Virginia Woolf readers and scholars around the globe are coming up with creative ways to fill the time as they shelter at home during the current coronavirus pandemic.
Members and followers of the Italian Virginia Woolf Society are posting photos of themselves reading Woolf and reading her letters aloud via video.
And now, the Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain is sending its members 100 questions about Virginia Woolf and Bloomsbury — a few at a time. “There’s no prize, just a sense of satisfaction, perhaps even smugness, if you get them all right,” states the society’s email.
The first five brain teasers from the Big VW Quiz
Play along by answering these questions:
1) When was Virginia’s play Freshwater first performed?
(a) April 1933
(b) November 1934
(c) January 1935
d) December 1936
2) Where was it performed?
3) What year did Virginia first meet Vita Sackville-West?
4) What was Virginia’s first piece of published shorter fiction (as defined by Susan Dick in “Complete Shorter Fiction”)?
5) In which years were the first and second Post Impressionist exhibitions?
Join up
If you’d like to join the society to get the remaining 95 questions, you can find out more on the VWSGB website’s membership page.
I had let many intriguing posts from friend Elisa Bolchi — and former society president — slip through my Facebook feed. So I finally clicked over to her page and on to the Italian Society’s page. There I found some comfort and some inspiration from those whose country is one of the hardest hit during the current pandemic.
Inspiration from Italy
On its page, the society, formed in 2017, has posted inspirational messages from its president, Nadia Fusini, along with those from its founding partners, and another from beloved bookseller Raffaella Musicò.
It has also shared a video of Federica Leuci reading aloud letters from Woolf to various friends like Vita Sackville-West and Clive Bell.
In addition, the society has issued a photo challenge we can meet while staying at home and reading Woolf.
The #Woolfincasa #Woolfathome photo challenge
The challenge posted on Facebook reads: “At this time the right thing to do is stay in the house. What better opportunity to (re)-read a Virginia Woolf book? Take a picture of yourself reading a Woolf book on the couch, the chair, table, bed… wherever you want, as long as you’re home! Then post it and tag us and add the hashtag #Woolfincasa and #Woolfathome, we’ll create the album “The Rooms of Woolf” with all your photos. Good morning 💜 #iorestoacasa#sharingbeauty
A number of followers posted photos of themselves reading Woolf. A few are shown in the screenshot below of the Italian Virginia Woolf Society’s Facebook page. You might want to post yours on social media as well.
I took mine today when I just happened to be wearing the “Italia” sweatshirt I bought from a street vendor in Rome five years ago. Elisa Bolchi was kind enough to post it for me.
#Woolfincasa and #Woolfathome with Blogging Woolf in Ohio
Editor’s Note: Today marks the 79th anniversary of Virginia Woolf’s death, and as this post shows, she and her work continue to inspire artists and writers across the globe.
Woolf’s exploration of the consequences of illness
“Due to Covid-19 I have cast my eyes upon On Being Ill,” Knutsen explained. “This felt like something to get me through.
“The essay is about the consequence of illness; loneliness, isolation and vulnerability. But when we are forced to stop and slow down, we may notice the beauty in the small details of the world around us, and that our everyday, ordinary life is what we miss the most,” she said.
Working from home under quarantine in a printshop of her own
Ane Thon Knutsen’s letterpress
Knutsen, mother of a four-year-old, says her project allows her to combine motherhood with work under Norway’s self-imposed quarantine. The country made the move, which is in place at least until Easter, to stop the rapid spread of the coronavirus.
“I like being alone working, and I am blessed with a workshop at home. So I contemplated a Quarantine project that works with the circumstances,” she said.
Her project: using her printing press to print one sentence on one sheet of paper every day from On Being Ill “until we can go back to normal. I hope I will not make it through, as we’re counting about 140 sentences, and the paper is restricted to leftovers from my stock,” Knutsen explained.
Published on Instagram
Five days ago, she began posting a photo of each page on her Instagram account, @anethonknutsen. As of today, she is on sentence number six. The project, she says, “will present a very slow reading of the story.
“In the end (when that will be, who knows), I will make a box with all the sheets — like a calendar of sorts. Hopefully I will exhibit it as a wall piece in the future,” she said.
The project is set in 10-point Goudy Old Style. For the ink, Knutsen has “mixed a rich gray ink… inspired by the dust jacket by Vanessa Bell, and the colour of the lead type. It softens the appearance of the words on the page,” she explained on Instagram.
She hopes to print 20 copies, in a 208 mm x 135 mm format, the same as Woolf’s 1930 edition.
Sentence two from Virginia Woolf’s “On Being Ill”
Sentence one from Virginia Woolf’s “On Being Ill”
A tray filled with type set for Ane Thon Knutsen’s letterpress
Today, no matter where we live in the world, we are feeling the effects of the coronavirus pandemic. Events are cancelled or postponed and travel is curtailed. We are told to stay home and only go out when necessary, maintaining physical distancing when we venture outside to buy groceries or medicine or get some much-needed exercise.
Virginia and Leonard Woolf lived through the pandemic of their time, the Spanish flu, which raged worldwide from 1918-1919, while the couple were living in Richmond.
Estimated to have killed 100 million people around the globe and more than 250,000 in Britain alone, the Spanish flu also affected people close to the Woolfs. In July 1918 diary entries, Virginia notes that their London neighbor has influenza, later reporting that she has succumbed to the disease.
Virginia and influenza
Virginia herself contracted influenza at the end of 1919, confining her to her bed, and that episode is thought to be part of the pandemic strain. It was not her first bout with the flu; nor would it be her last. She suffered from it in 1916, in the early months of 1918 before the Spanish flu had reached Britain, and again in 1922, 1923, and 1925.
Pain is abhorrent to all Stracheys, but making all allowances for the exaggerations and terrors of the poor creature, Lytton has had a sufficient dose of horror, I imagine, and the doctor privately warns Carrington that shingles may last months. However, Lytton, is probably… avoiding London, because of the influenza (we are, by the way, in the midst of a plague unmatched since The Black Death, according to the Times, who seem to tremble lest it may seize upon Lord Northcliffe & thus precipitate us into peace.)
Illness in the essay
Virginia’s experiences with illness led her to write the essay On Being Ill, published in 1930 by the Hogarth Press. And now that our own pandemic has taken center stage worldwide, some scholars are writing about how past epidemics have been described in literature, film, and the arts.
One such piece by Laura Cernat centers on Woolf’s essay. And Ane Thon Knutsen, a Norwegian typesetter and Woolf scholar, is in the midst of an art project focused on the work. But more on that later.
Illness in the novel
The 1918 pandemic also made its way into one of Virginia’s most famous novels — Mrs. Dalloway (1925) — but that fact often attracts minimal notice. When it comes to debilitating health conditions in that novel, the shell shock of Septimus Smith gets most of the attention from critics and readers. However, in Viral Modernism, the Influenza Pandemic and Interwar Literature, Elizabeth Outka argues that Woolf has centered the novel on influenza and presents Clarissa Dalloway as a pandemic survivor.
A post on the British Library website takes a similar tack and includes a quote from the novel.
“Clarissa is almost certainly a victim of the influenza pandemic of 1918–20, but she is also to be one of the novel’s lingering wraiths: ‘Since her illness she had turned almost white’ (31).
The temperature was 34 degrees and a light dusting of snow covered the ground when my copy ofLondon in Bloom by Georgianna Lane arrived in my Ohio mailbox several weeks ago.
With its cover photo depicting pale pink roses draping a doorway, arching over a window, and filling the basket of a matching pink bicycle parked out front, the book introduced a welcome breath of spring into my life that day. We need that even more now.
Turning from fear to beauty
The coronavirus has infected our globe, and many of us are sheltering at home, attempting to stave off the ugliness of anxiety. So there is no better time to open a book full of the floral beauty of London, Virginia Woolf’s favorite city.
London in Bloom is the third and final book in Lane’s Cities in Bloom series, published by Abrams. To capture the images that fill it, she spent many early morning hours photographing the floral beauty and architectural detail of England’s capitol before residents and tourists clogged the streets, sidewalks, and parks. I daresay she would find that task easier now.
On “Tea and Tattle”
I first heard of the book on episode 27 of Francesca Wade’s “Tea and Tattle” podcast. Wade describes it as “most beautiful guide to the city’s parks, gardens, florists and hotels and should be on any London-lover’s shelf!”
Much like Woolf, a lover of gardens who incorporated them into her life and into her work, the author shares her affection for London’s gardens in her Introduction to the book:
Perhaps not surprisingly, my most memorable London experiences have been inextricably interwoven with gardens… the open spaces of London have seeped into my consciousness, awakened my imagination, and become part of me” (7).
From parks and gardens to floral displays
London in Bloom is divided into four sections:
parks and gardens
floral boutiques
market flowers and
floral displays.
Each is introduced by a page or two of text that shares Lane’s thoughts and experiences, then filled with gorgeous photos of flowers and architectural details — brickwork, tile-work, doorways — that enhance them.
Whimsical touches are also introduced in the form of light cotton floral print dresses in a shop window, teacups and cake on a tea table, and London’s trademark red phone booth and double decker buses.
Beauty and practicality
Despite some touches of red, the theme throughout is pastel — from flowers to buildings to cover pages. But the book includes the practical, as well as the beautiful.
The back section gives us instructions on creating our own London-style bouquet, a field guide to London’s spring blooming trees and shrubs, and an introductory guide to springtime blooms throughout the city.
London in Bloom provides delectable refreshment for the eye and the soul in our troubled times, whether you are a lover of flowers, a fan of London, or just in need of a bit of balm.
