VIRGINIA WOOLF

A KITCHEN OF ONE'S OWN

2009-09-24T20:15:00.000-07:00

A recent post by my friend Brenda in Australia (of Rinkly Rimes fame) had seen this tea-towel at a friend's house and couldn't resist poking 'me' (devoted to the writer) with some of her thoughts about what Virginia might think about what is said and done in her name today.

So, dear Woolfians,

go to BryAntics for her take and leave a comment!

MINTA'S GLOW

2009-09-09T17:56:00.000-07:00

... and the lost brooch

Enlarge for detail

Media: Multicolour woodcut

Size:

Series: IMPRESSIONS of TO THE LIGHTHOUSE

To quote: '... it might be true that she minded losing her brooch, but she wasn't crying only for that. She was crying for something else. We might all sit down and cry, she felt, but she didn't know what for.'

(Possibly for the loss of not only her grandmother's brooch but for her loss of innocence while on that walk). Mrs. Ramsay is satisfied that an engagement has taken place.

SEPTEMBER

2009-08-10T05:32:00.000-07:00

THE PORTRAIT and the PAINTER

Media: Multicolour woodcut

Size: 9" x 13" approx.

Series: IMPRESSIONS of TO THE LIGHTHOUSE

MRS. RAMSAY "....that woman in grey..."

2009-07-23T20:04:00.000-07:00

Media: Multicolour woodcut
Size: 11 1/4" x 14"

Series: IMPRESSIONS of TO THE LIGHTHOUSE

TIME PASSES

2009-07-19T23:38:00.000-07:00

Image size:

Paper: rice

Edition: None 1/5 artist's proofs

Inspired by reading TO THE LIGHTHOUSE, I used the drift wood found on the beach of our backyard to make this first interpretation of the novel, combining a matrix made by impressing leaves and dried weeds into a layer of modeling paste. When dried, the surface was then painted with a coat of clear polyeurothane varnish for hardening, then printing. It was an experimental piece. Later, an alternative approach was chosen to make a new series, which I called impressions of TO THE LIGHTHOUSE.

I have lately come across the recorded voice of Virginia Woolf reading 'Craftsmanship' on YouTube, with other related recordings and videos, which may be of interest to those who tried earlier to source this material.

WOOLF'S LIGHTHOUSE - BREAKING NEWS!

2009-07-13T06:03:00.000-07:00

THE LIGHTHOUSE has been sold!

Go to the BBC story for the announcement of sale.

Auctioned off: 80,000 pounds sterling - more to come

My friend, Stuart Clarke, Editor of VWSGB, quotes from the novel:

"on the quay, (with) the whole bay spread before them...Mrs Ramsay could not help exclaiming, "Oh, how beautiful!" For the great plateful of blue was was before her; the hoary Lighthouse, distant, austere, in the midst; and on the right, as far as the eye could see, fading and failing, in soft low pleats, the green sand dunes with the wild flowing grasses on them, which always seemed to be running away into some moon country, uninhibited of men."

Thank you Stuart!

UPDATE: It has been sold to a private buyer, see the BBC news for the 'SOLD to' story

IMPRESSIONS of TO THE LIGHTHOUSE

2009-07-10T07:03:00.000-07:00

TITLE: 'ON, THEN, ON TO R..."

TFrom a series of multicolour wo0dcuts

Image size: 28" x 20"

Media: Multicolour woodcut

Paper: Rives BFK

Edition: 4 monoprints

Impressions of TO THE LIGHTHOUSE, a series of 20 prints, in varying sizes, limited editions executed as a Tribute to Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) in the 1980s This project began as an experimental series in which I wanted to show the traditional b/w woodcut transitioning to a multicolour format that picked up the patterns and rhythms of Woolf's vision of making shape out of the chaos of perceptions. At the time Woolf was experimenting with changing the structure of the traditional novel form. More prints will follow from time to time.

The original question was, 'Is this an "impressionist" or a "post impressionist" novel. My written paper on the subject didn't pass muster, but my prints did. By the time I got to college, I was already a printmaker and that was an acceptable communications skill at UWW, New College of Hofstra, NY. Alas, New College, at the time Directed by the innovative Dean Christman, has long since been discontinued and, in my opinion, to the great loss of the student population, faculty, and to the stature of the university itself!

WOOLFIAN NEWS UPDATES

2009-06-18T04:30:00.000-07:00

From The Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain: (click for the VWSGB website only) two items of great interest as follows:

1) An excellent review of Stuart Clarke's ESSAYS OF VIRGINIA WOOLF, Volume 5: 1929-1932 (published by Hogarth Press) by Claire Harman (published by The Times Literary Supplement, June 17, 2009). GO TO:

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/article6518501.ece

(This URL needs to be underlined for it to work).

2) The book, VIRGINIA WOOLF and VANESSA BELL, by Susan Sellers. Susan will be interviewed TODAY by Leonard Lopate on WNYC scheduled for 1.40 pm local time. It can be heard 'live on': (click), then click on the 'listen live' FM option on the left side of the screen.

The interview will be posted as a podcast shortly after it airs which will be 'available' at: (click available).

Impressions of TO THE LIGHTHOUSE

2009-06-14T08:28:00.000-07:00

2) Ghost, Air, Nothingness

Media: Multicolour woodcut

Image Size: 6" x 8 1/2"

Monoprint

To quote from TTL: "Oh, Mrs. Ramsay! she called out silently, to that essence which sat by the boat, that abstract one made of her, that woman in grey, as if to abuse her for having gone, and then having gone, come back again. It seemed so safe thinking of her. Lily Briscoe.

Virginia Woolf, in the role of painter, Lily Briscoe. To the uninitiated, the animal in the foreground is a Goat, a family nickname.

I have just replaced the former photocopy with a better one and, in the process, have lost two comments. I regret because comments and replies do help to clarify the novel for those who are not familiar with Virginia Woolf's autobiographical approach.

A PLATE called LEDA

2009-06-11T16:56:00.000-07:00

In answer to a call by Elizabeth Wix to show favourite plates, I cannot resist bringing this one out again, published early in March this year, when I first began blogging.

This is a pottery plate made by Quentin Bell. Quite by chance I found it in a store in Cambridge, UK, in 2001.

It shows a satirical hand drawn portrait of Lydia Lopokova, who married John Maynard Keynes in 1925, much to the surprise of Venessa Bell and Virginia Woolf. They apparently thought her 'a goose, intellectually much inferior to Maynard and themselves'. Bloomsbury gave them a hard time. Hence, the title LEDA, and whatever else you might want to read into it. Quentin's humour invariably infiltrated much of his prolific work as a lecturer, writer, artist and sculptor.

The love affaire between this unlikely couple - Lydia, one of the greatest dancers in Diaghilev's Russian ballet and Maynard, the famous British economist - is recorded in LYDIA & MAYNARD, The letters of Lydia Lopokova and John Maynard Keynes, edited by Polly Hill and Richard Keynes, published by Andre Deutsch Limited, 1989. It is a good read.

Impressions of TO THE LIGHTHOUSE

2009-06-04T13:54:00.000-07:00

1) *SEA AND SKY

A series of multicolour woodcuts

Image size: 10 1/2" x 14 1/2"

Edition: State 1/5

Date: 1982

One of a series of prints inspired by the novel TO THE LIGHTHOUSE.

Each print is a multicolored woodcut - a print in which many shapes and colors are superimposed - incorporating a variety of images described in particular pages of the novel.

"In the midst of chaos there is shape": in Woolf's fictional world the novel is reshaped to reflect the multifaceted and many layers of a woman's family life. This is not a novel with a beginning, a middle and an end in the traditional sense!

Woolf creates a form that explores the inner lives of her subjects - a new 'autobiographical' form. Thus, instead of printing a traditional illustration of the described scene, I am overprinting objects that the author is describing at particular moments in time. In the final process of printing, I look for the shape and rhythm that defines a sense of the whole experience. It is as if one is looking through time instead of at a linear sense of time.

This novel was published in 1927, long before modern digital photography techniques were developed that now enables us to see and capture pictures within pictures, instead of capturing one beautiful picture that says it all.

In this series, begun in 1982, it shows how I began to think about making painterly prints. Just as Lily Briscoe, the artist in the novel, is attempting to paint Mrs. Ramsay throughout the story, Virginia Woolf is, in fact, 'painting' with words a memory of her childhood summers in Cornwall. The novel is in three parts - what was then in, THE WINDOW, a long interlude of TIME PASSES, then, what is now, THE LIGHTHOUSE, (in the time frame of the story).

*The title of the print: to suggest a sense of the random flow of thought before it takes shape, reflecting the ambience of the moment.

LIGHT SUMMER READING - Mystery REVIEW UPDATE

2009-05-30T03:37:00.000-07:00

Ms. Magazine has called this one "... an imaginiative spoof"

My opinion - SHAME ON MS.

Published by Penguin Books in 1983, this is an unlikely novel of espionage with Virginia Woolf, PI investigator, uncovering an intrigue that may determine the course of World War 1. Virginia and her Bloomsbury friends, including well known biographical characterizations of time, place, scenes and dialogue, are dubiously reinvented by the authors who disclaim their spoof as historical fact.

UPDATE June 1, 2009.

Have just finished re-reading this novel some 25 years later. I now consider it one of the worst parodies I have ever read, both of the portrayal of Virginia Woolf, her life and friends, and of the mystery novel genre itself. No wonder societies like the Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain were founded in 1998, a non-profit organisation, which aims to raise the profile of Virginia Woolf and promote the reading and discussion of her works. Its quarterly Bulletin keeps members abreast of the influence Virginia Woolf continues to have in the arts and literature around the world.

An Anonymous comment/inquiry has been asked about Stephanie Barron's new novel 'THE WHITE GARDEN: A novel of Virginia Woolf", thought to be published in the fall - actually, September 29. Barron is the author of the Jane Austen Mystery stories; it is likely that this, also, may be added to your light summer reading list. More to come in answer to this inquiry.

RARE BLOOMSBURY GROUP VOICES - a new recording

2009-05-07T10:00:00.000-07:00

News from the Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain

The BBC Library announces that this 2 CD set, with booklet, will be available September 1, 2009. Price: 15.15 pounds sterling. Click here to: Check out the purchase details.

SISSINGHURST GARDEN - UPDATES

2009-04-22T05:26:00.000-07:00

See comments at the very end!

1) THE NICOLSON FAMILY, UPDATE - according t0

commenter Flo, who has watched the BBC4TV 8-part series

already.

2) PORTRAIT OF A MARRIAGE, UPDATE - following a

comment by Bee Drunken.

With the reminder, OH TO BE, a short poem by my friend, Rinkly Rimes, blogging in Australia today, I recalled that I had shot these photographs (selected formal views of Sissinghurst Garden) in 1976c. It was early spring, so that the 'design' (bones of the garden) was clearly marked before the abundance of flowers would soften the precisely close cut hedges containing as many as ten smaller gardens within the whole.

The Vestal Virgin, guardian of the four larger beds of flowers in the White Garden, is now housed in the Library. The statue is a lead casting from the walnut original by Rosandic.

Vita wrote a little poem for her -

How slender, simple, shy, divinely chaste,

She wilting stood,

Her suppleness at pause, by leisure graced,

In robes archiac by the chiseled woo'd,

That smoothly flowed around her waist,

And all her figured traced,

And at her feet in fluid ripples broke.

Thought to be A. R. Powys's wall, dividing Vita's flowers from the vegetables. Powys was an indefatigable garden designer/advisor to the Nicolsons. Vita did not share Gertrude Jekyll's fashion for mixing vegetables and flowers. Jekyll was a famed garden restorer at the time.

UPDATE: Since posting this information, I have learned from blogger Flo that Adam and wife, Sarah, are moving back to Sissinghurst to plant a vegetable garden, according to Parts 1 and 2 of a BBC planned series on Sissinghurst. To see comment, click where indicated below. My reply follows.

In front of the Priest's House, quartered beds edged in box, each of which hold different kinds of white flower.

The Moat Walk

A partial view of the Rondel, on the right, showing how Harold adjusted the classical device of a circle within a square. Closely clipped dark yew hedges make up the Rondel circle.

Sissinghurst, a property of the National Trust since 1967, was created in the 1930s by Vita Sackville West and Sir Harold Nicolson. They had two sons, Benedict and Nigel. Vita died in 1962 in a room at Priest's House overlooking the White Garden. When Harold died in 1968, their son, Sir Nigel Nicolson lived on in Sissinghurst until 2004, when he died.

THEN AND NOW - like watching our own children and grandchildren, inherit or refuse, the fruits of parental interests!

Today, it is the home of Nigel's daughter, writer Juliet Nicolson, her two daughters, and her long time partner Charles Anson. She has two other daughters from an earlier marriage who live in London and visit.

Benedict, CBE CVO, was Editor of the renowned Burlington Magazine. It is said he refused to be involved with his family interests* preferring to be an art historian. He died, suddenly, in London in 1978. He left a daughter, Vanessa, who (last known in 1990) lives in a cottage near the Castle.

Juliet, Adam and Rebecca Nicolson, Vita and Harold's grandchildren, continue to be involved in the publishing industry. I hear that, currently, there are plans, albeit controversial, to add a vegetable garden to supply the very popular restaurant. An estimated 180,000 visitors from all over the world pay to see the gardens each year.

*SISSINGHURST, Portrait of a Garden, by Jane Brown, with forward by Nigel Nicolson, colour photographs by John Miller, published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, in 1990. Not only does it discuss the making of the garden, it also alludes to the trials and tribulations of the families involved and why the garden became the property of the National Trust.

For those who love gardens, this book is something to drool over, if you can't visit the garden itself. Sissinghurst is always on my agenda to revisit when I go to see my family in Kent.

A VIRGINIA PRIZE FOR FICTION

2009-04-18T06:28:00.000-07:00

To celebrate 20 years of success as a small independent publishing house based in Richmond-upon-Thames, AURORA METRO, is launching a new competition to encourage and promote new writing by women. To find out more about the Virginia Prize, go to aurora metro

A CRITICAL MEMOIR

2009-04-13T16:58:00.000-07:00

Cassandra Editions 1978 Published by Academy Press Limited

This is a critical memoir that can still be found in used book stores. This is not about the private life of Virginia Woolf, although it is autobiographical from Woolf's point of view. It is about Woolf's intentions and effects, about the inner lives of her characters that concern Holtby. As a common reader, I found Holtby's overview of how and why Woolf needed to change the structure of the novel when she did, not only an exciting notion, but one that had appealed to my own desire to experiment with the traditional matrix shape, as a printmaker, back in the 60s - long before I knew much about Virginia Woolf. For those interested in the creative process and development of this novelist's experimental methods, this one is a very good read.

2009-04-08T10:15:00.000-07:00

THE ESSAYS OF VIRGINIA WOOLF, VOLUME 5, Edited by Stuart Clarke

Amazon.com

Go to Search, put in the title. At this time, both new and used editions of the British Hogarth Press publication are available.

In his review Adam Nicolson says, "Alongside the essays, he (Stuart Clarke), allows you to see the process by which the essays were made". (London "Evening Standard" January 26, 2009

VIRGINIA WOOLF - a BBC Recording

2009-03-28T07:46:00.000-07:00

WORDS FAIL ME (29 April 1937 BBC) Virginia Woolf gives eulogy to words (7 min 29)

From the essay, CRAFTSMANSHIP. Email me for recording via contact information found in complete profile information.

A WOOLFIAN'S WOOLF

2009-03-20T21:48:00.000-07:00

This is a handmade paper sculpture by Lora Pennington. c. 1980

She would first create likenesses to Virginia Woolf using modeling clay, from which she would make a mould - a rubbery matrix that enabled her to recreate the features in reverse. The mould was then lined with damp pulp, and left to dry to produce a replica of the original model.

QUENTIN BELL

2009-03-14T06:34:00.001-07:00

Quite by chance I found this ceramic plate, made by Quentin Bell,

in a store in Cambridge, UK, in 2001.

A satirical view of Lydia Lopokova, who married John Maynard Keynes in 1925, much to the surprise of Venessa Bell and Virginia Woolf who, apparently, 'thought her a goose, intellectually much inferior to Maynard and themselves'. Bloomsbury gave them a hard time.

A good read about the love affair between one of the greatest dancers in Diaghilev's Russian ballet and the famous British economist, look for the book: LYDIA & MAYNARD, The letters of Lydia Lopokova and John Maynard Keynes, edited by Polly Hill and Richard Keynes. Andre Deutsch Limited, 1989

I am wondering if the families have a collection of Quentin's plates?

Quentin Bell, writer, artist, potter; b. 19.8.1910, d. 16.12.1996

A RECENT PERFORMANCE OF WAVES, in New York

2009-02-28T11:55:00.000-08:00

One of three responses to the "WAVES" in the

VIRGINIA WOOLF MISCELLANY

Fall/Winter 2008 Issue number 74

Photo Credit Blogger Rinkly Rimes

"The waves, as they neared the shore, fell in one long concussion, like a wall falling, a wall of grey stone, unpierced by any chink of light. The blackness on the beach deepened..."

The New York City performance of “Waves” by The National Theatre of Great Britain, a work devised by Katie Mitchell and Company, is a tour-de-force but, then, so was the novel, The Waves, by Virginia Woolf, when it was first published in 1931. A New 42^nd Street Project of the Lincoln Center, “Waves” ran through November at the Duke Theatre in Times Square to packed Woolfian audiences.

I went to the theatre with a New York friend, an independent filmmaker, Barbara Hammer, who later commented: “watching the coordination, the sound and visual effects, it was as if I were watching the creative process itself unfold.”

As I watched the performance, this is what occurred to me:

A novel like The Waves is written for the 21^st century, though it was conceived in the early 20^th century. No wonder that, after pronouncing the novel a “masterpiece” (“the best of your books”), Leonard Woolf told Virginia that he thought the first 100 pages were extremely difficult and “was doubtful how far any common reader will follow” (WD: 168-69). At a time when the computer was still an unknown quantity, Woolf was already devising her own method of changing the structural shape of her novels in ways that anticipate multimedia and hypertext.

A subsequent technological revolution has enabled faster comprehension of different ways of looking at experience, of organizing and documenting what individual creative processes suggest. Credit must be given to Mitchell and her actors who, simultaneously, enact and help to shape a particular multilevel concept while so brilliantly illuminating Woolf’s prescient vision by using video cameras, photographic tricks of the trade and sound effects.

From the start of the performance, the audience is confronted with an underground hive of activity: eight actors melting in and out of a nearly dark stage, parts of which are lighted for creating a scene, while also assembling props and sound-making materials in preparation for recording a rehearsal enacted under a makeshift tent. A long, rectangular table, placed in front of a giant-size screen above, serves as a countertop on which other scenes are prepared even while the first one is recorded and projected above, thereby maintaining a steady stream of action. On each end of the table, and disappearing behind the screen, is placed archival storage-like shelving that holds all the readymade props needed for each scene. Also, seen at each end of the table, are podiums, lighting equipment, cameras and tripods. The stage is like a broadcasting studio, a do-it-yourself environment. Each rehearsal is translated into a new image projected above, a still photograph, say, made for posterity while the networking system readies for the next surge and thunderous crash.

On the left side of the screen, set back, there is a makeshift wardrobe of costume parts rapidly donned, as needed, and covering the basic work gear worn by each actor. The actor changes into his or her bit-of-a-costume (a sleeve, or a tie) in front of the audience, often while speaking lines; alternatively, the lines may be ghosted by another actor at one of the podiums. Make-up is applied at the same time, assisted by one of the actors who become, for the moment, wardrobe helpers.

The drill-like precision of each actor, the selection of each prop required, the simultaneous creation of the sound track and the scene performed at the table is mind-boggling. I am reminded of Woolf’s intention for this novel, as she wrote in her diary on 30 December 1930:

What it wants is presumably unity….Suppose I could run all the scenes together more?—by rhythms chiefly. So as to avoid those cuts; so as to make the blood run like a torrent from end to end—I don’t want the waste that the breaks give; I want to avoid chapters; that indeed is my achievement, if any, here: a saturated unchopped completeness; changes of scene, of mind, of person, done without spilling a drop. (WD: 160)

For sure, not so much as a drop is spilled in the performance. At first, the actors are not easily identified, except, perhaps, by Woolfians who already know by heart who says what. And, for that, also, one needs to be blessed with good hearing to be able to place a voice with its soliloquy, a deliberate ploy to enable the gradual emergence of the persona of each actor. From the novel we know them as Bernard, the wordsmith; Neville, the lovelorn intellectual and poet; Percival, loved by all, but self involved; Louis, the outsider; Rhoda, the activist; Susan, the earth-mother; and Jinny, her vanity explicit. All three women actors look vaguely like Virginia Woolf, until each acquires her own persona developed through her assigned soliloquy.

Symbolic expressions are frequently made during the performance. For instance, enacting the recurrent image of the match in the novel, Bernard, in the performance, not the novel, puts a lighted match to the telegram he receives about Percival’s death, and it flutters down, still burning, into the wastepaper bin at his feet. (One hopes fervently that it doesn’t miss the bin in any of the performances). He goes on, unemotionally, signing his “letters” (as portrayed on the screen above), and the enlarged image changes into a black and white scene that fades to nothingness. In a staccato series of events, each friend receives a telegram and the audience is treated to visual, sound-byte-like responses reflecting the recipient’s emotional reaction.

The match image occurs again when Virginia Woolf herself (referred to as “the lady writing,” thus echoing the phrase from the novel) is spotted as another actor strikes a match to light her cigarette, held in a long holder. Somehow, as she reads from her book in her melodic upper-class voice, the moment solidifies—there is Virginia—amid the ‘busyness’ (or flux) of the company around her.

Then there is the curious scene of the banana (a somewhat controversially received image) that appears on the big screen. It is a compelling moment as Percival self-consciously munches on a banana with sidelong glances at Neville. Aware of Neville’s long, intense gaze, Percival abruptly bites off the end. As the New York Times critic, Ben Brantley, has observed, the episode offers ‘a sexual joke that seems out of place.” Yet, is it? Throughout the novel, sexual activity is frequently alluded to in Woolf’s “poetic-abstract” style. Describing an undergraduates-at-play scene, Neville does “say” (as a friend pointed out to me):

Look how the willow shoots its fine sprays into the air! Look how through them a boat passes, filled with indolent, with unconscious, with powerful young men. They are listening to the gramophone; they are eating fruit out of paper bags. They are tossing the skins of bananas, which then sink eel-like, into the river. All they do is beautiful. (W 82)

It is time for an interlude: the wave surges and crashes, and the underground work begins again for, later in the story, Neville’s past love life is recalled as he mourns the losses of days gone by.

Another sexual scene is enacted as Rhoda, seen sitting alone at a table in the Hampton Court restaurant, though united with friends, feels (and the audience sees) an unidentified, unattached male hand exploring her thigh under the table, a touch from which she rapidly, fearfully, takes flight. The encounter between Percival and Neville is longer lasting than the one involving Rhoda, which is over almost before it registers.

Once one is oriented to the complex management of the performance itself, special sound effects are heard introducing an orchestral-like background of studio-made rhythms. The actors sing, hum, and/or tap dance, or just tap their feet, tap, tap, tap. They shuffle through carefully strewn leaves, scattered pebbles, or stamp upon squishy cushions. There was the sound of a door opening and closing, suitcases being moved, or rocked. The sounds progressed to familiar sound-bytes of instruments, handmade, from the sound of a bow drawn across the rim of a jar, or a bowl filled with water. Then we hear the brief sound of an organ—promised early on in one of Woolf’s diary notes. It had survived the endless creative process of re-writing. The sounds echo the rhythm of the waves.

It is only after the intermission, the most melancholy part of the performance, that, perhaps, the sound seemed overdone, like canned music in a soap opera. Once again, the attention is jarred, as an incongruous note is struck at a time when, aesthetically, silence might have sufficed. Yet, however, this is entirely in accord with Woolf’s pattern-making, of creating a crescendo, a surge of sound, a howl, a bite, signaling the end of a drama that, in the experience of her reality, will begin all over again.

For Woolf, the sounds, the rhythms, the symbolic expression, the word, the repetitions, the patterns were all there, unifying forces making, simultaneously, a whole (to the sound of the pounding waves) out of the experience of life as she saw it. Yes, surely she would have been proud of the National Theatre’s performance of “Waves,” and would have enjoyed it.

Margaret Gosden
Artist and common reader

Works Cited

Brantley, Ben. “Six Lives Ebb and Flow, Interconnected and Alone.” New York Times 17 Nov. 2008 HYPERLINK http://theater2.nytimes.com/2008/11/17/theater/reviews/17wave.htm

Woolf, Virginia. A Writer’s Diary. NY: Harcourt Brace, 1954.

—. The Waves. NY: Harcourt, 1959

CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT IVWS

Published in Miscellany, Fall/Winter 2008, Issue 74. For more information about the International Virginia Woolf Society, the website is http://www.utoronto.ca/IVWS/

2009-02-23T12:02:00.000-08:00

'"The sun had not risen".........then rose quicker than I could capture it.

THE WAVES

2009-02-16T09:02:00.000-08:00

The novel is divided into nine sections, separated by prose-poems (interludes) which describe the passage of the sun across the sky symbolizing the inevitable course of human life from birth to death.

"The sun had not yet risen." (As I looked East this morning at 6.45 am (from my 10th floor apartment) it rose faster than I could capture it.....

(For more information about Virginia Woolf, go to VWSGB: http://www.virginiawoolfsociety.co.uk Cover picture below courtesy of the Virginia Woolf Bulletin Issue No. 30, January 2009)

"ARCH AND ACERBIC, WITH SHOCKERS ALONG THE WAY"

By Adam Nicolson

By the end of this month this new approach to reading the essays of Virginia Woolf should be on the shelves. On January 26, in the London "Evening Standard", Adam Nicolson wrote, in part, "You can get the essays and the Common Reader free online nowadays, but the virtue of this edition is that the editor quotes long and fruitily from Woolf's diary and letters. Alongside the essays, he allows you to see the process by which they were made."

Can't wait to pick up my copy!