Virginia Woolf's career was shaped by her impression of the conflict between poetry and the novel, a conflict she often figured as one between masculine and feminine, old and new, bound and free. In large part for feminist reasons, Woolf promoted the triumph of the novel over poetry, even as she adapted some of poetry's techniques for the novel in order to portray the inner life. Woolf considered poetry the rival form to the novel. A monograph on Woolf's sense of genre rivalry thus offers a thorough reinterpretation of the motivations and aims of her canonical work. Drawing on unpublished archival material and little-known publications, the book combines biography, book history, formal analysis, genetic criticism, source study, and feminist literary history. Woolf's attitude towards poetry is framed within contexts of wide scholarly interest: the decline of the lyric poem, the rise of the novel, the gendered associations with these two genres, elegy in prose and verse, and the history of English Studies. Virginia Woolf and Poetry makes three important contributions. It clarifies a major prompt for Woolf's poetic prose. It exposes the genre rivalry that was creatively generative to many modernist writers. And it details how holding an ideology of a genre can shape literary debates and aesthetics.

A revised and fully updated edition, featuring five new chapters reflecting recent scholarship on Woolf.

Originally published in 1990, Virginia Woolf and the Poetry of Fiction, provides a stylistic study of the fiction of Virginia Woolf. The book examines what is generally described as a ‘traditional novel’, examining such works as Jacob’s Room, and the way in which meaning is nonetheless conveyed poetically. The book argues that her early novels, are shown to contain writing of considerable sophistication and maturity and how her major works of fiction are approached in a more specific way: Mrs Dalloway through its poetic rhythms, To the Lighthouse as a multi-perspectival exploration of a reality embodied in a single image, and The Waves as a play-poem.

Recycling Virginia Woolf in Contemporary Art and Literature exam>ines Woolf’s life and oeuvre from the perspective of recycling and pro>vides answers to essential questions such as: Why do artists and writers recycle Woolf’s texts and introduce them into new circuits of meaning? Why do they perpetuate her iconic fgure in literature, art and popular culture? What does this practice of recycling tell us about the endurance of her oeuvre on the current literary, artistic and cultural scene and what does it tell us about our current modes of production and consumption of art and literature? This volume offers theoretical defnitions of the concept of recycling applied to a multitude of specifc case studies. The reasons why Woolf’s work and authorial fgure lend themselves so well to the notion of recy>cling are manifold: frst, Woolf was a recycler herself and had a personal theory and practice of recycling; second, her work continues to be a prolifc compost that is used in various ways by contemporary writers and artists; fnally, since Woolf has left the original literary sphere to permeate popular culture, the limits of what has been recycled have ex>panded in unexpected ways. These essays explore today’s trends of fab>ricating new, original artefacts with Woolf’s work, which thus remains completely relevant to our contemporary needs and beliefs

A celebration of the centenary of the founding of Leonard and Virginia Woolf’s Hogarth Press.

Addresses such themes as the creation of worlds through literary writing, Woolf’s reception as a world writer, world wars and the centenary of the First World War, and natural worlds in Woolf’s writings.

In Virginia Woolf and the Nineteenth-Century Domestic Novel, Emily Blair explores how nineteenth-century descriptions of femininity saturate both Woolf's fiction and her modernist manifestos. Moving between the Victorian and modernist periods, Blair looks at a range of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century sources, including the literature of conduct and household management, as well as autobiography, essay, poetry, and fiction. She argues for a reevaluation of Woolf's persistent yet vexed fascination with English domesticity and female creativity by juxtaposing the novels of Elizabeth Gaskell and Margaret Oliphant, two popular Victorian novelists, against Woolf's own novels and essays. Blair then traces unacknowledged lines of influence and complex interpretations that Woolf attempted to disavow. While reconsidering Woolf's analysis of women and fiction, Blair simultaneously deepens our appreciation of Woolf's work and advances our understanding of feminine aesthetics.

A study of the influence of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century literature on Virginia Woolf's novels and criticism which offers new interpretations and enriches our understanding of Woolf's creative process.

This collection of original essays on Virginia Woolf by leading scholars in the field opens up new debates on the work of one of the foremost modernists of the 20th century. The collection also looks at some of Woolf's own essays, discussing her theory of fiction and devotion to 'stream of consciousness' writing. Its thirteen contributors place this discussion of Woolf's artistic theory and practice within the context of her association with the Bloomsbury Group and her interest in spirituality, feminism, homosexuality, pacifism and psychoanalysis.