'There is a trifling scene in Virginia's book where a charming young creature in a bright fantastic attitude plays the flute: it positively frightens me - to realise this utter coldness and indifference'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Katherine Mansfield Print: Book
'[Ethel] Mannin was firmly rooted in the autodidact tradition. In her father's library she enjoyed Gissing and Wells, "Adam Bede" and "The Cloister and the Hearth". A Clapham letter-sorter, he collected Nelson's Sevenpenny Classics, which she applauded as "a great boon to poor people"... By age fifteen she was quoting Wilde, Dr Johnson, Francis Bacon, Shakespeare, Milton, Elizabeth Browning, Omar Khayyam, Anatole France, Emily Bronte, Shaw, Hazlitt, Stevenson, W.E. Henley, and Schopenhauer in her commonplace book...Except "Orlando", she read nothing of Virginia Woolf, whom she found "too intellectual, too subtle and complicated and remote from reality...Mannin made sure to read "Ulysses" (or at least the final chapter) and she admired Gertrude Stein'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ethel Mannin Print: Book
[Virginia Woolf's] 'masterpiece, in Rosamond's opinion, was her biography of Roger Fry, although the novels were also revered - "To the Lighthouse" above all - even if some of the stylistic tricks were sometimes found to be irritating.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Rosamond Lehmann Print: Book
[Virginia Woolf's] 'masterpiece, in Rosamond's opinion, was her biography of Roger Fry, although the novels were also revered - "To the Lighthouse" above all - even if some of the stylistic tricks were sometimes found to be irritating.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Rosamond Lehmann Print: Book
'Sunday 3 October. I am reading "A Room of One's Own". Most delightful and profound - if I had the time I would write an essay about life in the WRNS'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Barbara Pym Print: Book
Virginia Woolf to Gwen Raverat, 11 March 1925:
'I don't think you would believe how it moves me that you and Jacques should have been
reading Mrs Dalloway, and liking it. I'm awfully vain I know; and I was on pins and needles
about sending it to Jacques; and now I feel exquisitely relieved; not flattered: but one does
want that side of one to be acceptable'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gwen Raverat Print: Unknown, In proof copy
'Hugh Walpole's The Apple Tree, a volume of reminiscences, was published for Christmas
1932. The first words of the book are: "There is a fearful passage in Virginia Woolf's beautiful
and mysterious book The Waves, which when I read it, gave me an acute shock of
unanticipated reminiscence." He then quotes a long passage in which he found his title: "The
apple-tree leaves became fixed in the sky; the moon glared."'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hugh Walpole Print: Book
Virginia Woolf to Stephen Spender, 10 July 1934:
'I'm so happy that you read the Lighthouse with pleasure, when there are so many other books
you might be reading.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Stephen Spender Print: Book
Virginia Woolf to Philip Morrell, 3 February 1938:
'I'm delighted with -- first: your liking Jacobs Room [...] second, that you should actually have read, still more marvellously have liked, Night and Day'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Morrell Print: Book
Virginia Woolf to Philip Morrell, 3 February 1938:
'I'm delighted with -- first: your liking Jacobs Room [...] second, that you should actually have
read, still more marvellously have liked, Night and Day'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Morrell Print: Book
Virginia Woolf to Benedict Nicolson, 13 August 1940:
'[opens] Just as I began to read your letter, an air raid warning sounded. I'll put down the reflections that occurred to me, as honestly as I can, as you put down your reflection of reading my life of Roger Fry while giving air raid alarms at Chatham [goes on to describe
thoughts on reading letter, looking up at raiders overhead, etc].'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Benedict Nicolson Print: Book
'I have been horribly remiss in writing to thank you for "Mrs Dalloway", but as I didn't want to write you the 'How-charming-of-you-to-send-me-your-book-I-am-looking-forward-to-reading-so-much' sort of letter, I thought I would wait until I had read both it and The Common Reader, which I am sorry to say I have now done.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vita Sackville-West Print: Book
'I shall have, however, to give up reading your works at dinner, for they are too disturbing. I can't explain, I'll have to explain verbally some day. Unless you can guess. How well you write, though, confound you. When I read you, I feel no one has ever written English prose before, - Knocked it about, put it in its place, made it into a servant.'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vita Sackville-West
'Last night I went to bed very early and read Mrs Dalloway. It was a very curious sensation: I thought you were in the room - But there was only Pippin, trying to burrow under my quilt, and the night noises outside, which are so familiar in one's own room; and the house was all quiet.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vita Sackville-West Print: Book
'then the old problem: what shall I read at dinner, propped open by a fork? decide finally on Virginia, grab the common reader, a pair of spectacles, a pencil, go in to dinner,'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vita Sackville-West Print: Book
'But everything is blurred to a haze by your book of which I have just read the last words, and that is the only thing which seems real. I can only say that I am dazzled and bewitched. How did you do it? how did you walk along that razor-edge without falling? why did you say anything so silly as that I 'shouldn't like it'?'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vita Sackville-West Print: Book
'"I'm in the middle of the Lighthouse, ekeing it out so that it will last. Why doesn't she publish a book every day? and what fun to be in at the birth of books quite as important as Jane Austen. She is a genius and I would carry a thousand hair-shedding dogs to the gates of Hell for her did she wish it!"'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hugh Walpole Print: Book
'I can't tell you how much I like "The Sun and the Fish", (all the more because it is all about things we did together,) and I am ordering a copy of Time and Tide.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vita Sackville-West Print: Serial / periodical
'I have been horribly remiss in writing to thank you for "Mrs Dalloway", but as I didn't want to write you the 'How-charming-of-you-to-send-me-your-book-I-am-looking-forward-to-reading-so-much' sort of letter, I thought I would wait until I had read both it and The Common Reader, which I am sorry to say I have now done.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vita Sackville-West Print: Book
'It seems to me the loveliest, wisest, richest book that I have ever read, - excelling even your own Lighthouse.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vita Sackville-West Manuscript: Codex
'He [a friend] took me to a bar which he said was quite respectable, but the proprietor showed me pornographic photographs, which are things I absolutely loathe and abhor. So I went away in a dudgeon and read a chapter of Orlando to cleanse my mind. That book is the cleanest thing I know, - like very clear and deep crystal.'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Harold Nicolson
'I came in just now, having been to Wertheim's to buy a pair of gloves for 4 marks, and meant to go on with my story of the bank clerk who loses his memory, but having stopped at the book shop on the way and bought Orlando in Tauchnitz I began to read, and so lost myself that the evening is already nearly gone. Do you know, I never read Orlando without tears pricking my eyes?'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vita Sackville-West Print: Book
Wednesday 15 September 1920: 'Blessed with fine weather, I could look from my window, through the vine leaves, & see Lytton sitting in the deck chair reading Alfieri from a lovely vellum copy, dutifully looking out words. He wore a white felt hat, & the usual grey clothes; was long, & tapering as usual; looking so mild & so ironical, his beard just cut short [...] For my own encouragement, I may note that he praised the Voyage Out voluntarily; "[italics]extremely[end italics] good" it seemed to him on re-reading, especially the satire of the Dalloways.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lytton Strachey Print: Book
Monday 1 June 1925: 'Now comes Mrs Hardy to say that Thomas reads, & hears the C[ommon]. R[eader]. read, with "great pleasure".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Hardy Print: Book
Monday 1 June 1925: 'Now comes Mrs Hardy to say that Thomas reads, & hears the C[ommon]. R[eader]. read, with "great pleasure".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Hardy Print: Book
'On 22 December the Woolfs went to Charleston for Christmas [...] Clive and Vanessa Bell [sister to Virginia Woolf] and the three children were there [...] Vanessa reported to Duncan Grant [...] that they had spent a fascinating evening reading V[irginia]W[oolf]'s diary recalling early days at 46 Gordon Square, with the four Stephens' very full and "rather high society life" there' (source ed.'s note).
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vanessa Bell and family Manuscript: Unknown
Saturday 27 February 1926: 'Mrs. Webb's book has made me think a little what I could say of my own life. I read some of 1923 this morning, being headachy again'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Manuscript: Unknown
'In the meantime, let me say that I read you with delight, even though I wanted to exclaim, "Oh, BUT,Virginia..." on 50% of your pages.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vita Sackville-West Print: Book
'Vanessa [Bell] wrote [to her sister Virginia Woolf] from Charleston (n.d., Berg [Collection]): "I have been for the last 3 days completely submerged in The Waves -- & am left rather gasping, out of breath, choking, half drowned, as you might expect. I must read it again when I may hope to float more quietly -- but meanwhile I'm so overcome by the beauty ...'"
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vanessa Bell Print: Book
Extract of letter to Virginia Woolf from E. M. Forster, copied by Woolf in diary entry of 16 November 1931:
'"I expect I shall write to you again when I have re read The Waves. I have been looking in it & talking about it at Cambridge. Its difficult to express oneself about a work which one feels to be so very important but I've the sort of excitement over it which comes from believing that one's encountered a classic."'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: E. M. Forster Print: Book
'G. L. Dickinson wrote to V[irginia] W[oolf] in praise of The Waves on 23 October [1931], and again, after re-reading, on 13 November 1931.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson Print: Book
'G. L. Dickinson wrote to V[irginia] W[oolf] in praise of The Waves on 23 October [1931], and again, after re-reading, on 13 November 1931.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson Print: Book
Thursday 21 July 1932: 'Alice Ritchie ringing me up [...] said "One thing I want to say. Please dont go so far away in your next book". She had just re-read The Waves: magnificent: but loneliness almost unbearable.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alice Ritchie Print: Book
Friday 7 July 1933: 'Being headachy [...] I have spent the whole morning reading old diaries, and am now (10 to 1) much refreshed. This is by way of justifying these many written books [...] The diary amuses me.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Manuscript: Unknown
Wednesday 17 October 1934: 'I am so sleepy. Is this age? I cant shake it off. And so gloomy. Thats [writing] the end of the book [The Years]. I looked up past diaries -- a reason for keeping them -- & found the same misery after Waves.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Manuscript: Unknown
From Appendix ('Biographical Outlines of Persons Most Frequently Mentioned') to The Diary of Virginia Woolf vol.4: 'Reading V[irginia] W[oolf]'s A Room of One's Own fired [Ethel Smyth] with the desire to meet the author, which she did in 1930'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ethel Smyth Print: Book
Saturday 15 March 1919: '[Mary Agnes Hamilton] told me a curious thing about the sensibilities of my family -- Adrian [Stephen] had asked her to tell me how much he'd liked The Voyage Out, which he has just read for the first time, & is too shy to write & tell me so himself.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Adrian Stephen Print: Book
Sunday 20 April 1919: 'In the idleness which succeeds [writing] any long article [...] I got out this diary, & read as one always does read one's own writing, with a kind of guilty intensity. I confess that the rough & random style of it, often so ungrammatical, & crying for a word altered, afflicted me somewhat. I am trying to tell whichever self it is that reads this hereafter that I can write very much better [...] And now I may add my little compliment to the effect that it has a slapdash & vigour, & sometimes hits an unexpected bulls eye [goes on to discuss further reasons for, and artistic benefits of, keeping diary].'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Manuscript: Codex
Friday 2 April 1937: ''Maynard is reading The Years. & is enthusiastic.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Maynard Keynes Print: Book
Tuesday 24 May 1937: 'I'm pleased this morning because Lady Rhondda writes that she is "profoundly excited & moved by 3Gs." Theo Bosanquet who has a review copy read her extracts.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Theodora Bosanquet Print: Book
Philippa Strachey to Virginia Woolf, 30 May 1938: 'I have read [Three Guineas] with rapture -- It is what we have panted for for years and years'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Philippa Strachey Print: Book
Thursday 9 February 1939: 'Looking at my old Greek diary I was led to speculate [...] I won't budge from the scheme there (1932) laid down for treating decline of fame. To accept; then ignore; & always venture further.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Manuscript: Unknown
Friday 15 November 1940: 'I had a gaping raw wound too reading my essay in N.W. Why did I? Why come to the top when I suffer so in that light?'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Tuesday 30 March 1937: 'Ethel rings up to say she has re-read Years, under Miss [Alice] Hudson [JP]'s direction, & finds it no longer unintelligible, but superb -- How can this be true of any mind?'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ethel Smyth Print: Book
'I was idly looking at [italics] Jacob's Room [end italics] tonight. It exasperated yet charmed me. Here was an attempt to relate day and night. She [Virginia Woolf] lays her little strands side by side instead of working them into a patern. But perhaps it is because there is no solid structure underneath that it leaves me with this curious empty and dissatisfied feeling. In the last book it is beaten out so thin that it is threadbare.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Antonia White Print: Book
'After dinner, (a delicious dinner), Virginia read us her memoir of Old Bloomsbury. She had read it to me already at Saulieu, but I loved hearing it again; I want you to hear it.'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf
'My own darling, I write to you in the middle of reading "Orlando", in such a turmoil of excitement and confusion that I scarcely know where (or who!) I am. It came this morning by the first post and I have been reading it ever since, and am now half-way through. Virginia sent it to me in a lovely leather binding - bless her.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vita Sackville-West Print: Book
'This 'new direction' [in literature], Larkin was beginning to realize, would depend on subtlety as well as candour - the sort of approach he was learning to associate with other writers he now re-read, or read for the first time. With Henry Green and Virginia Woolf (he admired "The Waves"); with Julian Hall, whose novel of public school life "The Senior Commoner" he approved for its "general atmosphere of not shoing one's feelings in public"; and with Katherine Mansfield. "I do admire her a great deal", he told Sutton, "and feel very close to her in some things".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Larkin Print: Book
'At that time Winifred's Derbyshire contemporary, the poet and novelist Thomas Moult, was editing a series of "Modern Writers on Modern Writers". When he invited her to contribute a volume and choose her own author, she selected Virginia Woolf, whose novels she had always admired, as a deliberate exercise in intellectual discipline.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Winifred Holtby Print: Book
'She preferred to say - in words written ten years ago at the end of "The Waves" which might stand for her epitaph - "Against you I will fling myself, unvanquished and unyielding, O Death!"'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: Book, Unknown
'Meeting held at Gower Cottage, 20.II.’39
R. D. L. Moore, & subsequently H. Stevens in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read & approved.
[...]
5. R. H. Robson told of The Stately Homes of Thames, + we heard of Bisham
Abbey, Mapledurham, Ufton Court, of Jesuits hunted by Walsingham, of the
incident of The Rape of the Lock, of Lovelace, Lady Place, Hurley, and Soames
Forsyte.
6. H. R. Smith, dealing with the Story of the River, + passing lightly over the
Danish incursions upstream, spoke of the thousand years in which the Thames had
been in bounds. Weirs had been made by millers, navigation had been slow and
perilous, the modern lock was a matter of the last hundred + fifty years. Twenty-
six mills were named in Domesday Book[.] The Thames Conservancy had brought
order out of chaos.
[...]
8. S. A. Reynolds read from Mortimer Menpes of warehouses + houseboats, the
boat race + Henley Regatta, Kingfishers + quick backwaters, fishing + the
vagaries of the towpath.
9. R. D. L. Moore gave us Literary Gleanings, touching on Spenser and Shelley,
quoting from The Scholar Gypsy + Thyrsis, + reading Soames Forsyte’s thoughts
in the early morning on the river, Kipling’s The River’s Tale, + Virginia Woolf’s
astonishing account in Orlando of the great frost, when a girl dissolved into
powder + fish were frozen twenty fathoms deep!
[...]
11. Muriel Stevens read a friend’s notes on Deptford + its river scenes.
12. A. B. Dilkes from Three Men in a Boat.
[Signed] S A Reynolds
27/3/93 [i.e. 27/3/39]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Roger Moore Print: Book