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Posts Tagged ‘27th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf’

Collaborative project produces beautifully crafted student response to Woolf’s Room of One’s Own

Posted in 27th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, books, Virginia Woolf, tagged , , , on Saturday 25 July 2020| Leave a Comment »

A beautifully crafted staff-student book that is part of a collaborative project at the University of Reading is now available.

A Room of Our Own: The Virginia Woolf Learning Journals presents witty, inventive, and deeply felt learning journal entries from more than 20 final year students in the Department of English Literature at the University of Reading. Appropriately enough, the university was the site of the 27th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf: Virginia Woolf and the World of Books,

Content of the book

The entries are 500-word pieces of critical and creative writing responding to Woolf’s novels and essays.

The 64 contributions are organized into 10 chapters. The texts discussed in the collection are The Voyage Out, Jacob’s Room, Mrs. Dalloway, A Room of One’s Own, Three Guineas, ‘Street Haunting’, ‘Modern Novels’, ‘Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown’, ‘Professions for Women’ and ‘Memories of a Working Women’s Guild’.

Madeleine Davies’ introduction to the book explains the genesis of the project and its links to diversifying assessment practice, student engagement, and the ability of graduates to find employment.

Look of the book

Designer Katy Smith studied Woolf’s handwritten letters so she could create a hand drawn typeface in a similar style in a shade of purple, Woolf’s ink preference for her own writing. She also designed special icons representative of each chapter.

Smith worked with Davies and three student editors from the English Literature Department — Libby Bushill, Zoë Kyle and Maddie Bazin — on the project.

An award winner

The project has won two University of Reading collaborative excellence awards, has been the basis of a Times Higher Education shortlisting (2019) for Most Innovative Teaching, and is the university’s nomination for this year’s HE Advanced CATE Award.

Get a copy

A Room of One’s Own is available as an e-book and as a paperback. You can follow the project on Twitter at @RoomofOurOwnUOR.

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Persephone Books, a London favorite, has new edition of Woolf’s Room

Posted in A Room of One's Own, books, tagged , , , , on Wednesday 23 October 2019| 1 Comment »

Cecil Woolf pauses in front of Persephone Books, Lamb’s Conduit Street, London, in June 2016.

Tucked away on Lamb’s Conduit Street in Bloomsbury, Persephone Books has been my favorite London bookstore since I first visited it — twice — during my 2016 trip.

That’s not just because it is located on the same street where Jacob Flanders of Virginia Woolf’s Jacob’s Room had his very own room. It is also because the shop reprints neglected fiction and non-fiction by mid-20th century (mostly) women writers. It is, in short, a treasure.

A stack of gray dust covers

Every time I visit, I cannot resist purchasing as many as I can carry of Persephone’s 135 books. From Marghanita Laski’s To Bed With Grand Music to Barbara Euphan Todd’s Miss Ranskill Comes Home, each is unique. And none has disappointed.

A stack of Persephone Books, each with its gray dust cover and colorful endpaper with matching bookmark, is eternally in my TBR pile, including the three I bought this year: They Were Sisters by Dorothy Whipple; Tory Heaven or Thunder on the Right, another by Laski; and Wilfred and Eileen by Jonathan Smith.

This year, though, I decided to spare myself. Having enough to carry, I had Persephone ship my books to my home in the U.S. They arrived within a week of my return, accompanied by a gracious hand-written note of thanks.

Still urgent today

And now Persephone, founded by Nicola Beauman, has printed a new edition of Virginia Woolf’s classic feminist polemic, A Room of One’s Own (1929). It is wrapped in Persephone’s classic soft gray dust cover, with the 1930 Vanessa Bell textile design “Stripe” as its endpaper and matching bookmark.

A Room of One’s Own, with its central premise that a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction, is a volume whose message has urgency and currency today, says Clara Jones, who wrote the preface.

The poetry and pragmatism of Woolf’s central claim about the room and the money have taken on renewed urgency today. The ubiquity of debt for a generation of young people who pay large university tuition fees, are charged prohibitive rents and paid low wages, combined with the fact that all but the luckiest (or best connected) with literary ambitions will begin their apprenticeship by working for free, make Woolf’s trinity of space, privacy and financial security as worth striving for as ever. – Clara Jones, Preface to Persephone edition of A Room of One’s Own

It is 90 years since Woolf wrote her iconic piece. You can read more about the Persephone edition (cost £13) on the Persephone website and in the Stratford-upon-Avon Herald.

About the founder and her store

Beauman herself is a legend in the world of book publishing — and in the world of Woolf. Along with Clara Farmer of the Hogarth and Chatto and Windus, she appeared on a panel at the 27th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf in Reading, England. Aptly enough, the conference theme was Woolf and the World of Books, with Beauman and Farmer’s panel titled “Publishers, Publishing & Bookselling.”

Beauman began Persephone 20 years ago as a mail-order publishing business with a list of 12 books. She now has 30,000 subscribers to her free magazine The Persephone Biannually. And when the shop celebrated its 20th anniversary earlier this year, a crowd of fans stopped in throughout the day and evening.

Here’s what Beauman had to say about the books she publishes in an April 14 New York Times story acknowledging her store’s 20 years in business:

The connection between them is that they were forgotten and they’re very well-written. I’m very keen on story and on page-turners. When I get to the end of a book I like to put it down and feel absolutely wrenched by what I’ve read, to be in a different world.
I can attest to the power of the books Persephone publishes. Upon finishing each of my Persephone Books, I find it difficult to make my way back into my own everyday world. I am that affected by what I have read.

Get a close look at Lamb’s Conduit Street, as well as the inside and outside of Persephone, with this YouTube video, the 2018 pilot episode of “Fran’s Book Shop.”

Inside Persephone Books with founder Nicola Beauman at work at her desk, July 2017.

A table full of “Fifty Books We Wish We Had Published” at Persephone Books in July 2017

A wall full of books in the traditional gray dust covers at Persephone Books in 2017

Persephone Books isn’t shy about making political statements. This banner hung in the shop in 2018.

A Woolf sighting at Persephone Books in June 2018

The window display at Persephone Books changes. This was the view in July.

 

 

 

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Books on Leonard and Virginia Woolf available at a discount

Posted in 27th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, books, Hogarth Press, Hogarth Press centenary, Leonard Woolf, tagged , , , , on Wednesday 21 March 2018| Leave a Comment »

Clemson University Press is offering two books at a substantial discount until May 1. Download the flyer as a PDF.

An Annotated Guide to the Writings and Papers of Leonard Woolf

The revised edition of An Annotated Guide to the Writings and Papers of Leonard Woolf, by Janet M. Manson and Wayne K. Chapman (2018), 292 pp. (paperback). Normal retail: $34.95. 50% off: $17.50 plus s&h Order the book.

The Annotated Guide is a finding aid to collections of Leonard Woolf papers, which substantially augments previous research tools.

Virginia Woolf and the World of Books

Virginia Woolf and the World of Books, edited by Nicola Wilson and Claire Battershill (forthcoming, 2018), 310 pp. + (hardcover). Normal retail: $120. 70% off: $34.95 plus s&h Order the book.

Although it is not identified as such, this book contains the selected papers from the 27th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, held last June at the University of Reading in Reading, England.

Just over 100 years ago, in 1917, Leonard and Virginia Woolf began a publishing house from their dining-room table. This volume marks the centenary of that auspicious beginning.

Inspired by the Woolfs’ radical innovations as independent publishers, the book celebrates the Hogarth Press as a key intervention in modernist and women’s writing and demonstrates its importance to independent publishing and book-selling in the long twentieth century.

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Happy 91st birthday to Cecil Woolf

Posted in 26th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, 27th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, Cecil Woolf, Cecil Woolf Publishers, Happy birthday, tagged , , , on Tuesday 20 February 2018| Leave a Comment »

Happy 91st birthday to Cecil Woolf, author, publisher, conference attendee and speaker, Bloomsbury walker, party giver, plaque unveiler, and the oldest living relative of Virginia and Leonard Woolf.

We wish we could be with you to celebrate today. Instead, dear man, we toast you from near and far.

You can read more about him in last year’s birthday post.

Cecil Woolf cuts the cake designed by Cressida Bell for the 100th birthday party of the Hogarth Press last June in Reading, England.

Cecil Woolf, accompanied by his wife Jean Moorcroft Wilson, talks about being The Other Boy at the Hogarth Press at the 100th birthday party for the Hogarth Press in Reading, England last June.

Cecil Woolf published his story, The Other Boy at the Hogarth Press, last spring, unveiling it at the 27th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf.

Cecil Woolf and Jean Moorcroft Wilson at their post-conference party last June at their London townhouse.

Cecil Woolf stops at 46 Gordon Square, London, while giving Blogging Woolf a personalized tour of Bloomsbury in June 2016.

Taking a break with Cecil Woolf in the Tavistock Square garden after the 2016 Woolf conference.

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How Virginia Woolf rescued a Norwegian typesetter

Posted in 27th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own, Hogarth Press, Hogarth Press centenary, tagged , , , , , , on Sunday 17 September 2017| 8 Comments »

Ane Thon Knutsen with her hand-bound volume “A Printing Press of One’s Own,” introduced at this year’s Woolf conference in Reading, England.

Ane Thon Knutsen combined two loves with her project A Printing Press of One’s Own — her love of Virginia Woolf and her love of typesetting.

The two come 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 in June.

It includes Ane’s personal, heartfelt essay about her experience finding a space of her own in which she could pursue her passion — typesetting. Her search occurred at a personally challenging time, soon after becoming a mother.

The intersection of the two — and the rescue role Woolf played in it — comprise her story. It includes her experiences conducting research at the British Library, which allowed her to handle the first volumes Virginia and Leonard printed on the Hogarth Press.

About that, she writes:

What contrasts! In some cases they have really tried to print appealing books, but in others they have not made the effort, or investment of time. Inkblots. Everything off-kilter. The complete disregard for the sanctity of the type area. Scraps of paper crookedly pasted on to cover up misspelled names. Damaged types which had not been replaced. These are not books considered worthy of dignified display alongside William Morris and Gutenberg’s bible. This smacked more of punk rock and anarchy. The books bear the marks of temper and a strong will. I was touched.

The essay also includes Ane’s ruminations on why Woolf did not write about the time she spent with the typecase. As Ane puts its,  “She, who could name the feelings, details and experiences we let slip by unmentioned, was perfectly qualified to describe the meditation of typesetting.”

Thoughts of her own

According to Ane, “The book is an essay referring to A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf. The essay reflects upon women’s role in letterpress, and the importance of a room of one’s own in artistic practices.

“In this book I am investigating the first books printed by Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press, both in practice and in the written ‘dialogue’ between Virginia Woolf and myself, as we are both self-taught typesetters.”

Two versions

The illustrations throughout both the English and Norwegian versions of the volume are linocuts by Ane’s artist sister, Ylve Thon. All text is hand set and printed together with linocuts on a proofing press.

The English version has a blue cover, is digitally printed, and contains handprinted linocuts and is hand-bound. Both are for sale, with the English version priced at £18. The handset Norwegian version is £75.

Ane’s volume is part of her artistic research project in graphic design at Oslo National Academy of the arts, where she works on a project investigating tactility in printed matter.

You can follow her on Instagram @anetutdelaflut.

“A Printing Press of One’s Own” by Ane Thon Knutsen – Photo courtesy of Ane Thon Knutsen

A look inside – Photo courtesy of Ane Thon Knutsen

Linocuts in the volume are by Ane’s sister, the artist Ylve Thon. – Photo courtesy of Ane Thon Knutsen

Ane’s books among some of her typesetting equipment. – Photo courtesy of Ane Thon Knutsen

Ane met Cecil Woolf at the conference, and he graciously signed a limited edition Hogarth Press centenary keepsake of Woolf’s “The Patron and the Crocus,” available from Whiteknights Press.

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