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Among other intriguing rare finds, Jon S. Richardson Rare Books is offering a previously unknown version of Virginia Woolf’s short story “The Mark on the Wall” in French.

According to the Fall 2023 “Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group” catalogue, “La Tache Sur le Mur” was published in the March 1923 issue of EUROPE, Revue Mensuelle, with Woolf’s story translated by Louis Mende at pp. 164-174.

“The piece is accompanied by a short essay on Woolf’s breakthrough style and a review of  her novels through her short story collection Monday or Tuesday by one P.C. [presumably Paul Colin, one of the editors).”

The catalogue explains that “this translation is not noted in Kirkpatrick, it is three years earlier than the earliest known appearance of Woolf in the French language” and there is “no mention in Leonard’s autobiography of this translation or Mende.”

More about the volume

As for the volume’s condition, the “book is bright, solid and VG for age with minor wear from age and soil, unusual to be in this condition because paper has acidified slightly.” The price is $275.

The Jon S. Richardson Rare Books offerings are available via AbeBooks. You can also reach the shop at yorkharborbooks@aol.com or at 207-752-1569.

More about the Richardsons

Jon and Margaret Richardson are not newcomers to the world of Woolf. They have made hunting down the works of Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury group their mission since opening York Harbor Books in Maine more than 25 years ago.

The Richardson duo put out a list of “Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group” offerings quarterly. They issued their previous list in the summer.

More French connections to Woolf’s “Mark on the Wall”

For more on the French connections to Woolf’s “Mark on the Wall,” read Blogging Woolf’s post from Oct. 20, 2010, “The French connection to ‘The Mark on the Wall.'” It explores similarities, parallels, and differences between Woolf’s short story and novels by Marguerite Dumas and Alain Robbe-Grillet.

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Norwegian multidisciplinary artist Ane Thon Knutsen is at it again — at combining Virginia Woolf and the letterpress, that is.

This time, the Oslo Academy of the Arts professor has debuted her installation, “Printed Words: Adaptations of Virginia Woolf,” at University Archives and Special Collections at the Florida Gulf Coast University library.

The Feb. 23 opening reception introduced the installation, which will be on display from now through the 32nd Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf:
Virginia  Woolf and Ecologies, June 8-11. Registration opens in March.

In “Printed Works,” the self-taught typesetter who has exhibited other letterpress projects and installations related to Woolf, adapts a selection of Virginia Woolf’s self-published short stories.

“Knutsen’s artistic research aims to point out the influence typography, particularly typesetting, might have on the content of the text. It speaks to the power of designing and publishing one’s own work,” notes the FGCU Special Collections and Archives website.

Her first Woolf project: a book

In “A Printing Press of One’s Own,” which premiered at the 27th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf” at the University of Reading, England, in 2017, Ane produced a hand-set volume that includes Ane’s personal essay about her experience finding a space of her own in which she could pursue her passion — typesetting.

Ane Thon Knutsen with her hand-printed volume introduced at the 2017 Woolf conference, “A Printing Press of One’s Own”

According to Ane, “The book is an essay referring to A Room of One’s Own (1929) 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.”

Her second: up on the walls

In the winter of 2019, Ane had a major installation of Woolf’s first short story, “The Mark on the Wall,” (1917) in Kunstnernes Hus, an art institution in the centre of Oslo.

As described by Nell Toemen, who visited the exhibit and shared her thoughts with Blogging Woolf, Woolf’s story was “handprinted on I don’t know how many papers, white and off-white, neatly arranged so as to fill all the walls. If you would walk the room in eleven rounds you would be able to read the whole story. Reading it this way is an absolutely different experience than reading the story in a book.”

Page 2 of the “On Being Ill” project

Her third: via Instagram

In March of 2020, as lockdowns due to the COVID-19 pandemic spread around the globe, Ane used her printing press to print one sentence on one sheet of paper every day from “On Being Ill,“ Woolf’s 1930 essay.

She shared each page on Instagram and she shared her thoughts about the project with Blogging Woolf.

At the time, she said she was using her printing press to print one sentence on one sheet of paper every day from “On Being Ill” “until we can go back to normal. I hope I will not make it through, as we’re counting about 140 sentences, and the paper is restricted to leftovers from my stock.”

About Ane Thon Knutsen

Ane is internationally known for her letterpress-focused installations and artists’ books. The associate professor of graphic design at the Oslo Academy of the Arts has won numerous awards for her work. She owns and works from her private letterpress studio in Oslo.

 

 

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It’s the time of year to lift the veil, take a stroll, stalk the moors, revisit a place you used to live and maybe meet yourself there. Bring a friend, a fiend, a presence, a shade, a ghostly cavalcade to a meeting of uncanny minds as you join Virginia Woolf readers online for Woolf Salon No. 14: Hauntings. The discussion will feature five short stories from five tale tellers, including Woolf’s “A Haunted House.”

Details

What: Woolf Salon No. 14: Hauntings
Hosts: Salon Conspirators
Day: Friday, Oct. 29
Time: 3–5 p.m. ET / Noon –2 p.m  PT / 4 – 6 p.m. Brasilia / 8 – 10 p.m. BST / 9 – 11 p.m. CEST

Five short tales. Five tale tellers

  1. Elizabeth Bowen’s ”The Demon Lover”
  2. Elizabeth Gaskell’s “The Old Nurse’s Story
  3. Jean Rhys’s “I Used to Live Here Once
  4. May Sinclair’s “If the Dead Knew
  5. Virginia Woolf’s “A Haunted House

How to join The Woolf Salon

Anyone can join the group, which meets on the third or fourth Friday of each month via Zoom and focuses on a single topic or text. Just contact woolfsalonproject@gmail.com to sign up for the email list and receive the Zoom link.

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Is it today? Or was it yesterday? The date of the centenary anniversary of the publication of Virginia Woolf’s short story collection Monday or Tuesday is under debate, the Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain admits.

Roundtable participants at the 27th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf in 2017 sit below a screen showing a digitized ledger sheet from the Hogarth Press.

The society celebrated the centenary with an email message to members and a post on its Facebook page that included mention of the date disparity, background about the book, and a list of the stories in the 1921 volume, the only collection of Woolf’s short fiction published in her lifetime.

Short stories in Monday or Tuesday

  • A Haunted House
  • A Society
  • Monday or Tuesday
  • An Unwritten Novel
  • The String Quartet
  • Blue & Green
  • Kew Gardens
  • The Mark on the Wall

About the book

Leonard and Virginia handset the type for Monday or Tuesday, which was the first of Woolf’s hardback books published by the Hogarth Press.

Vanessa Bell created the cover art, as well as the four woodcuts that appear inside the Hogarth Press edition.

Art and content aside, in Beginning Again, Leonard described it as “one of the worst printed books ever published, certainly the worst ever published by The Hogarth Press” (239).

Modernist Archives Publishing Project

The digital collection of the Modernist Archives Publishing Project, which officially debuted at the 27th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf: Virginia Woolf and the World of Books, includes Leonard’s order book. In his meticulous fashion, it details the names of people who bought copies of the original volume.

Photos courtesy of the Modernist Archives Publishing Project

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London Sign PostWe have all speculated about what Virginia Woolf would do if she were alive today.

I once wondered whether she would surf if she still summered at St. Ives.

Now I am wondering whether she would wear the designs of Nicole Farhi, who is said to be a favorite of the “British intelligentsia,” a group to which Woolf definitely belonged.

An article in the Telegraph thinks so. And since it notes that French fashion designer Farhi “creates clothing that women who don’t want to think about fashion don’t have to think about,” I may agree.

After all, Woolf  felt quite insecure about her own sense of style. She ascribes this sort of insecurity to the character of Mabel in the short story, “The New Dress.” Woolf writes, “of course, she [Mabel] could not be fashionable. It was absurd to pretend it even — fashion meant cut, meant style, meant thirty guineas at least.”

If Woolf felt the same way about herself, she may have been eager to wear one of Farhi’s designs, even though it would set her back more than thirty guineas.

This is my personal Nicole Farhi fashion pick for Virginia. It seems the perfect outfit for her to wear while exploring the London scene on a chilly December day.

Check out Farhi’s fall fashions and see which of them you think Virginia would wear. Then take the poll.

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