The year 2014 has started off right, with writers citing Virginia Woolf heading into the new year.
The Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain marked the new year by quoting Woolf’s 1 January 1935 Diary entry on its Facebook page: “I must press a good deal of work in – remembering 53 – 54 – 55 are on me. And how excited I get over my ideas! And there’s people to see.”
A writer for Delaware’s Cape Gazette uses the following famous quote of Woolf’s in a story looking back on 2013 dining experiences: ““One cannot think well, love well or sleep well if one has not dined well.”
The most recent, * Interesting fact no. 12, * told the story of how Woolf, 28, and her sister, Vanessa Bell, 30, “once appeared in public almost nude,” according to the judgment of some who saw them at a ball held in conjunction with Roger Fry’s 1910 exhibition of Post-Impressionist painters at the Grafton Galleries.
Inspired by the paintings, the two sisters browned their arms and legs, adorned themselves with flowers and beads, and appeared as bare-shouldered, bare-legged, ‘indecent’, figures from a Gauguin canvas.
It’s said that the two women recreated their Gauguin girl look for a later photo, which has not been located.
I also want to draw your attention to panel 47:The Decade Modernism Forgot: The 1930s, moderated by Woolf scholar Erica Delsandro of Bucknell University. It is scheduled for Thursday, Jan. 9, from 1:45 – 3 p.m. in Chicago G, of the Chicago Marriott and features these panelists:
“Hiding Inside the Whale,” Calum Chechie, Univ. of Oxford, Saint Catherine’s Coll.
“Joyce’s Nightmare of History in George Orwell’s The Cloergyman’s Daughter,” Ruth S. Hoberman, Eastern Illinois Univ.
“The Orphan decade: Elizabeth Bowen’s 1930s Novels,” Anna Teekell, Lincoln Memorial Univ.
Now for the Woolf panels:
Thursday, Jan. 9
Time: 7–8:15 p.m.
183. Woolf, Wittgenstein, and Ordinary Language BELMONT Chicago Marriott
Presiding: Madelyn Detloff, Miami Univ., Oxford; Gaile Pohlhaus, Miami
Univ., Oxford
1. “Woolf, Wittgenstein, and Nonsense: The Voyage Out as Therapy,”
Megan M. Quigley, Villanova Univ.
2. “‘Stand Roughly Here’: Woolf, Keynes, and Ordinary Language in the
1930s,” Alice Keane, Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor
3. “Dumb Colloquy: The Aesthetics of Conversation and Conversational
Aesthetics of To the Lighthouse,” Erin Greer, Univ. of California,
Berkeley
For abstracts, contact detlofmm@miamioh.edu.
Time: 8:45-10 p.m.
All IVWS members are invited to attend the SHARP cash bar on Thursday, Jan. 9, from 8:45-10pm in the Chicago IX room at the Sheraton. [SHARP = Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing; the IVWS has a joint panel with them Friday.
Friday, Jan. 10
Time: 5:15–6:30 p.m.
398. Virginia Woolf and Book History
McHenry, Chicago Marriott
Program arranged by the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing and the International Virginia Woolf Society
Presiding: Leslie Kathleen Hankins, Cornell Coll.
1. “A Library of Her Own: Virginia Stephen’s Books,” Beth Rigel Daugherty, Otterbein Univ.
2. “An Experiment in Form and Content: Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf’s Monday or Tuesday,” Amanda Miller, Duquesne Univ.
3. “Blank Spaces: The Hogarth Press and ‘Lost’ Women Publishers,” Alice E. Staveley, Stanford Univ.
Respondent: Karen V. Kukil, Smith Coll.
For abstracts, visit sharpweb.org.
Saturday, Jan. 11
Time: 3:30–4:45 p.m.
609. Virginia Woolf and London’s Colonial Writers
Belmont Chicago Marriott
Program arranged by the International Virginia Woolf Society
Presiding: Elizabeth F. Evans, Univ. of Notre Dame
1. “Virginia Woolf, the Hogarth Press, and South African Modernism,” Laura A. Winkiel, Univ. of Colorado, Boulder
2. “Virginia Woolf, Mulk Raj Anand, and the Novel of Political Transition,” Jeannie Im, New York Univ.
3. “Virginia Woolf’s Caribbean Connections,” Mary Lou Emery, Univ. of Iowa
For abstracts, contact evansef@gmail.com
The correspondence between Leonard Woolf and Vita Sackville-West, in the aftermath of Virginia Woolf’s suicide, is devastating for what cannot be expressed.
That’s a quote from a New York Timesreview of the book To the Letter by Simon Garfield in which Garfield takes, “a nostalgic and fretful look at the ‘lost art’ of letter writing.”
Woolf, of course, was a prolific letter writer, and Garfield’s book includes anecdotes, historical tidbits and excerpts from some of hers.
Christmas shopping with Virginia Woolf? That’s a yes, according to a Woolf sighting (16) that quotes the essay “Oxford Street Tide” in thenew edition of The London Scene: Six Essays on London Life. Scroll down for more, seasonal and otherwise.
Carol Anshaw Paints Vita Sackville-West, Slate Magazine (blog)
“Of course, I came to Vita by way of Virginia Woolf,” Anshaw says of her muse, who is most famous for her relationship with Woolf, despite their both being …
A Room Of One’s Own, NOW Magazine Virginia Woolf’s statement that “a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction” has resonated ever since she made it in a series of …
Paul Merton’s Impro Chums – National Tour, The Good Review
Ah, improvisation – the comedic stream-of-consciousness; a theatrical method that would probably be practiced by the likes of Virginia Woolf or Marcel Proust, …
The Lost Art of Letter-Writing, Wall Street Journal
From Cicero to John Keats, Virginia Woolf to Jack Kerouac —how would these masters of the letter have taken to the inbox and junk folder? Would they have …
In 1928 and 1929 Virginia Woolf made two addresses – one to Girton College and one to Newnham College in Cambridge. Later she expanded her ideas into …
A day in the life of a book, Brainerd, Daily Dispatch Virginia Woolf’s most famous character, Mrs. Dalloway (in the book of the same name) said that “she always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to …
Virginia and Some of Her Friends | La Mama, Australian Stage Online
Virginia and Some of Her Friends is one of this year’s offerings, and while it is not … Those with a prior knowledge of Virginia Woolf’s biography would be able to …
Fascinating tales from vibrant life, Herald Scotland
Professor Hermione Lee’s life of Virginia Woolf met with Fitzgerald’s approval. Lee now writes the life of a writer whose novels have a richer humanity and more …
Virginia Woolf goes Christmas shopping, Telegraph.co.uk Down in the docks one sees things in their crudity, their bulk, their enormity. Here in Oxford Street they have been refined and transformed. The barrels of damp …
Benjamin Rivers’ Sense of Snow, Torontoist
In Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf describes a woman’s entire life through the course of events that occur in a single day. In a similar way, Benjamin Rivers’ …
Forgive Me, Virginia Woolf, New York Times
I was in England, taking a class on Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group at Oxford; we were introduced by mutual friends. And as if true love weren’t enough …
English fiction: Penelope Fitzgerald: Blue flower, Chicago Tribune
WHEN Hermione Lee’s life of Virginia Woolf was published in 1996, one of the reviewers who vouched for it was Penelope Fitzgerald, then aged 80 and one of ..
Virginia Woolf Called for Sainthood for Samuel Johnson, The New Republic
On this day in 1740, the Scottish author and lawyer James Boswell was born. Best known for his pioneering usage of human details and personal observations …
‘Book of Ages,’ by Jill Lepore, San Francisco Chronicle
asked Virginia Woolf, who then invented a brief and tragic life for the imaginary Judith Shakespeare. Likewise, Jill Lepore, Harvard historian and staff writer for …
Music was vital to Virginia Woolf, Herald Scotland
MUSIC played a vital role in the work of Virginia Woolf, according to new research carried out by a Scots academic. MUSIC played a vital role in the work of …
Dinner At Seven-Thirty, NOW Magazine Virginia Woolf’s stream-of-consciousness novels pose major challenges to anyone brave enough to adapt them to other formats. Dense, poetic reflections work …
Book of a lifetime: Middlemarch, By George Eliot, The Independent
I agree with Michael Gove about very little but we are at one on the greatness of Middlemarch, rightly described by Virginia Woolf as “a magnificent book that, …
For the Greek Spring by Kelvin Corcoran – review, The Guardian
On first visiting Greece in 1906, Virginia Woolf‘s disappointment led her to snobbishly contrast the “rustic dialect of barbarous use” she heard with the “classical …
Elevated view of decline in Tim Winton’s Eyrie, The Australian
Norwegian author Knut Hamsun employed stream-of-consciousness narration years before Virginia Woolf and James Joyce. He was a writer “of crepuscular …
Everyone deserves a special place, San Antonio Express Virginia Woolf wrote movingly in “A Room of One’s Own” about the need for women writers to have a space of their own in which to write. I think that now the idea …
