The Uncollected Letters of Virginia Woolf - by Stephen Barkway & Stuart N Clarke (Hardcover)

About the Book

Gathers over 1,400 uncollected and newly discovered letters from Virginia Woolf.

Book Synopsis

Many previously undiscovered letters from Virginia Woolf have come to light since the original six-volume Collected Letters was published between 1975 and 1980. Over 1,400 are included in this vital new book, illuminating facets of Woolf's life that have previously been hidden or only glimpsed. Important letters to contemporary writers, such as Stella Benson, Rebecca West, Lyn Lloyd Irvine and Berta Ruck, have been unearthed from archives, as well as fifty letters to T. S. Eliot. This book also features substantial collections of letters to Lady Colefax, Winifred Holtby, Mary Hutchinson, Christabel McLaren (Lady Aberconway) and Raymond Mortimer, as well as previously unrecorded correspondents. Through these letters we see Woolf encouraging would-be authors and negotiating with editors, literary agents and foreign translators in her role as a professional writer. The Uncollected Letters of Virginia Woolf provides extraordinary insight into the variety of acquaintance of one of the most fascinating literary figures of the twentieth century.

Review Quotes

The extraordinary erudition, care, detail and thoroughness of [the editors'] work is characteristic of much editorial work on Woolf. [...] The Uncollected Letters surpasses almost all of them in the range of people who march through its pages, each of whom is introduced with a detailed biography, substantial contextual material and multiple cross-references. Often the footnotes are more interesting than the letters, especially when those are simply invitations to tea. And, like Woolf's invitations, these footnotes have personality - something almost unheard of in scholarly editions.

[...] In their painstaking and devoted labours, Stephen Barkway and Stuart N. Clarke have rendered Woolf accessible and legible to all of us in letters, notes and postcards that, like the Ramsays' house in To the Lighthouse, have escaped the engulfing darkness of time.

--Suzanne Raitt "Times Literary Supplement"

This beautifully designed, sturdy volume... is a colossal work of breathtaking dedication and remarkable scholarship. [...] In this meticulously curated volume, the letters, and our delight in them, will--with their laughter, intrigues and crackling fires--run on and on.--Matthew Macer-Wright "Virginia Woolf Bulletin"

...this late in the game - when [Woolf's] essays and letters have been collected, diaries published (then republished in spiffy new editions) and fiction prefaced, annotated and afterworded ad nauseam - it is rare to get a scholarship-altering book. Stephen Barkway and the late Stuart N Clarke have produced just such a volume.

[...] This meticulously edited book, full of Woolf's writing at its glistening best, will surely help critics in their attempts to grasp the author.

--Zoe Guttenplan "Literary Review"

The Uncollected Letters of Virginia Woolf is the most significant contribution to Woolf Studies and the Humanities for decades. This is an immaculate critical work, which is also a major social history, edited by two pre-eminent, expert scholars. The Uncollected Letters sets a gold standard for all such editions in the future.--Maggie Humm, Vice-Chair of the Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain and author of The Bloomsbury Photographs