Cecil Woolf is calling all Woolfians, both common readers and scholars!
The publisher and nephew of Leonard and Virginia has proposed a project for Blogging Woolf. And he plans to publish it as a monograph in his Bloomsbury Heritage series.
Cecil has asked us to collect “Virginia Woolf’s Likes and Dislikes” on this blog. Submit your entries in the comments section on this page, citing the source of the quote (Woolf’s Diary or Letters), volume, and page number.
Contributors should also include their name and academic affiliation, if appropriate, so you can be credited for your contribution in the Bloomsbury Heritage volume Cecil plans to edit and publish.
Cecil himself has come up with the first offering. Here’s what he sent Blogging Woolf:
- “I like printing in my basement best, almost: no, I like drinking champagne and getting wildly excited. I like driving off to Rodmell on a hot Friday evening and having cold ham, and sitting on my terrace and smoking a cigar with an owl or two” (Letter to Hugh Walpole, 16 July 1930, Letters IV, 189).
On the previous page in the same volume of Letters, I found the following dislike:
- “I don’t like [J. C.] Squire, but am doubtless jaundiced by my sense of his pervading mediocrity and thick thumbedness” (Letter to Ethel Smyth, 11 July 1930, Letters IV, 188).
Now it’s your turn, fellow Woolfians. Post away in the comments section below.
Or send your entry to bloggingwoolf@yahoo.com.
[...] Woolf likes & dislikes [...]
My first thought–really, the very first–was “chocolate creams!”
Will find the citation for you & return…
Please do. Start the ball rolling!
“I like to think of myself tapping at my father’s study door, saying very loud and clear `Can I have another volume, father? I’ve finished this one’. Then he would be very pleased and say `Gracious child, how you gobble!’”
(Letter to V. Sackville-West, 19 February 1929, Letters IV, 27)
Hi, I am Mavis from Taiwan.
In response to this topic, my first impression is her passion for walking in London.
Mrs. Dalloway claims,“ I love walking in London,” (The first chapter of Mrs. Dalloway)
In one entry of her diaries, Woolf paradoxically claims that “To walk alone in London is the greatest rest.” (The Diary of Virginia Woolf, v3, 29
will try to find out more during the process of my research, this topic is interesting!
Mavis, thanks for submitting your ideas. Add more any time!
Some likes:
1 “But I like the London suburbs in autumn and the immense poetry and I like Hyde Park fading into night…” (Letters, 12 October 1934).
2 ” What I like best is the water meadow onot which our garden opens..” ( Diary, 29 September 1924)
3 ” I would like to have another life, & live it in action ” ( Diary ,8 September 1930)
4 “And L. and I were very extravagant, for the first time inour lives, buying desks, tables… for Rodmell. This gave me pleasure.”
(Diary ,5 June 1929 )
5 “I am more and more attracted by looseness, freedom and eating one´s dinner off a table anywher, having cooked previously.”
( Diary , September 1930)
Some dislikes:
1 “But the money psychology is odd, & that it doesn´t give me enormous pleasure to spend ” ( Diary ,0 November 1927)
2 “but I don´t like women who are vain & lacking in self-confidence at the same time” ( Diary ,23 November 1920)
3 “Why do I dislike unbalanced criticism so much -”
( Diary ,23 November 1920)