Virginia Woolf, Night & Day.

(via mizenscen)

tetheredstrings:

From The 50 Greatest Love Letters of All Time, edited by David H, Lowenherz

feastonscraps:

Virginia Woolf, To The Lighthouse

[i love the images]

(via lavenderletters)

katherine-mansfield:

Part of a letter Virginia Woolf wrote to Katherine Mansfield on February 13, 1921

In this long letter to Katherine Mansfield, Woolf talks about how important it is “that women should learn to write.” Mansfield echoes Woolf’s dedication to the art of writing in her journal fragment: “What is your ultimate desire—to what do you so passionately aspire? To write books and stories and sketches and poems.” These two fiercely committed writers had an intimate but guarded friendship. Prelude by Katherine Mansfield was the second publication of the Hogarth Press. Leonard and Virginia Woolf spent nine months printing and binding three hundred copies by hand. In her letter Woolf tells Mansfield that the reviews are enthusiastic: “Morgan Forster said that Prelude & The Voyage Out were the best novels of their time…”

Woolf was writing Jacob’s Room in 1921, but had to break off from fiction writing to earn money for printing paper: “I shall write an article on Dorothy Wordsworth and so pay for our new sheets.” In her letter, Woolf also contrasts her style to Mansfield’s: “What I admire in you so much is your transparent quality.” In Jacob’s Room: “I’m always, chopping & changing from one level to another. I think what I’m at is to change the consciousness, & so to break up the awful stodge… I feel as if I didn’t want just all realism any more—only thoughts & feelings—no cups & tables.”

Woolf also talks about the genesis of her short story, “A Society,” which was published along with other short pieces in Monday or Tuesday: “Like an idiot I lost my temper with Arnold Bennett and wasted my time writing a foolish violent, I suppose unnecessary satire… Suppose some poor wretch who wanted to write was put off by that little grocer?” Mansfield particularly admired “Kew Gardens” from Monday or Tuesday.

In the letter, Woolf also gossips about her friends T. S. Eliot and Lytton Strachey: “I like Eliot, & pity him, as if he suffered a great deal from having acquired a shell which he can’t lift off. Meanwhile all sorts of things grow underneath, very painfully. But this is guess work. We only make signs to each other. Lytton is as mellow as a pear. Queen Victoria is done, & he is set up for life on the proceeds.” Lytton Strachey dedicated his 1921 biography of Queen Victoria “To Virginia Woolf.”

Source

from The Waves, by Virginia Woolf

from To The Lighthouse, by Virginia Woolf.

Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf

(via fragilis)

On the left, Virginia Woolf’s manuscript for “Mrs Dalloway” and on the right, one of Oscar Wilde’s letters.

suicide note from Virginia Woolf to Leonard Woolf (typed by prescience)

Night and Day dust-jack & a page from its manuscript by Virginia Woolf
(from Virginia Woolf: An Inner Life, by Julia Briggs)