Virginia Woolf in Context
As a paradigmatic modernist author, Virginia Woolf is celebrated for the ways her fiction illuminates modern and contemporary life. Woolf scholars have long debated how context – whether historical, cultural, or theoretical – is to be understood in relation to her work, and how her work produces new insights into context. Drawing on an international field of leading and emergent specialists, this collection provides an authoritative resource for contemporary Woolf scholarship that explores the distinct and overlapping dimensions of her writings. Rather than survey existing scholarship, these essays extend Woolf studies in new directions by examining how the author is contextualized today. The collection also highlights connections between Woolf and key cultural, political, and historical issues of the twentieth century such as avant-gardism in music and art, developments in journalism and the publishing industry, political struggles over race, gender, and class, and the bearings of colonialism, empire, and war. A valuable critical touchstone for researchers, the volume will also complement graduate scholarship in English literature, literary theory, context studies, and modernism and postcolonial studies.
- Largest number of essays on Virginia Woolf ever offered in a single collection
- Offers original interventions from major and emerging Woolf scholars
- Covers an exceptionally wide range of theoretical and historical contexts for the study of Woolf's writing
Reviews & endorsements
"While the study of historicism in the works of modernist author Virginia Woolf is not new, this anthology is a valuable addition to the scholarship on Woolf."
D. L. Spanfelner, Choice
"Similar to other books in Cambridge University Press’s Literature in Context series, this collection places a particular writer within the various contexts that inform his or her work … this collection provides the contexts necessary to understand Woolf’s more difficult works without prescribing the view one should take of these works - and Woolf herself."
Molly Youngkin, English Literature in Transition, 1880–1920
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Table of Contents
- Preface Jane Goldman and Bryony Randall
- Part I. Theory and Critical Reception:
- 1. Historicising Woolf: context studies Michael Whitworth
- 2. Virginia Woolf: after lives Mark Hussey
- 3. Woolf and modernist studies Bryony Randall
- 4. Woolf and realism Pam Morris
- 5. Woolf and intertextuality Anne Fernald
- 6. Woolf and 'theory' Claire Colebrook
- 7. Woolf and feminist theory Lisa Coleman
- 8. Woolf and psychoanalytic theory Sanja Bahun
- 9. Woolf and theories of postcolonialism Sonita Sarker
- 10. Woolf and theories of sexuality Morgne (Patricia) Cramer
- Part II. Historical and Cultural Context:
- 11. Virginia Woolf and modernity: crisis and catoptrics Randall Stevenson
- 12. Virginia Woolf: war and peace Jane Lilienfeld
- 13. Woolf's Bloomsbury Kathryn Simpson
- 14. Politics and class Elena Gualtieri
- 15. Feminist politics Judith Allen
- 16. Race, empire and Ireland Anna Snaith
- 17. Jewishness and anti-Semitism Heidi Stalla
- 18. Woolf's London: London's Woolf David Bradshaw
- 19. Regionalism, nature and the environment Bonnie Kime Scott
- 20. Science and technology Holly Henry
- 21. Art Suzanne Bellamy
- 22. Music Emma Sutton
- 23. Cinema and photography Maggie Humm
- 24. Woolf and theatre Beth Wright
- 25. Woolf and publishing Drew Shannon
- 26. Woolf, journalism and reviewing James Stewart
- 27. Woolf and Freud Perry Meisel
- 28. Woolf and lesbian culture Madelyn Detloff
- 29. Woolf and the culture of letter-writing and diary-keeping Ian Blyth
- 30. Contemporary philosophy Derek Ryan
- 31. Continental Woolf Carole Bourne-Taylor
- 32. Woolf and the Russians Darya Protopopova
- 33. American Woolf Thaine Stearns
- 34. Woolf and the Victorians Margaret Homans
- 35. Classical Woolf Vassiliki Kolocotroni
- 36. Woolf and eugenics Linden Peach
- 37. Woolf and commodities Ruth Hoberman
- 38. Woolf and the private sphere Jessica Berman
- Key critical works cited
- Index.