LibGuides: Displays: Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) was a pioneering British modernist writer and a central figure of the Bloomsbury Group. Renowned for her innovative narrative techniques, such as stream of consciousness, her works explore themes of identity, time, and the inner lives of her characters. Novels like Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, and Orlando are celebrated for their poetic prose and profound insight into human experience. Woolf was also a trailblazing feminist thinker, with her essay A Room of One’s Own advocating for women’s creative and intellectual freedom. Her legacy endures as a literary icon who reshaped modern fiction.

Monks House Papers (Virginia Woolf Special Collection)

One of the twentieth century’s most brilliant and innovative writers, Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) remains a subject of literary and cultural scholarship world wide. Her contribution to modernism, which includes the novels Mrs Dalloway (1925) and To the Lighthouse (1927), is impossible to overstate. The archive of her papers at the University of Sussex is known as the Monks House Papers, named after the Woolfs’ house at nearby Rodmell in East Sussex.
The papers at Sussex are those which Leonard Woolf made available to Virginia’s nephew Quentin Bell for the purpose of writing her official biography. They complement both the Leonard Woolf Archive at Sussex and the holdings of Virginia Woolf manuscripts in the New York Public Library and the British Library.

Recommended Books

Between the Acts by Virginia Woolf
Call Number: PR 6045.O72 B4 1969

ISBN: 9780156118705

Publication Date: 1970-10-21

In Virginia Woolf's lyrical, inventive last novel, the action takes place on one summer's day at a country house in the heart of England on the eve of World War II. "Love. Hate. Peace. Three emotions made the ply of human life." Between the Acts takes place on a June day in 1939 at Pointz Hall, the Oliver family's country house in the heart of England. In the garden, everyone from the village has gathered to present the annual pageant -- scenes from the history of England starting with the Middle Ages. As the story of England unfolds, the lives of the villagers also take shape. The past blends with the present and art blends with life in a narrative full of invention, affection, and lyricism. Through her characters' passionate musings and private dramas, and through the enigmatic figure of the pageant's author, Miss La Trobe, Virginia Woolf's final novel both celebrates and mocks Englishness. Even so, the coming of war looms over the whole community, heralding a new act.
Carlyle's House and Other Sketches by Virginia Woolf; Doris Lessing (Foreword by); David Bradshaw (Editor)
Call Number: PR 6045.O72 C375

ISBN: 9781843910558

Publication Date: 2003-07-01

From the cold formality of London town-houses with their rows of austere portraits, to the dull chaos of the academic's abode, and the eccentric spinsters' Hampstead home, Virginia Woolf paints a series of portraits of everyday life, capturing character and setting in exquisite detail. Stemming from her own experiences, these sketches offer a precious insight into her thoughts on the society in which she moved - whilst also betraying the passions and prejudices of a troubled genius." "Heralding the later masterpieces Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse, this early notebook is quintessential Woolf. Recently unearthed from a collection of private papers, it contains a series of seven striking sketches, each transcribed and edited by David Bradshaw.
The Crowded Dance of Modern Life: Selected Essays. Volume 2. by Virginia Woolf
Call Number: PR 6045.O72 A16 1993

ISBN: 9780140185645

Publication Date: 1992

The linking theme of these essays is modernity, for Woolf was writing in a world radically separated from the old certainties by the catastrophe of World War I. Here she provides some responses to what she called "the crowded dance of modern life".
Freshwater, a Comedy by Virginia Woolf
Call Number: PR 6045.O72 F74 1985

ISBN: 9780156335409

Publication Date: 1985-06-20

Virginia Woolf's only play-a hilarious farce taken from the life of her great-aunt, Julia Margaret Cameron, the famous Victorian photographer. It was first performed at Vanessa Bell's London studio in 1935 as one of Bloomsbury's theatrical evenings and later, in New York, in a star-studded French production. Edited and with a Preface by Lucio P. Ruotolo; drawings by Edward Gorey.
Melymbrosia by Virginia Woolf; Louise A. DeSalvo (Editor)
Call Number: PR 6045.O72 V69 1982

ISBN: 9780871042774

Publication Date: 1982-01-01

First published in England 1915, and following nearly a decade of composition, "The Voyage Out" is Virginia Woolf's first novel. Rachel Vinrace, the woman at the center of this beautiful and original story, is an intelligent, yet innocent, young English girl who embarks on a sea voyage to South America with distant relatives. Although she is far from the drawing rooms and theaters of London, she comes to learn of the worlds of politics and sex, love and marriage. Her journey takes a delicious turn when she meets -- and falls passionately for -- Terence Hewet, a man she meets in the Brazilian coastal town of Santa Marina. But it is in tragedy that this novel, poignant in its emotions, yet uncompromising in its vision, ultimately ends.
Moment and Other Essays by Virginia Woolf
Call Number: PR 6045.O72 M66 1974

ISBN: 9780156619004

Publication Date: 1974-10-23

A selection of twenty-nine essays. "[Woolf's] essays...are lighter and easier than her fiction, and they exude information and pleasure.... Everything she writes about novelists, like everything she writes about women, is fascinating.... Her well-stocked, academic, masculine mind is the ideal flint for the steel of her uncanny intuitions to strike on" (Cyril Connolly, New Yorker). Editorial Note by Leonard Woolf.
Moments of Being by Virginia Woolf
Call Number: PR 6045.O72 Z46 1985

ISBN: 9780156619189

Publication Date: 1985-08-23

Moments of Being is "the single most moving and beautiful thing that Virginia Woolf ever wrote about her own life" (The New York Times) and her only autobiographical writing, published years after her death. This collection of five pieces written for different audiences spanning almost four decades reveals the remarkable unity of Virginia Woolf's art, thought, and sensibility.? "Reminiscences," written during her apprenticeship period, exposes the childhood shared by Woolf and her sister, Vanessa, while "A Sketch of the Past" illuminates the relationship with her father, Leslie Stephens, who played a crucial role in her development as an individual a writer. Of the final three pieces, composed for the Memoir Club, which required absolute candor of its members, two show Woolf at the threshold of artistic maturity and one shows a confident writer poking fun at her own foibles.
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
Call Number: PR 6045.O72 M7

ISBN: 9781388284435

Publication Date: 2018-10-08

Mrs Dalloway details a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, a high-society woman and her preparations for a party she is hosting. The story travels forwards and back in time and in and out of the characters' minds to construct an image of Clarissa's life, which is full of inner tension and turmoil, and regret about her past. This is one of Woolf's best-known novels. In 2005, Mrs Dalloway was included on Time magazine's list of the 100 best English-language novels.
Night and Day by Virginia Woolf
Call Number: PR 6045.O72 N54 1973

ISBN: 9780156656009

Publication Date: 1973-10-24

Set in London before World War I, this novel explores the truth of feelings and particularly the nature of love. It is, in that sense, a love story, but in the hands of Virginia Woolf, it transcends conventional romance to pose a series of crucial questions about women, intellectual freedom, and marriage.
Orlando by Virginia Woolf
Call Number: PR 6045.O72 O75 2021

ISBN: 9780008516109

Publication Date: 2021

'Orlando had become a woman - there is no denying it. But in every other respect, Orlando remained precisely as he had been. The change of sex, though it altered their future, did nothing whatever to alter their identity.' Boisterous and defiant, Virginia Woolf's queer classic subverts restraints of genre, time and gender. Traversing the complexities of human emotion and society's obsession with conformity, the wild adventures of Woolf's gender fluid hero begin in Elizabethan England and end in 1928 - yet Orlando ages just 36 years. A satirical romp that spans over three hundred years of history, Woolf's fantastical biography was decades ahead of its time.
A room of one's own by Virginia Woolf
Call Number: PR 6045.O72 R66 2002

ISBN: 9780141183534

Publication Date: 2002

Collecting two book-length essays, A Room of One's Own and Three Guineas is Virginia Woolf's most powerful feminist writing, justifying the need for women to possess intellectual freedom and financial independence. This Penguin Modern Classics edition is edited with an introduction and notes by Michele Barrett. A Room of One's Own, based on a lecture given at Girton College, Cambridge, is one of the great feminist polemics, ranging in its themes from Jane Austen and Carlotte Bronte to the silent fate of Shakespeare's gifted (imaginary) sister and the effects of poverty and sexual constraint on female creativity. Three Guineas was published almost a decade later and breaks new ground in its discussion of men, militarism and women's attitudes towards war. These two pieces reveal Virginia Woolf's fiery spirit and sophisticated wit, and confirm her status as a highly inspirational essayist.
Selected Diaries by Virginia Woolf
Call Number: PR 6045.O72 Z46 2008

ISBN: 9780099518259

Publication Date: 2008

Virginia Woolf turned to her diary as to an intimate friend, to whom she could confide her thoughts on public events or the joys and trials of domestic life. Between 1915 and her death in 1941 she recorded her thoughts with grace, courage, honesty and wit. The result is one of the greatest diaries in the English language.
Selected essays by Virginia Woolf
Call Number: PR 6045.O7 A6 2008

ISBN: 9780199556069

Publication Date: 2008

This selection brings together 30 of Virginia Woolf's best essays across a wide range of subjects including writing and reading, the role and reputation of women writers, the art of biography and the London scene. They are enchanting in their own right, and indispensable to an understanding of this great writer.
Selected Letters by Virginia Woolf
Call Number: PR 6045.O72 Z48 2008

ISBN: 9780099518242

Publication Date: 2008

The finest and most enjoyable of Virginia Woolf's letters are brought together in a single volume. It is a marvellous collection - spontaneous, witty, often flirtatious and powerfully moving. Whether bemoaning some domestic travail, commenting publicly on the state of the nation, or discussing cultural, artistic or personal concerns, Virginia Woolf is one of the great correspondents. This volume displays not only Woolf's courage and brilliance, her generosity and love of gossip, but also her genius for close and enduring friendship.
Selected short stories by Virginia Woolf
Call Number: PR 6045.O72 A6 2000

ISBN: 9780141183138

Publication Date: 2000

Often overlooked by the prominence of her novels and diaries, these short stories underline Woolf's search for fresh ways of presenting the relationship between individual lives and the forces of society and history.
Thoughts on peace in an air raid by Virginia Woolf
Call Number: PR 6045.O72 A6 2009

ISBN: 9780141043951

Publication Date: 2009

Street haunting -- Oxford Street tide -- Craftsmanship -- The art of biography -- How it strikes a contemporary -- Why? -- The patron and the crocus -- Modern fiction -- How should one read a book?
Virginia Woolf by John Lehmann
Call Number: PR 6045.O72 Z7332

ISBN: 9780500260265

Publication Date: 1999-05-01

A critical biography which includes illustrations that are a unique record of Virginia Woolf, the Bloomsbury Group and the literary and artistic world that surrounded the writer who is still popular today.
Virginia Woolf by Nigel Nicolson
Call Number: PR 6045.O72 Z775 2000

ISBN: 9780297646204

Publication Date: 2000

This volume is a biography of English writer Virginia Woolf (1882-1941). Woolf is regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century. During the inter war period, Woolf was a significant figure in London literary society and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Her most famous works include the novels Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927) and Orlando (1928), and the book-length essay, A Room of One's Own (1929), with its famous dictum, "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction." This biography was written by someone who knew her well when he was a child; and it closely investigates her attitudes to feminism and war. The author was the son of Vita Sackville-West, who was Virginia Woolf's closest friend.
Virginia Woolf by Hermione Lee
Call Number: PR 6045.O72 Z7331 1996

ISBN: 9780701165079

Publication Date: 1996-10-15

Hermione Lee sees Virginia Woolf afresh, in her historical setting and as a vital figure for our times. Her book moves freely between a richly detailed life-story and new attempts to understand crucial questions - the impact of her childhood, the cause and nature of her madness and suicide, the truth about her marriage, her feelings for women, her prejudies and obsessions. This is a vivid, close-up portrait, returning to primary sources, and showing Woolf as occupying a distinct, even uneasy position with 'Bloomsbury'. It is a writer's life, illustrating how the concerns of her work arise and develop, and a political life, which establishes Woolf as a radically sceptical, subversive, courageous feminist. Incorporating newly discovered sources and illustrated with photos and drawings never used before, this biography is a revelation - informed, intelligent and moving.
Virginia Woolf by Linden Peach
Call Number: PR 6045.O72 Z814

ISBN: 9780333687314

Publication Date: 2000-02-22

Virginia Woolf has emerged from recent scholarship as a less inward-looking and other-worldly writer than she was depicted for more than half a century. However, this is the first book to address the cryptographic nature of her writings about politics and history. Approaching each of her novels in turn through theoretical frameworks provided by Michel Foucault, Mikhail Bakhtin and contemporary social theorists, Linden Peach argues that Woolf is a more sophisticated political thinker than has been commonly recognised, interested in historiography, engaged by the coded nature of social 'reality' and interrogating the cryptic meanings within public discourse.
Virginia Woolf by Laura Marcus
Call Number: PR 6045.O72 Z753

ISBN: 9780746309667

Publication Date: 2004-04-30

In the new edition of her highly regarded study, Laura Marcus examines a wide range of Virginia Woolf's novels, short stories, essays and autobiographical writings in the context of themes and topics of central contemporary relevance and interest: time, history and narrative; modernism and the city; gender, sexuality and identity; art and life-writings. As well as exploring her significance for, and contribution to, feminist debates and to definitions of modernism, the book also includes detailed analyses of all Woolf's novels an her non-fiction writings, including A Room of One's Own, Three Guineas and the 'biography' Flush. It considers current theoretical approaches to Woolf's work and also engages with Woolf's own cultural contexts, exploring, for example, her responses to war, to Freud's theories, and to early twentieth-century theories of sexuality and gender identity, and the transition from Victorianism to modernity.
The Widow and the Parrot by Virginia Woolf; Julian Bell (Illustrator); Quentin Bell (Afterword by)
Call Number: PR 6045.O72 W53

ISBN: 9780152967833

Publication Date: 1988-04-01

When the house she has inherited from her miserly brother burns down, a widow from Yorkshire adopts a parrot which leads her to a hidden treasure.
Women and Writing by Virginia Woolf; Michele Barrett (Introduction by)
Call Number: PR 111.W66 1980

ISBN: 9780156936583

Publication Date: 1980-04-24

Known for her novels, and for the dubious fame of being a doyenne of the 'Bloomsbury Set', in her time Virginia Woolf was highly respected as a major essayist and critic with a special interest and commitment to contemporary literature, and women's writing in particular. This spectacular collection of essays and other writings does justice to those efforts, offering unique appraisals of Aphra Behn, Mary Wollstonecraft, the Duchess of Newcastle, Dorothy Richardson, Charlotte Bronte, and Katherine Mansfield, amongst many others. Gathered too, and using previously unpublished (sometimes even unsigned) journal extracts, are what will now become timeless commentaries on 'Women and Fiction', 'Professions for Women' and 'The Intellectual Status of Women'. More than half a century after the publication of A Room Of One's Own, distinguished scholar Michele Barrett cohesively brings together work which, throughout the years, has been scattered throughout many texts and many volumes. . . affording these very valuable writings the collective distinction they deserve at last.
The Years by Virginia Woolf
Call Number: PR 6045.O72 Y43 1992

ISBN: 9780192818331

Publication Date: 1992

Traces the history of a family, opening in 1880 as the children of Colonel and Mrs. Pargiter, living together in a large Victorian London house wait for their mother's death and the freedom it will bring; it takes them through several carefully dated and documented sections to the "Present Day" of 1936, and a large family reunion, where two generations gather. Throughout the fragmented texture of the narrative a savage indictment of Woolf's society begins to be heard. Her characters long and struggle for some better way of life, where "freedom and justice" might really be possible but are weighed down by the pressures of war, the patriarchial social structures, capitalism and Empire and the rise of Fascism.