Modernist London Seminar

Modernist London Seminar (sorry, Links on site do not work; use links below instead)

• Course description Rooted in comparing and contrasting major works of T.S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf,  the seminar will explore the modernist milieu in London from about 1910 to 1939, looking at the competing cliques of Bloomsbury (Leonard and Virginia Woolf, Lytton Strachey, Clive and Vanessa Bell, Roger Fry, Morgan Forster) and Hampstead (Katherine Mansfield, John Middleton Murray, D.H. Lawrence) as well as their attackers and defenders (such as Ottoline Morrell and Wydham Lewis). Aside from central works by Woolf and Eliot ("Prufrock" The Waste Land, To the Lighthouse , etc.) study of other writers and artists will be based on student selection. Students will write weekly responses, do a class project on a figure or institution, keep a visual journal, and write a 12-15 page seminar paper, all of which will be woven together as a class website. 
• Books to buy
• Full Course Syllabus   (Again, the majority of links do not work)
• Visual Archive
• Some links (Some of these still do work)

Night and Day: A Bibliography of Criticism (2019)

Criticism on Night and Day  

updated 5/25/19

This is not a complete list of everything written on the novel, but a fairly comprehensive list of what I have read/want to read. The asterisks represent favorite treatments; NOTES, PDF, OWN  are private records.

(My apologies for formatting irregularities.  I fixed what I cd without going into the code and removing extraneous tags.)

**Larsson, Lisbeth. Walking Virginia Woolf’s London: An investigation in Literary Geography. (Palgrave MacMillan, 2017) . Chapter 3, pp. 39-81. OWN https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783319556710 (links to extensive maps of all walks in N&D)

Outka, Elizabeth. “The Transitory Space of Night and Day” pp. 55-66 Berman, Jessica (ed. and introd.) A Companion to Virginia Woolf. Oxford, England: Wiley-Blackwell; 2016. OWN

Ludtke, Laura E. “Public and Private Light in Virginia Woolf’s Night and Day.”pp. 91-109 IN: Bach, Susanne (ed. and introd.); Degenring, Folkert (ed. and introd.) Dark Nights, Bright Lights: Night, Darkness, and Illumination in Literature. Berlin, Germany: de Gruyter; 2015.  PDF

Goodman, Robin Truth “Woolf and Women's Work: Literary Invention in an Obscure Hat Factory.”pp. 69-80 IN: Goodman, Robin Truth (ed. and introd.) Literature and the Development of Feminist Theory. Cambridge, England: Cambridge UP; 2015 (Read on-Line at amazon.com)

Corbett, Mary Jean. Virginia Woolf and “The Third Generation” Twentieth  Century Literature, 2014 Spring; 60 (1): 27-58.

Nash, John. Exhibiting the Example: Virginia Woolf's Shoes.” Twentieth Century Literature, 2013 Summer; 59 (2): 283-308. PDF

Ryan, Derek; “Woolf's Queering of Granite.” Virginia Woolf Miscellany, 2012 Fall; 82: 20-22.  Available on line: https://virginiawoolfmiscellany.wordpress.com/virginia-woolf-miscellany-archive-issue-84-fall-2013-through-issue-92-fall-2017-winter-2018/

Alt, Christina. Virginia Woolf and the Study of Nature. Cambridge UP, 2010: pp. 135-47. NOTES

Peach, Linden. “Virginia Woolf and Realist Aesthetics.” pp. 104-117 IN: Humm, Maggie (ed. and introd.) The Edinburgh Companion to Virginia Woolf and the Arts. Edinburgh, Scotland: Edinburgh UP; 2010. OWN

Bradshaw, David.” 'Great Avenues of Civilization': The Victoria Embankment and Piccadilly Circus Underground Station in the Novels of Virginia Woolf and Chelsea Embankment in Howards End.”.pp. 189-210 IN: Cianci, Giovanni (ed. and introd.); Patey, Caroline (ed. and introd.); Sullam, Sara (ed.) Transits: The Nomadic Geographies of Anglo-American Modernism. Oxford, England: Peter Lang; 2010. Sent for ILL/ PDF coming

McNees, Eleanor “Public Transport in Woolf’s City Novels: The London Omnibus.”pp. 31-39 IN: Evans, Elizabeth F. (ed. and introd.); Cornish, Sarah E. (ed. and introd.) Woolf and the City: Selected Papers from the Nineteenth Annual Conference on Virginia Woolf. Clemson, SC: Clemson University Press; 2010. OWN

Quigley, Megan; “Modern Novels and Vagueness.” Modernism/Modernity, 2008 Jan; 15 (1): 101-129.

Okumura, Sayaka. “Communication Networks: The Telephone, Books, and Portraits in Night and Day.”Virginia Woolf Bulletin of the Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain, 2007 Sept; 26: 27-36.  OWN

Ellis, Steve. Virginia Woolf and the Victorians Cambridge, England: Cambridge UP; 2007. Chap 1, “Reclamation: Night and Day,” pp 12-42.

*Mills, Jean. The Unbounded Whole: Harrisonian Ritual Structures in Virginia Woolf's Night and Day; Virginia Woolf Miscellany, 2006 Spring-Summer; 69: 6-7  NOTES, xerox

*Julia Briggs.  Virginia Woolf: An Inner Life.  London: Penguin [Allen Lane] 2005. 29-57. NOTES

Park, Sowon S. Suffrage and Virginia Woolf: 'The Mass behind the Single Voice' Review of English Studies: 2005 Feb; 56 (223): 119-34. PDF

Madden, Mary C.. Woolf's Interrogation of Class in Night and Day pp. 56-63 IN: Kukil, Karen V. (ed. and introd.); Woolf in the Real World. Northampton, MA: Clemson University Digital; 2005.  OWN

Priest, Ann-Marie. “Between Being and Nothingness: The 'Astonishing Precipice' of Virginia Woolf's Night and Day.”Journal of Modern Literature, 2003 Winter; 26 (2): 66-80. PDF

Newman, Hilary; “Night and Day: Modernism in Disguise?” Virginia Woolf Bulletin of the Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain, 2002 Jan; 9: 34-38. OWN

Outka, Elizabeth. “'The Shop Windows Were Full of Sparkling Chains': Consumer Desire and Woolf's Night and Day.” pp. 229-35 IN: Berman, Jessica (ed. and introd.); Goldman, Jane (ed. and introd.); Virginia Woolf Out of Bounds: Selected Papers from the Tenth Annual Conference on Virginia Woolf. New York, NY: Pace UP, 2001.  OWN

Whitworth, Michael.  “ Simultaneity: A Return Ticket to Waterloo.”  Chapter 6 of Einstein’s Wake: Relativity, Metaphor, and Modernist Literature.  Oxford UP, 2001. 170-97.

Zemgulys, Andrea P.” 'Night and Day Is Dead': Virginia Woolf in London 'Literary and Historic’.” Twentieth Century Literature 2000 Spring; 46 (1): 56-77.  PDF

*Briggs, Julia.  Introduction to Penguin Edition of Night and Day. 33-60 in Virginia Woolf: Introductions to the Major Works, ed. Julia Briggs.  London: Virago Press, 1994. NOTES

Phillips, Kathy J. Virginia Woolf Against Empire. Knoxville: U of Tennessee P, 1994.  NOTES

Fisher, Jane. “’Silent as the Grave': Painting, Narrative, and the Reader in Night and Day and To the Lighthouse.” pp. 90-109 IN: Gillespie, Diane F. (ed.) The Multiple Muses of Virginia Woolf. Columbia: U of Missouri P; 1993.  OWN

Cooley, Elizabeth. “’Discovering the 'Enchanted Region': A Revisionary Reading of Night and Day.” CEA Critic: An Official Journal of the College English Association, 1992 Spring; 54 (3): 4-17. 

Hussey, Mark. “Refractions of Desire: The Early Fiction of Virginia and Leonard Woolf .”MFS: Modern Fiction Studies, 1992 Spring; 38 (1): 127-46.PDF and NOTES

Wussow, Helen. “Conflict of Language in Virginia Woolf's Night and Day.”  Journal of Modern Literature, 1989 Summer; 16 (1): 61-73. PDF

Malamud, Randy.”Splitting the Husks: Woolf's Modernist Language in Night and Day;” South Central Review, 1989 Spring; 6 (1): 32-45.XEROXED

Dick, Susan.  Virginia Woolf. Routledge, 1989.  OWN

Garner, Shirley Nelson. 'Women Together' in Virginia Woolf's Night and Day.  pp. 318-333 IN: Garner, Shirley Nelson (ed.); Kahane, Claire (ed.); Sprengnether, Madelon (ed.) The (M)other Tongue: Essays in Feminist Psychoanalytic Interpretation. Ithaca: Cornell UP; 1985. XEROXED/ OWN

*Squier, Susan Merrill.Tradition and Revision: The Classic City Novel and Virginia Woolf's Night and Day.”  pp. 114-133 IN: Squier, Susan Merrill (ed.) Women Writers and the City: Essays in Feminist Literary Criticism. Knoxville: U of Tennessee P; 1984.  Rpt and rev as Chap 4 of Virginia Woolf and the Politics of the City. Chapel Hil: U of North Carolina P, 1985.  Pp. 71-90.

Blain, Virginia. “Narrative Voice and the Female Perspective in Virginia Woolf's Early Novels.” pp. 115-136 IN: Clements, Patricia (ed.); Grundy, Isobel (ed.) Virginia Woolf: New Critical Essays. London; Totowa, NJ: Vision; Barnes & Noble; 1983.  OWN 

Little, Judy. Comedy and the Woman Writer: Woolf, Spark, and Feminism.  Lincoln and London: U of Nebraska P, 1983. OWN

**Marcus, Jane. “Enchanted Organs, Magic Bells: Night and Day as Comic Opera.” Pp. 97-122 IN: Freedman, Ralph and DiBattista, Maria, eds.  Virginia Woolf: Revaluation and Continuity. Berkeley: U of California P; 1980.  Rpt  in Virginia Woolf and The Languages of Patriarchy, ed. Jane Marcus.  Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1987. NOTES

McCail, Ronald.  “A Family Matter: Night and Day and Old Kensington.” RES (New series)  XXXVIII, No. 149 (1987 23-39.  XEROXED

Lee, Hermione.  The Novels of Virginia Woolf.  New York: Holmes and Meier, 1977. NOTES/OWN

Fleishman, Avorm.  Virginia Woolf: A Critical reading. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1975.  NOTES /OWN

Cummings, Melinda F. “Night and Day: Virginia Woolf's Visionary Synthesis of Reality.” Modern Fiction Studies, 1972; 18: 339-49.

Intro To Virginia Woolf: Life and Houses

Woolf posing for Vogue Magazine in 1926, wearing her mother's dress and her new "shingle" haircut.

Woolf's childhood London home, occupied by as many 10 adults and children, and numerous servants

Located on a cul-de-sac, only half a block from Kensington Gardens

Half-brother George Duckworth, Virginia, older brother Thoby, older sister Vanessa, half-brother Gerald Duckworth, Julia and Leslie Stephen, and younger brother Adrian.  Missing: Half-sister Stella Duckworth and Laura Makepeace Stephen

Julia Stephen and her daughter Stella Duckworth;  Virginia and her father Leslie Stephen, Julia Duckworth Stephen by Margaret Cameron, Leslie Stephens and a mountaineering guide.

Talland House in St Ives was the Stephen family home June-August from 1884 until Julia's death in 1897. It was the setting behind To the Lighthouse and many other references to coastal scenes.

Woolf's autobiographical "A Sketch of the Past" refers to her feeling of ecstasy lying in the nursery bed at Talland House and listening to the sound of the waves on the beach below.

In 1904 Vanessa moved the parent-less family to Bloomsbury, then as now surrounded by universities and bookstores, inhabited by writers and students.

Except for the years of exile in suburban Richmond, Woolf maintained a London house in Bloomsbury for most of her life moving from Gordon to Fitzroy to Bunswick, to Tavistock and Mecklenburgh Squares

Lytton Strachey by Vanessa Bell, Adrian Stephen, Leonard Woolf by Vanessa Bell, Maynard Kaynes by Gwen Raverat, E.M. Forster by Dora Carrington.

In 1910, Fry introduced modern French art -- Van Gogh, Cezanne, Matisse, Gauguin, among others -- to the British public.  It was a scandal!

After a major breakdown in 1915, Leonard convinced Virginia she needed to avoid the social stress of living in central London, so they moved to suburban Richmond.

Hogarth house was an easy mile from the extensive paths of Kew Gardens.

Hoping to divert Virginia with a relaxing hobby, they founded the Hogarth Press, which not only gave her the freedom to write as she wished but also became a major outlet for modernist texts.

While the Woolfs lived in London much of the time, Cornwall Woolf often revisited Cornwall, and  Virginia Began spending summers and holday weekends in Sussex as early as 1912.

Virginia's first "villa" in Sussex, located in the tiny village of Firle, was named "Little Talland House" as the Sussex landscape and proximity to the sea reminded her of Cornwall.

Next she andVanessa shared the lease on Asham House at the foor of Firle Beacon

Virginia found Charleston farmhouse on the other side of Firle, which proved perfect for Vanessa's large household

In 1919, when Asham became unavailable, the Woolfs found Monk's House in the downland village of Rodmell, in the water meadows near the river Ouse.

The Garden was a major attraction of Monk's House; it was expanded and developed over the years by the addition of land as well as greenhouses and beehives, various paths and benches. An extensive orchard of apple and plum trees provided annual income.

The interior walls were knocked down, the living room was painted a delicate sea green, and the house was gradually furnished with furniture designed by Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant.  The deep window sills were filled with geraniums and lilies.  When the Woolfs were in residence, books were stacked in piles everywhere, with ashtrays perched precariously on top.

Vanessa Bell designed the covers for almost all of Virginia's books published by the Hogarth Press.

Meanwhile almost every surface in Charleston was painted by Vanessa and Duncan, who became lifelong companions.  Vanessa's third child, Angelica, was fathered by Duncan, though she was not told of her paternity until she was 18.

Woolf had several different writing huts at Monk's House, including a tool shed replaced what is now the public bathroom.  This one was built in 1934 against the church wall on the east edge of the property.  Originally it was half the size; after Virginia's death, Leonard enlarged it as a lithography studio for Trekkie Parsons.

View across water meadows to Firle Beacon; Asham was below the white scar that marks the cement works.  Leonard with his "Dew Pond"

Southease Halt, where Virginia drowned herself in March of 1941.  The upper photo was taken her death date with the tidal river in full spate, looking towards Rodmell and Monk's house.

Visual Notes on A Room of One's Own

Looking out from Woolf's Writing Studio at Monk's House, Sussex

A few years after she wrote Room

Addition to Monk's House (1928); after financial success of Mrs Dalloway (1925) and To the Lighthouse (1927)

Early 30's

Vita with Virginia and with her two sons.  Radclyffe Hall, author of The Well of Loneliness, on trial for obscenity while Woolf was writing Room

Although Woolf call the campus "Oxbridge," specific visual details make clear that it is based on Cambridge; her brothers and their friends all went to King's or Trinity Colleges

Milton's draft of "Lycidas" is indeed held in the Wren Library

Newnham was one of the two Cambridge Colleges for women.  Located across the river from the other colleges on a side street, it is still easy to miss today.

Pernel Strachey, sister of Lytton, was Head of Newnham college from 1927 on, and in 1928 invited Woolf to deliver the first of several lectures which became A Room of One's Own

At a 2004 lecture by Dame Gillian Beer, in the same hall where Woolf spoke.  Anne Oliver Bell edited Woolf's diaries, and Frances Spaulding has written definitive biographies of all the Bloomsbury artists: Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant, Roger Frye

Maps of various Bloomsbury Sqs in which Woolf resided.  She lived longest at Tavistock Sq (1924-39), pictured above.  It was destroyed during the blitz.

The names of  (male) writers and thinkers appeared under the windows

A refurbished reading room left off the names

It has been suggested that Vanessa Bell's cover replicates a window of the reading room, with Woolf's name inserted in the pantheon, and the clock appropriately pictured at V-time.

Books and Manuscripts previously held at The British Museum are now housed at The British Library, including the notebook of Mrs Dalloway, childhood newspapers, and Woolf's suicide note