About Virginia Woolf

I am just beginning a study of Virginia Woolf and her writings - she is one of the major literary figures of the twentieth century -- a women I definitely want to know about... And I have heard that her personal life is almost as intriguing as her fiction!

Please post info and links about Virginia Woolf;

rosemeria, go to my profile and to my library. Type in Virginia Woolf, and you will get plenty of books you might be interested in. I wrote my dissertation on her letters, many decades ago, and she has been part of my life ever since.
:-))

You can find the text to some of Virginia Woolf's works free online at Project Gutenberg:

Jacob's Room (here)

Night and Day (here)

The Voyage Out (here)

Or, if you like audiobooks (I listen while I'm driving or cleaning!), you can listen to some works for free with LibriVox.

Night and Day (here)

And some short stories:

Blue and Green (audio or e-text)

A Haunted House (audio or e-text)

Kew Gardens (audio or e-text)

The Mark on the Wall (audio or e-text)

Monday or Tuesday (audio or e-text)

Thanks aluvalibri,

WOW, Nice library! I ordered Orlando for our group read and also Women and Writing from your list. My neighbor/crazy-funny-feminist-activist gave me a book by Ruth Gruber called Virginia Woolf - The Will to Create as a Women - the first chapter was about her as a young girl writing her dissertation on Virginia Woolf. You probably came across Ms. Gruber when you were studying Ms. Woolf's letters, they corresponded a few time.

And also thanks christigue,
I haven't tried audiobooks much but I'm going to give it a go on my next beach walk. I usually like to save my walks for my inner thoughts but I'll be happy include VW's more articulate sentences & stories the next time!

What is the Common Reader about? I gather it is a article she wrote.

resemeria

There are two volumes of Virginia Woolf essays titled The Common Reader and The Second Common Reader in which she talks about all kind of literary subjects. They are marvelous--if you must just get one I prefer by a small margin The Second common Reader--but they are both great. My editions are annotated; the editor is Andrew McNeillie.

I consider myself a "common reader"--one who loves to read and reads widely but it was not my major in college and I never studied it in an organized way. But in a sense I do study--because I will take something and find references on my own. I think this is the type of reader VW had in mind. IMHO

MusicMom41

I consider myself a common reader and I have been trying to study literature in a more organized way lately by reading a few of an authors works within a years time and I also read biographies of the authors. But.... with my LT friends I pretend that I'm working on my LT degree in Literature!

I found copies of the Common Reader I & II online - looks extremely interesting - I will start reading these essays while I wait for my Sigrid Unset books to arrive. Where are they??

Some of Virginia Woolf's best quotes:

"Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart and his friends can only read the title"

"As a woman, I have no country. As a woman my country is the world."

"A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction."

"I was in a queer mood, thinking myself very old: but now I am a woman again - as I always am when I write."

"It is fatal to be a man or woman pure and simple: one must be a woman manly, or a man womanly." (this one pertains to Orlando -- don't you think?)

"It is the nature of the artist to mind excessively what is said about him. Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others."

"Language is wine upon the lips."

"My own brain is to me the most unaccountable of machinery - always buzzing, humming, soaring roaring diving, and then buried in mud. And why? What's this passion for?"

"Odd how the creative power at once brings the whole universe to order."

Oh Ya, my favorite... She is very wise...
"One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well."

MRS. WOOLF AND THE SERVANTS
An Intimate History of Domestic Life in Bloomsbury
By Alison Light

Sounds like a fascinating book. The NYT review by Claire Messud can be read here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/19/books/review/Messud-t.html?ref=books#

#9 thanks for posting. I'll definitely read it

There's a terrific piece on National Public Radio about the British Library's newly released CDs of rare recordings of writer's voices, including Virginia Woolf's. You can access the story and samples of the recordings here

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=96030704&sc=nl&cc=b...

The story about Woolf's recording comes about :45 seconds in and her voice comes about 1:08 seconds in the story. It is the only known recording of her voice.

That is wonderful, theaelizabeth! Thank you sooooo much for letting us know.
:-))

Thank you theaelizabeth - she did not sound like I imagined she would!

she did not sound like I imagined she would
I agree with you, er60!

Those recordings are really interesting. I've heard the Woolf before, and yeah, not exactly what I expected. I don't think anyone in England sounds like that anymore due to the evolution of language. (Or am I wrong?) The one I found really surprising was F. Scott Fitzgerald's--he doesn't sound American at all.

I recently picked up a copy of her Selected Essays published by OUP. The selection is a bit wider than those in the Common Reader, not only focussing on literature, but also addressing feminist issues, theoretical criticism and a moving essay about her father. It also includes some of her urban sketches: short pieces describing the sights and sounds of London in the 20s, which foreground her wonderful descriptive powers. If you're looking for a one volume representative selection of her non-fiction, I really recommend it.
What a great writer she was.

My favourite quote is this, from an essay about the cinema. She is talking about the impossibility of transferring Anna Karenina onto the screen:

"The lady in black velvet falls into the arms of a gentleman in uniform, and they kiss with enormous succulence, great deliberation and infinite gesticulation on a sofa in an extremely well appointed library."

She sounded older and I guess that came with the formal production of the radio show. She was very engaging.

Mildly interesting article from the online journal of the Jane Austen Society of North America, "The Geese vs. the “Niminy Piminy Spinster”: Virginia Woolf Defends Jane Austen http://www.jasna.org/persuasions/on-line/vol29no1/auerbach.html