Last year, a Google Doodle marked the occasion of Virginia Woolf’s birthday. This year, it’s a book offer.
Today, Jan. 25 only, in celebration of Virginia Woolf’s 137th birthday, you can purchase the ebook version of Virginia Woolf in Richmond for £4.99.
Meanwhile, read Woolf’s own diary entries written on her birthday or the day after from the years 1897 to 1941. Some refer specifically to the gifts she received, the things she did and the people she saw on her birthday. The last one, written on Jan. 26, 1941, the year of her death, does not.
If you are lucky enough to be one of the 98 who will attend the Jan. 26 sold-out Virginia Woolf Birthday Lecture, sponsored by the Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain, please note that the location for the talk, titled “Virginia Woolf’s Non-Literary Reputation,” has changed.
Where to find it
The new location is Birkbeck, room MAL B20 at Birkbeck’s Malet Street campus. The entrance is round the back from Malet Street, in Torrington Square, WC1E 7HX. Doors will open at 1:30 p.m. and the lecture is at 2 p.m.
Organizers advise that you allow a good ten minutes to find the lecture theatre, which is in the basement B20. Members of the Executive Council to guide attendees and signs. You can also review the map (the Main building is number 1 on the map).
Immediately following the lecture from 3.30 p.m., the Reception (drinks, cake, raffle and book stall) will take place in the dining-room of the Tavistock Hotel at 48-55 Tavistock Square WC1H 9EH. The hotel has generously provided their services.
Change supports boycott
The late change of venue is due to the society’s support of the boycott of University of London administrative spaces, specifically Senate House, which academic and professional associations are supporting.
Virginia Woolf is an icon. We who love her know that. Now the BBC has recognized the fact.
The BBC is running a TV series called “Icons,” involving a public vote for one of four nominees in each of seven categories — and Woolf is a candidate in the seventh:
Leaders
Explorers
Scientists
Entertainers
Activists
Sports
Artists & Writers
Once those seven are chosen, there will be an overall vote for the 20th century’s greatest icon.
Artists and Writers on the air
On Tuesday 29 January at 9 p.m. on BBC2, the Artists & Writers category will feature Woolf, as well as Pablo Picasso, Alfred Hitchcock and Andy Warhol. The program, presented by actress Lily Cole, can be found online after broadcast.
You can vote
Voting begins at the end of each program and the vote is open until 4 p.m. the next day. For Woolf’s category, the voting window is from 10 p.m. Tuesday, 29 January – 4 p.m. Wednesday 30 January, London time. To vote, you will need to create an account. Get more voting information.
In 2017, Ane Thon Knutsen combined her love of Virginia Woolf and her love of typesetting with her project A Printing Press of One’s Own. The two came together in her hand-set volume by the same name, which she debuted at the 27th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf at the University of Reading that June.
Now she’s at it again, this time with a massive installation titled “The Mark on the Wall,” which runs Jan. 22 – Jan. 27 at Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo.
In this practice based PhD. Ane Thon Knutsen reflects on how the material process of typesetting colours the way one thinks about words and the physical materials of literature, from within the practice of typesetting itself.
The results of this research will be presented as a massive installation, an adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s “The Mark on The Wall” (1917). “The Mark on the Wall” is the first story Woolf wrote whilst teaching her self to typeset. The prints will all appear in one installation, filling a huge room.
Knutsen’s adaptions of this short story represents a new way of reading Woolf as a typesetting author. Knutsen reflects on and lives out how thoughts materialize in the world, in a pendular process between the mind and the body. In this installation Knutsen is translating the story from the pages of the book to a room of one´s own.
Knutsen will also be showing previous adaptions of “The Mark on The Wall” simultaneously at Oslo National Academy of The Arts.
See a time-lapse video of the printing process
As Ane says, “This (time-lapse video) documents every minute of the three months it took me to reprint and translate “The Mark on the Wall” to 1828 A3 posters, setting it word by word with moveable type. The whole short story can be read on the door in the centre during two hours and 18 minutes.”
About Ane
Ane Thon Knutsen (b.1984) is a designer & artist living and working in Oslo, Norway. She specialized in letterpress printing and her artistic practice can be placed in-between graphic design, conceptual letterpress printing and performative presentations.
Ane is currently a PhD- candidate in Graphic Design at Oslo National Academy of The Arts. In the project A Printing Press of One´s Own, she is researching Virginia Woolf’s practice as a self taught typesetter and publisher through experimental graphic interpretations of the short story “The Mark on the Wall” (1917).
“The Mark on the Wall” installation in photos
Below are photos of her work on the exhibit that Ane shared with Blogging Woolf.
“900 massive meters of prints are up!” is the comment Ane included with this photo on her Facebook page on Jan. 18.
Woolf in the #MeToo era, Woolf and theater, and Woolf and inclusivity are among the topics that will be covered at the 29th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, with its theme of Woolf and Social Justice, at Mount St. Joseph University in Cincinnati, Ohio, June 6-9.
The conference’s plenary speakers will include the following:
Elizabeth Abel (UC Berkeley) on Woolf and the Literary Implications of Social Justice
Anne Fernald (Fordham University) and Tonya Krouse (Northern Kentucky University) on Woolf in the Era of #MeToo
Kristin Czarnecki (Georgetown College) and Erica Delsandro (Bucknell University) on Woolf and Inclusivity
Ellen McLaughlin (Actor “Angels in America,” among many others], Director, Playwright “Septimus and Clarissa,” “A Narrow Bed,” among others) on Woolf, Theater, and Activism.
Other events include:
The June 6 evening celebration will be at the historic Taft Art Museum in downtown Cincinnati, a Greek revival, National Historic Landmark building that originally served as the home of the Taft family (and from which William Howard Taft accepted his presidential nomination in 1908). The museum will be closed to the public and attendees will be able to peruse the collection and the garden at their leisure.
June 7 will feature a performance of Leonard Woolf’s play “The Hotel,” featuring students and faculty from the Mount and supervised by McLaughlin.
An all-conference roundtable event will conclude the conference on Sunday morning, June 9, to be followed by a visit to the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in downtown Cincinnati, a museum commemorating Cincinnati’s historic location as the border between North and South, and the place to which escaped slaves fled to their freedom.
