New titles by Cecil Woolf Publishers

Cecil Woolf Publishers’ new monographs usually come out in June to coincide with the Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, but publication of the 2012 monographs was delayed. Now, the long-awaited list of new volumes in his two series, the Bloomsbury Heritage and The War Poets, is here.

Bloomsbury Heritage Series

• Virginia Woolf and the Spanish Civil War: Texts, Contexts & Women’s Narratives by Lolly Ockerstrom
• Walking in the Footsteps of Michel de Montaigne by Judith Allen
• Virginia Woolf as a ‘Cubist Writer’ by Sarah Latham Phillips
• How Should One Read a Marriage?: Private Writings, Public Readings, and Leonard and Virginia Woolf by Drew Patrick Shannon
• The Best of Blogging Woolf, Five Years On by Paula Maggio
• Virginia Woolf’s Likes and Dislikes, Collected and Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Paula Maggio

The War Poets Series

• Isaac Rosenberg, War Poet as Painter by Jean Moorcroft Wilson
• T.E. Hulme: ‘One of the War Poets’ by David Worthington
• Apollinaire: Poet of War and Peace by Jacqueline Peltier
• Alan Seeger: the American Rupert Brooke? by Phil Carradice
• Soldier Songs of the Second World War, selected and edited with an Introduction and Notes by Roger Press

See a complete list of the monographs in both of these series.

All of the books published by Cecil Woolf Publishers are available directly from:

Cecil Woolf Publishing, 1 Mornington Place, London NW1 7RP, England, Tel: 020 7387 2394 (or +44 (0)20 7387 2394 from outside the UK). Prices range from £4.50 to £9.95. For more information, contact cecilwoolf@gmail.com.

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Remembrance Day coverage features Cecil and Jean

Cecil Woolf and Jean Moorcroft Wilson

Jean Moorcroft Wilson and Cecil Woolf are featured in an article about World War I poet Edward Thomas posted today on the Islington Tribune website.

Wilson, who is writing a biography of Thomas, spoke about him at an event at the Imperial War Museum on the eve of Remembrance Day. She is the author of biographies of World War I poets Isaac Rosenberg (2005) and Siegfried Sassoon (2009).

Churchill biographer Martin Wilson also spoke at the event, describing the conditions on the Western Front during the Great War.

Wilson serves as editor for many monographs in the Bloomsbury Heritage Series and the War Poets Series published by her husband, Cecil Woolf of Cecil Woolf Publishers, which is based in London.

She also wrote the text that every Woolfian consults when planning a trip to England in the hopes of following in Virginia Woolf’s footsteps. It’s titled Virginia Woolf, Life and London: A Biography of Place.

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Pondering differences between writing fiction and letters

I love getting post from abroad. Everything about it is charming: the feel of the envelope, the look of the stamps, even the fact that “U.S.A.” is included in the address.

I never rip it right open. I usually hold the letter in my hands for a minute, thinking about the long distance it has come, the water it has crossed, the person on the other end who has taken the time to sit down and put pen to paper.

Sometimes I have to wait for the right moment before I can open it. I never want to read a letter from abroad when I am agitated or in a hurry or distracted by some mundane matter.

But when the moment is right, I settle down on my favorite sofa, the one where the late afternoon sun slants across my shoulder. In that calm and quiet spot, I carefully slit open the envelope. I sip the words slowly, letting them swish around in my mind. I savor their flavor and their meaning. I note their nuances and subtleties. I picture the person who wrote it and the place where he wrote.

A letter, an old-fashioned handwritten letter from abroad, is something I can tuck in my book and read again later. It is something I can take with me wherever I go. It is something I can save forever, tied up with others like it, bound together and stored in a drawer.

So where is the Virginia Woolf connection in all of this? Well, we all know she wrote and received lots of letters — volumes in fact. Five of them sit on my bookshelf.

But two other things have made me think about letters. The first was a note I received from Cecil Woolf, nephew of Leonard and Virginia, who wrote to say that he and his wife Jean Moorcroft Wilson had spent 12 days in South Africa, where they spoke at the University of Capetown. Cecil’s talk was titled “As I Remember Them: Virginia and Leonard Woolf.” His missive was dated Jan. 26, and I thought about the significance of that date as well.

Cecil Woolf

The second thing that made me think about letters was the much-discussed news that Angelica Garnett has published a new volume of short stories, The Unspoken Truth: A Quartet of Bloomsbury Stories. These stories are not letters. But Garnett has been quoted as saying that the stories are autobiographical, not invented, for the most part.

Those things led me to ponder the similarities between real life and fiction and the differences between real life stories and the lives we share via letters. Both are edited, either formally or informally. Both alter the realities of our daily lives. Both stay true to those realities.

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Meeting up with Virginia and friends on CD

Last night I spoke about walking in Virginia Woolf’s footsteps when I traveled to England several years ago. The occasion was a meeting of the Medina County Branch of AAUW.

As I talked about the sights and sounds of London, Sussex, Kent and Cornwall that connect to Virginia’s life and work, several thoughts struck me.

Since AAUW is an organization that promotes equity for women in girls in both the workplace and in educational settings, I felt compelled to remark on Virginia’s lack of opportunity for formal education.

And since I spoke about meeting Cecil Woolf and Dr. Ruth Gruber at Woolf conferences — two people who had known or met Virginia — I got to thinking about how special it is to have seen and heard her in person.

Those experiences are impossible for us today. But a two-disc CD set from the British Library allows us to experience Virginia and other members of the Bloomsbury group in another way.

“The Spoken Word: The Bloomsbury Group” came out this month. Producers searched  the BBC archives to present 24 recordings of the group’s major figures talking in their own words. Many of them are rare and previously unreleased.

According to the London Review Bookshop‘s Web site, “Highlights include Virginia Woolf talking about the importance of language, Leonard Woolf’s who’s who of the Bloomsburys, Duncan Grant discussing the infamous ‘Dreadnought’ hoax and Elizabeth Bowen describing legendary Bloomsbury parties.” You can get the full list here.

Woolf’s voice, along with those of other great writers of the 20th century, can also be heard on a three-disc set of CDs produced by the British Library called “The Spoken Word: British Writers.” Read more.

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The Rumpus covers two Woolfs: Cecil and the Conference

Cecil Woolf

In a former life, I was a journalist. In another former life, I was a public relations and marketing person. So a week or two before Woolf and the City, I started thinking like both again.

Here’s why. I knew Cecil Woolf was coming to the conference. I knew the conference was in New York City. I knew New York City is full of media.

So I thought, “What journalist who covers the literary beat wouldn’t want to interview the nephew of Leonard and Virginia Woolf who is also an independent publisher?” None, I thought.

As it turns out though, either I was wrong or the current economic downturn has affected New York media more than I imagined. Only one media outlet, The Rumpus, responded to my pitch.

But respond they did, and this week the online magazine posted a fascinating interview with Cecil, as well as a first-person account of the conference. Both are written by Sasha Graybosch.

Thanks to conference organizer Anne Fernald and her intern Megan Branch for putting me in touch with The Rumpus. And thanks to Rumpus editor Rozalia Jovanovic for recognizing a good story when she sees one.

Here is a different view of Cecil on the Lux Lotus blog.

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Meet Cecil Woolf at Woolf and the City

My headline is a blatant come-on. I know that. But I simply can’t resist shouting out loud in cyberspace about Cecil Woolf’s appearance at the Woolf conference.

And that’s not just because he is my publisher. It’s actually because he is such a dear — and the nephew of Leonard and Virginia Woolf to boot.

I met Cecil Woolf at the 17th Annual International Conference on Woolf, which was held in 2007 at Miami University of Ohio, within driving distance of my Northeast Ohio home.

It was my first Woolf conference, and I felt slightly intimidated — despite my advanced age — as I stood by myself at the opening reception. There I was, surrounded by the brilliant Woolf scholars whose books were my friends, even though the writers themselves were complete strangers to me.

Drew Patrick Shannon, a young Woolf scholar from the Cincinnati area, sort of took me under his wing that evening. He and his friends were funny and bright, and they seemed to know everyone. One person they knew — and pointed out to me — was Cecil Woolf.

The next day, while browsing the book tables, I lingered at the one covered with artfully decorated softcover volumes published by Cecil Woolf  Publishers. It was staffed by Cecil himself, and our conversation lasted right through the next conference session.

One conversation led to another, and by the time I drove home from Oxford, I had agreed to write a monograph for Cecil on Woolf and weather, a topic I had been researching and musing about for six years. 

Drew, who congratulated me that day but wondered aloud what idea he could pitch to Cecil, is now writing How Should One Read a Marriage? Private Writings, Public Readings, and Leonard and Virginia Woolf. It will be published in Cecil’s Bloomsbury Heritage Series later this year. 

So if you are on the fence about attending the conference, get off the fence and into the city. Even if you have to beg, borrow or steal the $45 for a one-day pass.

Besides all of the fabulous sessions on the conference schedule, believe this: You won’t want to pass up the opportunity to meet Cecil Woolf. You never know what may come of it. 

Stop by the opening reception for the conference, from 6 to 7:30 p.m. June 4, where I will be signing copies of my monograph, Reading the Skies in Virginia Woolf: Woolf on Weather in Her Essays, Her Diaries and Three of Her Novels. Cecil will be there too.

The signing will be held  in Fordham University’s Lowenstein Plaza Lobby, 113 W. 60th St. in New York’s Lincoln Center.

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