitching and pen and ink in the 36-page publication printed on her own press.Text contributors include Maggie Humm, one of the leaders of the campaign for the Talland House plaque, and writer Astra Bloom.
Purchase and shipping details
The cost of The Sea Blazed Gold is £13. Albani’s press, Night Bird Press, limits its shipment of pamphlets to within the UK. For overseas shipping, contact Nash Robbins at Much Ado Books: shop@muchadobooks.com
Read more on the topic in the October/November issue of My Cornwall.
I use the app Insight Timer on pretty much a daily basis. The app features a quote from a famous person each day. What a nice surprise when I saw that today’s quote was from Virginia Woolf.
The quote, certainly a source of inspiration, comes from The Waves (1931). The full text reads:
I feel a thousand capacities spring up in me. I am arch, gay, languid, melancholy by turns. I am rooted, but I flow.
Here is a screenshot of the quote as it appeared on the app.
