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Posts Tagged ‘Emma Woolf’

The long-awaited life-sized bronze statue of Virginia Woolf officially arrived in Richmond today, the place where Virginia and her husband Leonard lived from 1914-1924 and where they established their famous Hogarth Press in 1917.

Woolf’s great niece Emma Woolf and Emma’s 2-year-old son Ludovic Cecil Woolf, along with Sophie Partridge, great, great niece of Virginia Woolf, were set to unveil the statue.

Designed by acclaimed artist Laury Dizengremel, the sculpture is located on the upper terraces of Richmond Riverside.

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Virginia Woolf will officially arrive in Richmond, where Woolf lived for 10 years, on Nov. 16. The life-sized bronze statue of the famous author will be unveiled at 2:30 p.m. by her great niece Emma Woolf and Emma’s 2-year-old son Ludovic Cecil Woolf, along with Sophie Partridge, great, great niece of Virginia Woolf, who is making the trip to Richmond from France.

Emma is the daughter of the late publisher Cecil Woolf, Leonard Woolf’s nephew, and Jean Moorcroft Wilson, the noted biographer of World War I poets.

Designed by acclaimed artist Laury Dizengremel, the sculpture will be installed on the upper terraces of Richmond Riverside. No tickets are required for the event. Note: The closest London Underground station is Richmond (on the District line and London Overground).

More at Books on the Rise

After the unveiling, Peter Fullagar, author of Virginia Woolf in Richmond, will  speak at 4 p.m. at Books on the Rise, a new local book shop, about Woolf’s years in Richmond. Tickets are required.

The shop is also selling all things related to Woolf, from books to maquettes and merchandise.

Project background

In 2017, arts and education charity Aurora Metro launched the project to commission, fund and erect a statue of Woolf in Richmond Upon Thames. It recognizes Woolf’s life in Richmond from 1915 to 1924, along with her founding of the Hogarth Press with husband Leonard and the publication of her first novel, The Voyage Out, in 1915.

Aurora Metro raised £50,000 to fund the statue. The charity’s sister company is Aurora Metro Publications, a local publisher with three decades of publishing original voices and promoting work in translation.

Aurora Metro is still soliciting funds to cover the installation, associated literary events and maintenance of the statue, which is the only full-sized statue of Woolf in the UK.

Follow on social media

For the latest news about the statue, follow on Twitter @VWoolfstatue or on Facebook/VWoolfStatue.

 

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Today marks the 80th anniversary of Virginia Woolf’s death, which is being noted around the globe.

Emma Woolf ruminates

Her great-niece, Emma Woolf, daughter of the late Cecil Woolf and Jean Moorcroft Wilson, has marked this day with the following two articles:

Emma Woolf shared these photos on her Facebook page.

Yay Virginia, say the Italians

The Italian Virginia Woolf Society is holding an online event on Facebook  11 a.m. – 1 p.m. (EDT) today titled “Eviva Virginia,” which features readings of her works, along with a celebration of her life.

And the Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain celebrated Woolf’s work by posting this on their Facebook page:

Facebook tribute from VWSGB 

“80 years ago today the world lost a great writer in Virginia Woolf. However, we would prefer to celebrate her life, and the fact that she gave us ten novels, a biography, two feminist treatises, three dozen short stories, enough essays and reviews to fill six chunky volumes, thousands of letters, perhaps the most detailed diary by any writer, several memoirs, three Russian translations, a comic play, a juvenile newspaper, as well as numerous photograph albums. Enough material, that is, to keep Woolfians interested to the present day and beyond.”

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So far, here are the #DallowayDay events for this year:

  • On June 12th ‘a Wednesday in mid June’ Persephone Books, 59 Lamb’s Conduit St., London, will hold its annual Mrs. Dalloway Walk. It begins at 11 a.m. in Westminster. Lunch will be at the shop afterwards.
  • Join Waterstones and the Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain for the third annual celebration of Dalloway Day on Saturday, June 15, this year with the theme of “Queering.” Read more.
  • Italian Virginia Woolf Society Dalloway Day at Biblioteca Salaborsa, Bologna on June 15. Read more.
  • Royal Society of Literature events on Wednesday, June 19, include:
    • Walking with Mrs. Dalloway, 1:30-2:30 p.m. in the National Portrait Gallery
    • For There She Was: Love and Presence in Mrs Dalloway, 4 – 5 p.m., British Library Piazza Pavilion with renowned Woolf scholar Professor Dame Gillian Beer
    • RSL Members’ Book Group: A Room of My Own, 5:30 – 6:30 p.m., British Library Knowledge Centre
    • After Woolf,  7– 8:30 p.m., British Library Knowledge Centre. Monica Ali, Olivia Laing and Elif Shafak discuss Woolf’s influence and the challenges of interpolating one of the 20th Century’s most significant writers in works inflected by their own lives.
Cecil at Persephone

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

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England’s Lane
Emma Woolf
Three Hares Publishing

A review by Maggie Humm

Emma Woolf’s debut novel England’s Lane is a love story with a difference. Starting with a bang – an ingenious twist of the Hollywood cliche of a half-dressed male lover exiting a torrid sex scene when his lover’s husband returns unexpectedly- here the heroine Lily is the departing lover. Immediately sympathetic as she reports to sister Cassie ‘I’m standing on the platform at Gerrard’s Cross wearing a man’s shirt tucked into skinny jeans,’ Lily’s hands closed around a packet of cigarettes in Harry’s shirt pocket. ‘Hallelujah’.

The set up will please writers and publishers. Lily, 24, works with Harry, 47, Strategic Director of Higher Education Press and ‘that first kiss was deadly serious at the Frankfurt Book Fair’. The progress of their increasingly tense love affair flows in and out of multiple perspectives: Pippa, Harry’s wife’s blog, Harry at his psychiatrist, and Lily, and constitutes the first half of the novel.

Woolf handles multiple characters with insouciance – Lily’s siblings Cassie, Olivia, James and their mother Celia, and Harry’s family.

As Harry’s guilt grows so does his drinking, jealous stalking of Lily, and eventual breakdown. To say more would give away the plot’s key moment. Woolf pulls off a writer’s toughest trick – switching mid-stream from one expected narrative – adultery- to another – Lily’s life as a single mother in England’s Lane, Belsize Park, north London. Contacting her long departed father David, Lily’s life begins afresh with his second wife’s family, particularly with Julian.

Beautifully constructed, England’s Lane rushes us through to an unexpected happy ending (for everyone except Harry).

How could we not like Lily – intelligent, thoughtful, beautifully slim, with her JBrand skinny jeans, casual cashmere sweaters and Hunter’s wellies? In my only attempt to wear JBrand jeans my knees wouldn’t bend, but fiction identifications can happen between unlikely readers and central characters. Product placements proliferate: Fortnum’s hampers, crocodile Smythson notebooks, St. Lucie’s monogrammed bath robes, but love stories need obligatory reader pleasures.

The novel is at its strongest when Lily begins to parallel Harry’s wife Pippa’s fears of being an older mother.

Emma Woolf is Leonard Woolf’s great-niece but I found traces of Virginia Woolf in Emma’s evocative scenes. Virginia Woolf is one of the twentieth century’s pre-eminent visual writers and England’s Lane carries some of Virginia’s illustrative quality. It would be an ideal Sunday evening TV serial. I simply could not put it down.

Maggie Humm is the author of Talland House and the editor of The Edinburgh Companion to Virginia Woolf and the Arts.

Emma Woolf with her father Cecil Woolf

 

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