Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf is a 1962 Broadway play, written by American playwright and Pulitzer Prize winner Edward Albee, about the troubled marriage of a middle-aged couple named Martha and George. The play critiques the idea of the perfect American family and challenges social expectations about life, love and family. Since the play first … Read more
Although Virginia Woolf was a well-known Englishwoman, her family had a surprising connection to French aristocracy. Woolf had French roots on her mother’s side of the family and was a direct descendant of one of Marie Antoinette’s personal attendants, a man named Chevalier Pierre Ambrose Antoine de L’Etang. Woolf was De L’Etang’s great-great granddaughter. Born … Read more
When Virginia Woolf died by suicide on March 28, 1941, she left behind three suicides notes, two for her husband Leonard and one for her sister, Vanessa. The notes provide some insight into Virginia’s possible motives for suicide and shed some light on her mental sate at the time. Virginia’s Notes to Leonard Woolf: Virginia … Read more
Some people might be surprised to know that the Bechdel Test was indirectly inspired by Virginia Woolf’s non-fiction book A Room of One’s Own, which was published in 1929. The Bechdel Test is a famous feminist benchmark for movies which first originated in a comic strip by Alison Bechdel in 1985. The test uses three … Read more
In July of 1917, Virginia Woolf wrote an article commemorating the 100th anniversary of Henry David Thoreau’s birth for the Times Literary Supplement. Woolf was an admirer of American writers like Thoreau and felt American writers were more inventive and adventurous than any British writer to date. What is interesting about this essay is that, … Read more
The following is a guest post by Kitti Tóth. Tóth is a PhD student in Modern English and American Doctoral Programme at Budapest, Eötvös Loránd University. She became a Woolf enthusiast when she was an undergraduate student. She is currently working on her dissertation in which she examines the role(s) of art and artistic activity … Read more
The following is a guest post by Kirsty Hewitt. Hewitt is in her final year of a Research Master’s degree at the University of Glasgow, following a taught Master’s at King’s College London. She is currently writing a dissertation which examines the female body and mind through work by Simone de Beauvoir, Virginia Woolf, Katherine … Read more
The following is a guest post by Gloria Buckley. Buckley is a member of the Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain and has just completed her Master of Arts with Distinction in English Literature at Mercy College. She is a practicing lawyer for many years. Her poetry has appeared in several literary magazines and she … Read more
The following is a guest post by Kitti Tóth. Tóth is a PhD student in Modern English and American Doctoral Programme at Budapest, Eötvös Loránd University. She became a Woolf enthusiast when she was an undergraduate student. She is currently working on her dissertation in which she examines the role(s) of art and artistic activity … Read more
Virginia Woolf published her nonfiction book Three Guineas on June 2, 1938 as a sequel to A Room Of One’s Own. The book’s original title was Professions for Women and it was intended to be a novel-essay with alternating fiction and nonfiction chapters. Eventually, Virginia separated the fiction and nonfiction sections. The nonfiction section became … Read more
