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Posts Tagged ‘Catherine Hollis’

One of Blogging Woolf’s bookshelves

Editor’s Note: Deadline extended to Sept. 30, 2018.

Catherine Hollis, editor of an upcoming themed issue of the Virginia Woolf Miscellany on “Collecting Woolf” has put out a call for papers. She is hoping to gather both traditional scholarly articles on collecting Virginia Woolf and Hogarth Press books, as well as shorter pieces about our own collections.

Questions that could be addressed include the following:

  • Who collects Virginia Woolf and Hogarth Press books?
  • When did the demand for and economic value of Woolfs’ and the Hogarth Press’s books begin in the antiquarian book trade?
  • Are Woolf and Hogarth Press books more or less desirable than other modernist first editions?
  • What are the emotional, haptic, and educational values of early Woolf and Hogarth Press editions for scholars, students, and common readers?
  • What do the book collections of Virginia and Leonard Woolf tell us about their lives as readers and writers?

In addition to more formal academic essays, this issue of the Miscellany, in collaboration with Blogging Woolf, will also feature a special section called “Our Bookshelves, Ourselves.” Our book collections tell stories about our reading lives and also about our lives in the larger community of Woolf’s readers and scholars. In fact, a history of our bookshelves might begin to tell a history of the International Virginia Woolf Society itself.

If you are a “common book collector,” and your books tell a story about your immersion in Woolf or Hogarth Press studies, tell us about it. If you have interesting strategies or stories about acquiring collectible editions of Woolf and Hogarth Press books on a budget, let us know!

Send submissions of 2,000 words for longer essays and 500 words for “Our Bookshelves” by Sept. 1, 2018, to Catherine Hollis via hollisc@berkeley.edu

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Collecting books was the topic of the “Book Collectors and the Book Trade” panel at the 27th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf Conference in Reading, England, in June. So it’s no wonder my mind clicked into gear when I received an email full of Woolf treats from fellow Woolf hunter, book collector, and seller Jon S. Richardson.

June conference panelists included Leslie Arthur of the William Reese Company in Connecticut on “Bibliographers, Booksellers, and Collectors of the Hogarth Press,” Catherine Hollis of U.C. Berkeley on “The Common Reader and the Book Collector,” and Stephen Barkway of the Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain on “Hogarth Press Books,” the story of his personal collection.

Attached to Richardson’s email was the September 2017 list of volumes he has for sale, which include some by or about Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West, other Bloomsbury writers, and the extended Stephen clan.

What’s on the list

There are 70 items offered on the current list. Here are just a few:

  • Woolf, Virginia. MRS. DALLOWAY, New York, Harcourt, [1931], 296 pp., 6th impression of the first American edition in deep orange cloth with spine label, VG+ with a pristine spine label, Kirkpatrick A9b, this copy with the exceedingly rare Bell jacket in yellow/black/ cream design, being the 1931 issue of the jacket (with a blurb on To The Lighthouse on rear inner flap), jacket is VG+ with trivial loss to spine ends and two tiny areas of abrasion on spine, price of $2.50 on flap, but no sunning, front inner flap has blurb on Mrs. Dalloway with N.Y. Times review quotation, prior owners’ signatures on flysheet, a most handsome copy of this Bell artwork which is identical to the first edition. $785
  • Quentin Bell & Virginia Nicholson. CHARLESTON-A BLOOMSBURY HOUSE AND GARDEN, New York, Holt, 1997, first American edition, oblong quarto, fine with near fine dust jacket,152 pp., profusely illustrated in color, a room-by-room excursion through this home so central to Bloomsbury outside London. $55
  • Sackville-West, V. CHALLENGE, New York, George H. Doran, [1923], the third impression in RED CLOTH, lettered in black on spine and on upper board, see notes to Cross A9b, VG, 297 pp., dedicated to Violet Trefusis in the Romany dialect they shared, a scarce appearance of this book suppressed in England by Lady Sackville who feared the disclosure of VS-W’s relationship with Violet Trefusis, number of copies unknown. $95
  • [Bell, Grant, Woolf & Bloomsbury] A complete run of THE CHARLESTON NEWSLETTER, Issues Nos. 1-24 (1982-89) + index (all published); published by the Charleston Trust, Richmond, Surrey, edited by Hugh Lee, wrappers, VG, s contained in two volume custom green bindings supplied by Charleston at the time – these bindings are unusual in using a string technique which allows removal but also allows volumes to open nearly flat for ease of copying; an amazing work of scholarship starting with the formation of the Trust to save Charleston, many contributions by Quentin Bell and other Bloomsbury people then alive, many issues have color plates of Bloomsbury art by Bell & Grant especially Charleston and other rooms decorated by them; great sequence of articles on Bloomsbury bookplates with copies, the breadth of the topics is vast, ultimately succeeded by The Charleston Magazine in 1990; scarce in the complete set and an essential Bloomsbury reference source as much of this material (from original Bloomsbury members then still alive) exists only here. $485

Background on the Woolf hunters

According to “Woolf Hunters,” a 2010 article in the Harvard Magazine, Richardson founders Jon and harbor books screenshotMargaret Richardson have made hunting down the works of Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group their mission since opening York Harbor Books in Maine more than 20 years ago.

To receive your own list, contact Jon S. Richardson Rare Books at yorkharborbooks@aol.com.

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At the 26th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, scholar Catherine Hollis Small Backs of Childrenmade the connection between Virginia Woolf and Lidia Yukavitch’s novel The Small Backs of Children in her paper, “Thinking Through Virginia Woolf: Woolf as Portal in Lidia Yuknavitch’s The Small Backs of Children.”

Hollis was part of a fascinating panel titled “Woolf’s Legacy to Female Writers,” along with Eva Mendez, who spoke about Alice Munro, and Amy Muse, who spoke about Sarah Ruhl.

Hollis also wrote a review of Yuknavitch’s novel for Public Books in which she connects it to Woolf’s critique of gendered violence. “The Woolf Girl” appears in the December 15 issue of the online review site devoted to interdisciplinary discussion of books and the arts.

For more on the novel’s connections with Woolf, read Alice Lowe’s blog post, “Lidia Yuknavitch novel draws on Woolf.”

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So many exciting links to Bloomsbury and Virginia Woolf resources are popping up on social media this week. Since I don’t fry_booklet_virginia_woolf_1-209x300have time to write about them because I am busy preparing for the 25th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf: Virginia Woolf and Her Female Contemporaries, June 4-7 at Bloomsburg University, I am posting links to them here.

  1. On Twitter, I learned of a rare find in the basement of the Bristol Museum of a booklet printed for the Fry memorial exhibition held at the Bristol Museum & Art Gallery in 1935. It contains the text of the exhibition’s opening speech written and delivered by Woolf. “After further research, it appears this booklet is one of the most sought after publications by the writer,” wrote Fay Curtis in her museum post. “The print run was just 125, which is why they are so rare today, and the curator at the time had several to give away. Thankfully for us, he slipped one into the exhibition file – where it remained for eighty years. We have now removed it from the old file in the basement and entered it into the Fine Art collection.”
  2. On Facebook, I learned that a copy of the exhibit booklet is available at the University of Toronto Libraries.
  3. Facebook also told me Virginia Woolf is on the move at Victoria Library. Here’s the post, which pictured the small Woolf doll on a picnic blanket in front of a college building: “Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) is on the move. She left her secure box in the E.J. Pratt Library for the summer and will be visiting places on campus. Her first stop is in front of the Victoria College building.Victoria Library FB post screenshot” The Woolf doll is actually listed in the library catalog.
  4. From Catherine Hollis via Facebook comes the news that letters from George Mallory to Lytton Strachey are up for sale. You can view the lot.
  5. From the VWoolfListserv comes news that letter from Clive Bell to Lytton Strachey are also up for sale.
  6. This morning, the items below popped up on Twitter:

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Marina Warner and Jane Goldman, conference organizer

Jean Moorcroft Wilson

Vara Neverow and Patrizia Muscogiuri, who provided Blogging Woolf with these photos. More are posted on Flickr. See the Flickr feed in the right sidebar.

At left, Gill Lowe in the pageant skit written by Suzanne Bellamy, pictured at right

Derek Ryan, who played William in the pageant skit, was also one of the conference organizers.
Catherine Hollis, Lois Gilmore and Barbara Lonnquist

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