Table Of ContentVIRGINIA WOOLF
A Centenary Perspective
VIRGINIA WOOLF
A Centenary Perspective·
Edited by
Eric Warner
Pal grave Macmillan
ISBN 978-1-349-17491-1 ISBN 978-1-349-17489-8 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-17489-8
Introduction and editorial matter © Eric D. Warner 1984
Foreword © Quentin Bell 1984
Chapter 1 © Hermione Lee 1984
Chapter 2 © Allen McLaurin 1984
Chapter 3 © Ian Gregor 1984
Chapter 4 © Lyndall Gordon 1984
Chapter 5 © John Bayley 1984
Chapter 6 © T. E. Apter 1984
Chapter 7 © Gillian Beer 1984
Text of panel discussions © the individual contributors 1984
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1St edition 1984
All rights reserved. For information, write:
St. Martin's Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
Published in the United Kingdom by The Macmillan Press Ltd.
First published in the United States of America in 1984
ISBN 978-0-312-84949-8
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Main entry under title:
Virginia Woolf, a centenary perspective.
"Proceedings of the Virginia Woolf Centenary Con
ference, which took place on 20-22 September, 1982 at
Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge"-Introd.
Includes index.
I. Woolf, Virginia, 1882-1941-Criticism and inter
pretation-Congresses. 1. Warner, Eric, 1951-
II. Virginia Woolf Centenary Conference (1982 : Fi tz
william College)
PR6045·072Z8919 1983 823'.912 83-10898
ISBN 978-0-312-84949-8
Contents
Acknowledgements
Vll
Notes on the Contributors
IX
Foreword Quentin Bell
Xlll
Introduction Eric Warner
I A Burning Glass: Reflection in Virginia Woolf
Hermione Lee 12
2 Consciousness and Group Consciousness in Virginia
Woolf Allen McLaurin 28
3 Virginia Woolf and her Reader Ian Gregor 41
4 A Writer's Life Lyndall Gordon 56
5 Diminishment of Consciousness: a Paradox in the Art
of Virginia Woolf John Bayley 69
6 Self-Defence and Self-Knowledge: the Function of Vanity
and Friendship in Virginia Woolf T. E. Apter 83
7 Virginia Woolf and Pre-History Gillian Beer 99
Panel Discussion 1 124
Panel Discussion 2 146
Index 166
Acknowledgements
The co-operation of many people made the Virginia Woolf
Centenary Conference possible. The first and largest debt is the
easiest to state: without the Master and Fellows of Fitzwilliam
College the event would not have taken place. Their sympathy with
the project in its early stages was heartening to the organiser; but
their logistical, financial and moral support at subsequent points
was crucial to the Conference, and the success of the occasion owes
everything to them. In particular, I would like to express my
gratitude to the Master, Professor J. C. Holt, the Bursar, Dr David
E. Bowyer, the Steward, Dr John R. A. Cleaver, and my colleague
in English, Miss Rivkah Zim, for the time and effort they gave in the
early moments of planning the event.
I must likewise thank all the speakers and panellists who agreed
to participate in the Conference. Their willingness to come at short
notice and with scant reward indicates an affection for the subject
which goes beyond professional obligation. As this volume testifies,
the enthusiasm of these men and women effectively gave the
celebration of Virginia Woolfs centenary in her own country the
shape and substance it has, and for this contribution I am
grateful. Here too, I must extend my thanks to Quentin and Olivier
Bell, who agreed to come as special guests of the Conference, and
who presided over an affair which must be regarded as an outcome
of their own labours with characteristic grace and charm.
There is a substantial debt to the Conference Secretary, Mrs
Sheila Green, which must be recorded. She helped at every stage to
co-ordinate the administrative work of the event and her calm
composure often proved the necessary antidote to my frazzled haste.
The Conference benefited accordingly from her efforts.
I must similarly thank my two Conference Assistants, Ms
Caroline Murphy and MsJoan Scanlon, who coped with the actual
running of the Conference with an undemonstrative efficiency and
aplomb. Throughout the two and a half days of the Conference,
they provided reassuring support for an anxious organiser's nerves.
Vlll Acknowledgements
I should also like to express my thanks to the Catering Manager,
Mr Howe, and the College Chef, Mr Stosieck, for their superb work
in arranging the menus for the Conference. The College Butler, Mrs
Audrey Cann, and her staff saw to the dining arrangements with a
thorough and unruffled competence that Virginia Woolf herself
might have predicted from the first woman butler in Cambridge,
and to them as well thanks are due.
I am also extremely grateful to John Mantle, feature producer of
'The Arts Round-Up', and to Tim Lloyd, Engineer-in-charge of
BBC Radio Cambridgeshire, for their considerable help in taping
the panel discussions, and for featuring the Conference on the air.
Finally, I offer my thanks to my wife, Ann, who planted the seed
of suggestion for this Conference in the first place, and who then
gave it all the support and encouragement in her power to see it
come to fruition.
Fitzwilliam College
Cambridge E.W.
I am grateful to the following for permission to reproduce copyright
material: Quentin Bell, the Author's Literary Estate, the Hogarth
Press and Harcourt Brace Jovanovich for the extracts from 'A
Sketch of the Past' in Moments ifB eing by Virginia Woolf, edited by
Jeanne Schulkind; Martin Seeker & Warburg and Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich for the extract from If on a Winter's Night a Traveller by
I talo Calvino.
Notes on the Contributors
T. E. Apter is the author of three novels as well as critical studies of
Virginia Woolf and Thomas Mann. Her most recent book is a study
of fantasy literature. She is currently living and working in
Washington DC.
John Bayley is Warton Professor of English Literature at St
Catherine's College, Oxford. His numerous critical works include
studies of Push kin, Tolstoy, Shakespeare and Hardy. He is currently
working on Henry James.
Gillian Beer is a University Lecturer in English and Fellow of
Girton College, Cambridge. She has published widely on nine
teenth- and twentieth-century fiction. Her latest book is on topics
related to her contributions here, and is entitled Darwin's Plots:
Evolutionary Narrative in Darwin, George Eliot and 19th Century Fiction
(1983) .
Bernard Bergonzi has been Professor of English at Warwick
University since 1971. He is the author of several books on modern
literature, including The Situation of the Novel (1970) and Reading the
Thirties (1981). He has also published a novel, The Roman Persuasion
(1981).
Elaine Feinstein has written several novels, of which the last was
The Survivors (1982). She has also published many volumes of
poetry, including Some Unease and Angels (1982), and has translated
Marina Tsvetayeva's poems. An extended second edition of these
translations appeared in 1981.
Lyndall Gordon was born in South Africa and studied at
Columbia University. She is currently a Senior Research Fellow at
Jesus College, Oxford. Her biography, Eliot's Early Years (1977),
x Notes on the Contributors
won the Rose Mary Craws hay Prize in 1978. She is now writing a
critical biography of Virginia Woolf.
Ian Gregor has been Professor of Modern English Literature at the
University of Kent since 1969. A prolific writer on nineteenth- and
twentieth-century fiction, his publications include (with Mark
Kinkead -Weekes) William Golding: A Critical Study (1967) and The
Great Web: A Study of Hardy's Novels (1973)' He is at present working
on a critical study of Virginia Woolfs novels.
John Harvey is a University Lecturer in English and Fellow of
Emmanuel College, Cambridge. His critical writings include a
study of Victorian novelists and their illustrators. His novel, The
Plate Shop (1979), was awarded the David Higham Prize for fiction.
He has recently completed a second novel on Greek politics.
Frank Kermode was, un til 1982, King Edward VII th Professor of
English Literature at the University of Cambridge. His numerous
critical works include Romantic Image (1957), The Sense of an Ending
(1967) and The Genesis of Secrecy (1979)·
Hermione Lee is a Lecturer in English at York University. In
addition to reviewing fiction regularly for The Observer and The
Times Literary Supplement, her critical studies include The Novels of
Virginia Woolf (1977), Elizabeth Bowen: An Estimation (1981) and
Philip Roth (1982). Her most recent work is a selection from the
writings of Stevie Smith.
Allen McLaurin has taught at universities in England and]a pan,
and is currently Senior Lecturer at Humberside College of Higher
Education. He has published extensively on modern literature, and
edited (with R. Majumdar) the Critical Heritage volume on
Virginia Woolf. He is presently working on a study of some themes
in the history of ideas touched on in the essay included here.
Iris Murdoch, formerly lecturer in Philosophy at St Anne's
College, Oxford, has published critical studies ofSartre and Plato. In
1982 she delivered the Gifford Lectures in Edinburgh on The Idea of
the Good. One of the most distinguished and prolific novelists in
England today, her most recent novel is The Philosopher's Pupil
(1983).
Notes on the Contributors xi
Eric Warner is a Lecturer in English at Fitzwilliam College,
Cambridge. He is the editor, with Graham Hough, of Strangeness and
Beauty (1983), a two-volume anthology of nineteenth century
aesthetic criticism. He is currently preparing a study of Virginia
Woolfs romanticism for publication.
