Thursday, January 24, 2013

Virginia Woolf Battened Down in the Holds

The Diary Volume 3 - Tuesday 20 September 1925

"Haven't I just written to Herbert Fisher refusing to do a book for the Home University Series on Post Victorian? - knowing that I can write a book, a better book, a book off my own bat, for the Press if I wish. To think of being battened down in the hold of those University dons fairly makes my blood run cold. yet I'm the only woman in England free to write what I like".

This freedom to write as her own person is one of the powerful things in Woolf's writings. We are not getting a creed here but a slice of original thought. And it is the original thought that makes Woolf such a radical. She was probably right in her assumption about being the only woman in Britain of that time who could write exactly what she wanted.

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