The Voyage Out - Introducing Mr and Mrs Dalloway

Todays quotes might be a surprise you you. They certainly were to me!

While Captain Vinrace was thinking about passengers, 

Here he began searching in his pockets and eventually discovered a card, which he planked down on the table before Rachel. On it she read, “Mr. and Mrs. Richard Dalloway, 23 Browne Street, Mayfair.” p20

and 

The truth was that Mr. and Mrs. Dalloway had found themselves stranded in Lisbon. They had been travelling on the Continent for some weeks, chiefly with a view to broadening Mr. Dalloway’s mind. p20

There are several more paragraphs about The Dalloways.

Mrs Dalloway was the first Woolf book I studied in depth at university. I thoroughly enjoyed it but it never occurred to me that Clarissa and Richard had already been introduced in Woolf’s first novel.

It was a backward and welcome step to see the prequel in a sense of characters who would burst out of this book and get a book of their own.

 

 

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The Voyage Out

Virginias first published novel was The Voyage Out. The story focuses around Rachel Vinrace, a young woman whose father is a Ships Captain. She is travelling with him to a tropical port where she disembarks and stays with her Uncle and Aunty.

She falls in love with a young man…

I won’t spoil the plot, but the writing is lovely and clearly stamped with her views and philosophy.

I will start today sharing the portions I have enjoyed. My only qualification for doing this is that I’m an avid albeit common reader. Don’t expect any literary or critical gymnastics!

This quote is on p6

Observing that they passed no other hansom cab, but only vans and waggons, and that not one of the thousand men and women she saw was either a gentleman or a lady, Mrs. Ambrose understood that after all it is the ordinary thing to be poor, and that London is the city of innumerable poor people. Startled by this discovery and seeing herself pacing a circle all the days of her life round Picadilly Circus she was greatly relieved to pass a building put up by the London County Council for Night Schools. “Lord, how gloomy it is!” her husband groaned. “Poor creatures!” What with the misery for her children, the poor, and the rain, her mind was like a wound exposed to dry in the air.

This observation is made by Helen Ambrose, Rachel’s Aunty.

In her writings Woolf often mentions vehicles. She was a keen driver and enjoyed jaunting around Sussex and London in her car. Often Leonard and Virginia went touring abroad as well by car. Three modes of transport are mentioned here but for most people in London were poor and had to walk. The reference to Night Schools expresses the interest she had for such institutions and she herself lectured to WEA members. 

 

A Romp through the Novels of Virginia Woolf

I have started re reading Virginia's novels so I can have all those wonderful words running over my synapses. So it seems an opportune time to continue the blog after some time away from it. 

As I did with the Diaries I will post excerpts from the books and comment on them.

Now I am finally retired I have more time to spend on my literary interests.

I will be reading the novels chronologically starting with The Voyage Out

Bird Watching - a Woolf Perspective

She was becoming more and more interested in birds. It was a sign of old age, she supposed, as she went into her bedroom.

The Years, Virginia Woolf.

I found this fascinating quote today in "The Years". It just popped up without warning.

I have no idea whether she actually became a birdwatcher in latter life. Does anyone know? Just drop a comment on this post.

I'm becoming older but bird watching holds no fascination to me.

I do remember the birds in the garden when I visited Monks House in Sussex. The property had a lovely vegetable garden and the rest of the grounds and orchard are preserved as they were when Virginia and Leonard lived there.

Strewn with Wreckage

“Literature is strewn with the wreckage of those who have minded beyond reason the opinion of others.” ― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own

Writing is a deeply personal occupation (or preoccupation) that represents an intense engagement with the topic being written about.

You can not write well if you are continually worrying about what others think. Although Woolf gives us this excellent quote she was known to go through periods of self doubt about what others were thinking of her works. The anxiety was most intense just after publication of a new work.

Her writing is genuine and while she worried about opinions after publication she discussed little during the actual writing process except with Leonard Woolf, her husband.

For myself I write what I want, when I want, and to hell with the consequences.

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Virginia Woolf - The Indescribable Thing

Woolf once said that her death would be the “one experience I shall never describe.”

Luckily for us she did of course describe her life. Her powers of observation were well honed and I constantly marvel at the way she crafts words in her descriptions.

In a way though she is speaking to us from beyond the grave, her words live on to inspire new generations.

Death is the last mystery and we all have to wait to see what it is all about - oblivion or a door beyond?

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Virginia Woolf on Illusions

“Growing up is losing some illusions, in order to acquire others.” ― Virginia Woolf

While we often think that we lose our illusions as we leave childhood, we inevitably replace them with other and often more pernicious illusions. Some physicists would argue that life itself and the reality we experience is just an illusion.

This thought is also echoed by many mystics.

Illusions however are not inherently good or bad but a staple component of human living. Woolf's ability to hold life's illusions to our gaze is valuable and I love the illusory quality of her writing.

DK

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An Electronic Treasure for Virginia Woolf Scholars and Common Readers

Amazon has an amazing offer in Kindle Store for an eBook titled: Virginia Woolf : Complete Works 8 novels, 3 'biographies', 46 short stories, 606 essays, 1 play, her diary and some letters (Annotated). This is available at the discounted and unbelievable price of $3.47 USD.

You can order below:

It includes the following works:

THE NOVELS

The Voyage Out (1915) Night and Day (1919) Jacob’s Room (1922) Mrs. Dalloway (1925) To the Lighthouse (1927) The Waves (1931) The Years (1937) Between the Acts (1941)

THE ‘BIOGRAPHIES’

Orlando: a biography (1928) Flush: a biography (1933) Roger Fry: a biography (1940)

THE STORIES

Monday or Tuesday (1921) A Haunted House, and other short stories (1944) Mrs Dalloway’s Party (1973) The Complete Shorter Fiction (1985)

THE ESSAYS

The Common Reader I (1925) A Room of One’s Own (1929) On Being Ill (1930) The London Scene (1931) The Common Reader II (1932) Three Guineas (1938) The Death of the Moth, and other essays (1942) The Moment, and other essays (1947) The Captain’s Death Bed, and other essays (1950) Granite and Rainbow (1958) Books and Portraits (1978) Women And Writing (1979) 383 Essays from newspapers and magazines (see update v.3.0)

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL WRITING

A Writer’s Diary (1953) Moments of Being (1976) The Diary Vols. 1–5 (1977-84) (see updates v.4.0, v.5.0, and v.6.0) The Letters Vols. 3,4+5 (1977-79) (see update v.7.0 and v.8.0) The Letters of V.W. and Lytton Strachey (1956) (see update v.8.0)

THE PLAY

Freshwater: A Comedy (both versions) (1976)

This resource makes it so easy to access Woolf's writings and as an eBook you can have it with you all of the time.

Happy Reading

Grant

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Katherine Mansfield and Virginia Woolf: A Public of Two

Angela Smith has an interesting entry on the Oxford Scholarship Online web site (http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198183983.001.0001/acprof-9780198183983. the abstract is shown below:

Abstract Long after the death of Katherine Mansfield (1888–1923), Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) described being haunted by her in dreams. Through detailed comparative readings of their fiction, letters, and diaries, this book explores the intense affinity between the two writers. Their particular inflection of modernism is interpreted through their shared experience as ‘threshold people’, familiar with the liminal, for each of them a zone of transition and habitation. Writing at a time when the First World War and changing attitudes to empire problematized boundaries and definitions of foreignness, this book shows how the fiction of both Mansfield and Woolf is characterised by moments of disorienting suspension in which the perceiving consciousness sees the familiar made strange, and the domestic made menacing.

As a New Zealander I have a keen interest in the writings of both Katherine Mansfield (another New Zealander)and Virginia Woolf. Woolf concurred that the only writer whose writing she would like to be able to emulate was that of Katherine Mansfield. Both women were pushing the edges of Victorian and post Victorian society in the late 1800s and early 1900s. I had not seen the mention to her being haunted by KM in her dreams before.

Lock up your Libraries - Virginia Woolf

“Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.” ― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own

Even though we can close all the libraries, we can not lock up the freedom of the human mind. Because books can influence thought, book-burners and censors try to eviscerate our libraries, supposedly for our own good.

Books open minds and spread the teaching of a true education. No wonder the politicians try to dumb us down with modern "bread and circuses".

Long live the Library, Long live the freedom of the mind. Thank you Virginia for seeding the thought. Your words live on...

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Virginia Woolf on Life

“You cannot find peace by avoiding life.” ― Virginia Woolf

While the temptation is always there to avoid life and have a peaceful existence it will stultify your enjoyment of life. Woolf had every reason to seek peace. She suffered from mental illness for most of her life, and peace was often elusive.

Thankfully for us, her readers, she did not become a recluse, but she experienced life and all of its vicissitudes and survived. Like Jane Austen before her, Virginia Woolf had a eye for the minutiae of daily life which makes her writing piquant.

In fact the place where she did find peace was in her writing and in her deep relationship with her husband Leonard.

Her writing are full of detail and wisdom and we are fortunate that these writings have been treasured and well preserved.

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Ralph Thompson on The Years - New York Times

"Mrs. Woolf is nearest perfection when dealing with the past or with a present that has already begun to lose itself in the past. Then she is near perfection indeed." Ralph Thompson

Ralph Thompson, book reviewer for The New York Times writing on one of her novels, "The Years," made the above quote. The past is stable and we have had time to consider it's effects and ramifications. Woolf was a master writer about the past, yet this remarkable writer, was at the avant garde of modernism along with Eliot and Joyce. Her crystallized writing is as crisp today as it was at the time it was written and it allows us a fascinating view into life at the end of the Victorian era.

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Mrs Woolf's Body Found

April 19, 1941

Mrs. Woolf's Body Found

Verdict of Suicide Is Returned in Drowning of Novelist

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

LONDON, April 19 -- Dr. E. F. Hoare, Coroner at New Haven, Sussex, gave a verdict of suicide today in the drowning of Virginia Woolf, novelist who had been bombed from her home twice. Her body was recovered last night from the River Ouse near her week-end house at Lewes.

The Coroner read a note that Mrs. Woolf had left for her husband, Leonard.

"I have a feeling I shall go mad," the note read. "I cannot go on any longer in these terrible times. I hear voices and cannot concentrate on my work. I have fought against it but cannot fight any longer. I owe all my happiness to you but cannot go on and spoil your life."

Her husband testified that Mrs. Woolf had been depressed for a considerable length of time. When their Bloomsbury home was wrecked by a bomb some time ago, Mr. and Mrs. Woolf moved to another near by. It, too, was made uninhabitable by a bomb, and the Woolfs then moved to their weekend home in Sussex.

Mrs. Woolf, who was 59, vanished March 28.

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Virginia Woolf Believed Dead - 3

New York Times

Long Noted As Novelist

Mrs. Woolf's First Work Was Published in 1915

Mrs. Virginia Woolf was a granddaughter of Thackeray and a relative of the Darwins, Symondses and Stracheys. She grew up in a household that Stevenson, Ruskin, Lowell, Hardy, Meredith and other writers visited. As the wife of Leonard Woolf and the sister-in-law of Clive Bell, Mrs. Woolf had a literary circle of her own.

She was the author of fifteen books of high quality, in which the critics met up with at least four different kinds of thinking and writing. This led to her being characterized as "the multiple Mrs. Woolf."

In "Three Guineas" Mrs. Woolf replied to the question of a barrister: "How in your opinion are we to prevent war?" The keynote of this work was her remark that the inquiry must be unique in the history of human correspondence, "since when before has an educated man asked a woman how in her opinion war can be prevented."

Of one of her novels, "The Years," Ralph Thompson, book reviewer of The New York Times, said: "Mrs. Woolf is nearest perfection when dealing with the past or with a present that has already begun to lose itself in the past. Then she is near perfection indeed."

When not working on novels and longer essays, Mrs. Woolf frequently wrote critical articles for literary magazines, entering a number of literary controversies. One of her last tilts was with book reviewers in December, 1939. She contended it was a "public duty" to abolish the book reviewer, holding that reviews were so hurriedly written that the reviewer was unable to deal adequately with the books his editor sent him. Mrs. Woolf declared no Act of Parliament would be necessary to abolish the reviewer, contending that the tendencies she deplored would soon condition him out of existence.

Commenting editorially on Mrs. Woolf's description of Augustine Birrell, as a "born writer," The New York Times in August, 1930, described Mrs. Woolf as "one of the most subtle, original and modern of moderns, herself a born writer." Mrs. Woolf's published works began with "The Voyage" in 1915, followed by "Night and Day" in 1919, "Monday or Tuesday" in 1921, "Jacob's Room" in 1922, "The Common Reader," and "Mrs. Dalloway" in 1925; "To the Lighthouse," in 1927; "Orlando" and "A Room of One's Own" in 1929; "The Waves," 1931; "The Common Reader, Second Series," in 1932; "Flush," in 1933; "The Years," in 1937; "Three Guineas," in 1938, and "Roger Fry, A Biography," in 1940.

All her education was received at home from private tutors. Her favorite recreation was printing, in which she joined with her husband, Leonard Woolf, novelist and essayist, founder of the Hogarth Press and former literary editor of The Nation.

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Virginia Woolf Believed Dead - 2

It was reported her hat and cane had been found on the bank of the Ouse River. Mrs. Woolf had been ill for some time. The Woolfs ran the Hogarth Press from 1917 to 1938, when Mrs. Woolf retired to devote her time to writing. Her last book was "Roger Fry, a Biography," published last year.

Mrs. Woolf was born in 1882. She was a daughter of Sir Leslie Stephen. James Russell Lowell was her godfather.

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Virginia Woolf Believed Dead - 1

Virginia Woolf Believed Dead

By Special Cable to The New York Times

LONDON, April 2--Mrs. Virginia Woolf, novelist and essayist, who has been missing from her home since last Friday, is believed to have been drowned at Rodwell, near Lewes, where she and her husband, Leonard Sidney Woolf, had a country residence. Mr. Woolf said tonight:

"Mrs. Woolf is presumed to be dead. She went for a walk last Friday, leaving a letter behind, and it is thought she has been drowned. Her body, however, has not been recovered."

I came across this article and I will share in parts as it includes news over several days and an obituary.

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Virginia Woolf - Not an Early Coherent Speaker

As a child, it took Woolf longer than usual to begin speaking in coherent sentences (http://flavorwire.com/143610/59-things-you-didnt-know-about-virginia-woolf/).

One suspects that there was so much going on in her mind that she had difficulty letting it out and putting the words in the right order. As an adult she was known for her pressured speech when excited and this may have been part of her illness.

I guess the modern term would be having a mind dump. When you have so much to release it can be hard to control the flow.

But this rich mind full of genius and creativity gave us so much for which we should be very thankful.

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Virginia Woolf - an Original Home Schooler

Born of free thinking parents, Virginia Woolf had an unconventional education mostly provided by her father, an ex Cambridge don. She was given the freedom of his library and as can be seen from her early journals she made good use of it. Her reading was eclectic and prolific, a habit she kept up for her whole life. Her creativity and breakthroughs in stream of consciousness development were no doubt nurtured by her home schooling, which gave her great freedom.

I wonder how many potential great writers like Virginia Woolf have had their creative flame crushed and extinguished by our school system that caters to conformance and one size fits all?

I am thankful that her parents had the foresight to home school her and let her creativity blossom.

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Virginia Woolf on Civilisation

The Diary Volume 4, Saturday 30 January, 1932

"Civilisation is the thickness of a postage stamp on the top of Cleopatra's needle; & time to come is the thickness of postage stamps as high as Mount Blanc".

Or civilisation is a very thin veneer to say the least.

A great metaphorical expression.

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Woolf - the Industrious Insect

The Diary, Volume 4, Wednesday 13 January 1932

Well we have hit 1932 now.

"I shall be 50 on 25th, Monday week that is; & sometimes feel that I have lived 250 years already,& sometimes that I am still the youngest person in the omnibus. (Nessa said that she still always thinks this, as she sits down.) And I want to write another 4 novels: Waves, I mean: & the Tap on the Door; & to go through English literature, like a string through cheese, or rather like some industrious insect, eating its way from book to book, from Chaucer to Lawrence".

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