Reading the Skies in Virginia Woolf
Two Bloomsbury Heritage monographs, including one of my own, will debut at Woolf and the City, the 19th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf — and a third is in progress.
Cecil Woolf Publishers of London is the publisher.
The monographs making their first appearance at the June 4 to 7 conference at Fordham University — and afterward — are:
- Reading the Skies in Virginia Woolf: Woolf on Weather in Her Essays, Her Diaries and Three of Her Novels by Paula Maggio, number 54 in the Bloomsbury Heritage series.
- Virginia Woolf: A Musical Life by Emilie Crapoulet, number 50 in the series.
- How Should One Read a Marriage? Private Writings, Public Readings, and Leonard and Virginia Woolf by Drew Patrick Shannon will be published later this year.
Virginia Woolf: A Musical Life
Reading the Skies saw its first incarnation as a paper written for a graduate class taught by geology professors Dr. Alison J. Smith and Dr. Donald F. Palmer in the Master of Liberal Studies program at Kent State University. The class, which focused on the impact of climate change from the time of the Little Ice Age to the present, required that we write a weather-related paper.
I was an English major, not a science major, as an undergraduate, so I immediately searched for a literary connection. I did not have far to look.
How Should One Read a Marriage?
One of our texts was Briane Fagan‘s The Little Ice Age: Prelude to Global Warming 1300-1850. In it, he describes the frost fairs held on the River Thames during the years of the Little Ice Age. In a flash, I thought of Woolf’s descriptions of Orlando and Sasha skating feverishly across the Thames in her 1928 novel Orlando.
From there, I was on the hunt for anything written about Woolf and weather. Amazingly enough, I found nothing. Thus began my own study and analysis.
In Reading the Skies, I explore Woolf’s characteristically English fascination with the vagaries of the nation’s weather and its effect on culture. I also discuss weather’s influence on Woolf and her writing, including her theories about the role weather could and should play in fiction. Finally, I discuss how she carried out her theories in three of her novels, Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse and Orlando.
I invite you to pick up a copy of Reading the Skies and Virginia Woolf: A Musical Life at the Woolf conference at Fordham for the special conference price of $9. They — along with other monographs in the Bloomsbury Heritage Series — will be available at Cecil Woolf’s book display near the registration table in the Lowenstein Plaza Lobby. Here is the full conference schedule.
Then stay tuned to Blogging Woolf for news about the publication of How Should One Read a Marriage? We will announce its availability here.
Alice Lowe
Catherine
Kaylee Baucom
Paula Maggio
Stefano Rozzoni
seanmcphail
suzannebellamy1
veronikakra
Vara Neverow
William Patrick Wend
Zoe Wolstenholme
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