This thesis explores the development of Virginia Woolf?s late cultural criticism. While contemporary scholars commonly observe that Woolf shifted her intellectual focus from modernist fiction to cultural criticism in the 1930s, there has been little sustained examination of why and how Woolf?s late cultural criticism evolved during 1930-1941. This thesis aims to contribute just such an investigation to field. My approach here fuses a feminist-historicist approach with the methodology of genetic criticism (critique g?n?tique), a French school of textual studies that traces the evolution of literary works through their compositional histories. Reading across published and unpublished texts in Woolf?s oeuvre, my genetic, feminist-historicist analysis of Woolf emphasises that her late cultural criticism developed from her early feminist politics and dissident aesthetic stance as well as in response to the tempestuous historical circumstances of 1930-1941. As a prelude to my investigation of Woolf?s late output, Chapter 1 traces the genesis of Woolf?s cultural criticism in her early biographical writings. Chapter 2 then scrutinises Woolf?s late turn to cultural criticism through six essays she produced for Good Housekeeping in 1931. Chapter 3 surveys the evolution of Woolf?s critique of patriarchy in Three Guineas (1938) through the voluminous pre-publication documents that link this innovative feminist-pacifist pamphlet to The Years (1937). Finally, Chapter 4 outlines how Woolf?s last novel, Between the Acts (1941), fuses fiction with cultural criticism to debate art?s social role in times of national crisis. The close relationship between formal and political radicalism in Woolf?s late cultural criticism, I conclude, undermines the integrity of viewing Woolf?s oeuvre in two distinct phases?the modernist 1920s and the socially-engaged 1930s? and suggests the danger of using such labels in wider narratives of interwar literature. Woolf?s late cultural criticism, this thesis argues, developed from rather than rejected her earlier experimentalism.

After the Modernist literary experiments of her earlier work, Virginia Woolf became increasingly concerned with overt social and political commentary in her later writings, which are preoccupied with dissecting the links between patriarchy, patriotism, imperialism and war. This book unravels the complex textual histories of The Years (1937), Three Guineas (1938) and Between the Acts (1941) to expose the genesis and evolution of Virginia Woolf's late cultural criticism. Fusing a feminist-historicist approach with the practices and principles of genetic criticism, this innovative study scrutiniz.

After the Modernist literary experiments of her earlier work, Virginia Woolf became increasingly concerned with overt social and political commentary in her later writings, which are preoccupied with dissecting the links between patriarchy, patriotism, imperialism and war. This book unravels the complex textual histories of The Years (1937), Three Guineas (1938) and Between the Acts (1941) to expose the genesis and evolution of Virginia Woolf's late cultural criticism. Fusing a feminist-historicist approach with the practices and principles of genetic criticism, this innovative study scrutinizes a range of holograph, typescript and proof documents within their historical context to uncover the writing and thinking processes that produced Woolf's cultural analysis during 1931-1941. By demonstrating that Woolf's late cultural criticism developed through her literary experimentalism as well as in response to contemporary social, political and economic upheavals, this book offers a fresh perspective on her emergence as a cultural commentator in her final decade and paves the way for further genetic enquiries in the field.

Draws on unpublished historical archives to investigate the writing and thinking processes behind Woolf's inter-war cultural criticism.

Adeline Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) was an English writer. She is widely hailed as being among the most influential modernist authors of the 20th century and a pioneer of stream of consciousness narration. Woolf was a central figure in the feminist criticism movement of the 1970s, her works having inspired countless women to take up the cause. She suffered numerous nervous breakdowns during her life primarily as a result of the deaths of family members, and it is now believed that she may have suffered from bipolar disorder. In 1941, Woolf drowned herself in the River Ouse at Lewes, aged 59. This volume contains a fantastic collection of some of Woolf's best essays and lectures on various subjects ranging from American fiction to the works of Jane Austen, Daniel Defoe, and others. Highly recommended for literature lovers and fans of Woolf's seminal work. Contents include: “Virginia Woolf”, “Joseph Conrad”, “'Jane Eyre' and 'Wuthering Heights'”, “Henry James: The Old Order”, “Modern Fiction”, “Defoe”, “Addison”, “Henry James: Within the Rim”, “The Letters of Henry James”, “Sir Walter Scott. The Antiquary”, “American Fiction”, “Jane Austen”, etc. Read & Co. Great Essays is publishing this brand new collection of classic essays now complete with a specially-commissioned biography of the author.

Drawing on a rich array of archival sources and historical detail, The Politics of 1930s British Literature tells the story of a school-minded decade and illuminates new readings of the politics and aesthetics of 1930s literature. In a period of shifting political claims, educational policy shaped writers' social and gender ideals. This book explores how a wide array of writers including Virginia Woolf, W.H. Auden, George Orwell, Winifred Holtby and Graham Greene were informed by their pedagogic work. It considers the ways in which education influenced writers' analysis of literary style and their conception of future literary forms. The Politics of 1930s British Literature argues that to those perennial symbols of the 1930s, the loudspeaker and the gramophone, should be added the textbook and the blackboard.

A Room of One's Own is a very clear example of how creative thinkers connect and present things in novel ways. Based on the text of a talk given by Virginia Woolf at an all-female Cambridge college, Room considers the subject of 'women and fiction.' Woolf’s approach is to ask why, in the early 20th century, literary history presented so few examples of canonically 'great' women writers. The common prejudices of the time suggested this was caused by (and proof of) women's creative and intellectual inferiority to men. Woolf argued instead that it was to do with a very simple fact: across the centuries, male-dominated society had systematically prevented women from having the educational opportunities, private spaces and economic independence to produce great art. At a time when 'art' was commonly considered to be a province of the mind that had no relation to economic circumstances, this was a novel proposal. More novel, though, was Woolf's manner of arguing and proving her contentions: through a fictional account of the limits placed on even the most privileged women in everyday existence. An impressive early example of cultural materialism, A Room of One's Own is an exemplary encapsulation of creative thinking.