Abstract
The chapter considers Virginia Woolf’s preface to a collection of testimonials by autodidact members of the Women’s Cooperative Guild, Life as We Have Known It, against Leonard Woolf’s involvement with the Cooperative Society to explore social class, education and writing. Where Melba Cuddy-Keane (2003) argues that Woolf’s preface offers a ‘hopeful’, future ‘combinatory vision’ of cross-class literary discourse, this chapter focuses on the transitional present. Consideration of two published versions of Woolf’s response to the memoirs, ‘Memories of a Working Women’s Guild’ and the ‘Introductory Letter’, is employed to argue that Woolf consolidates the polyphonic qualities of the text’s narrative voice to mitigate criticisms of the memoirs’ literary value. Woolf validates the memoirs as a record of human strength as she distinguishes between democratic art and working-class writing.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Works Cited
Barrett, M. 2013. Virginia Woolf’s Research for Empire and Commerce in Africa (Leonard Woolf, 1920). Woolf Studies Annual 19: 83–122.
Black, N. 2004. Virginia Woolf as Feminist. London: Cornell University Press.
Bowlby, R. 1992. Introduction. In A Woman’s Essays, Virginia Woolf, ix–xxxiii. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Childers, M. 1992. Virginia Woolf on the Outside Looking Down. MFS 38 (1): 61–79.
Clarke, B. 2007. ‘But the Barrier Is Impassable’: Virginia Woolf and Class. In Woolfian Boundaries: Selected Papers from the Sixteenth Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, ed. A. Burrells, S. Ellis, D. Parsons, and K. Simpson, 36–42. Clemson: Clemson University Digital Press.
Cuddy-Keane, M. 2003. Virginia Woolf, The Intellectual and the Public Sphere. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Davin, A., and G. Dallas. 2012. Afterword. In Life as We Have Known It: The Voices of Working Class Women, ed. M.L. Davies, 158–163. London: Virago.
Fordham, F. 2010. I Do I Undo I Redo: The Textual Genesis of Modernist Selves. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Fox, R.M. 1928. The Triumphant Machine. London: Hogarth Press.
Giles, J. 1995. Women, Identity and Private Life in Britain 1900–1950. Basingstoke: Macmillan.
Hilliard, C. 2006. To Exercise Our Talents the Democratization of Writing in Britain. London. Harvard University Press.
Hirst, E. 1913. As Ithers See Us. The Cooperative News, 21 June, 800.
Hoggart, R. 1957. The Uses of Literacy. London: Chatto and Windus.
Jones, C. 2016. Virginia Woolf: Ambivalent Activist. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Lehmann, J. 1941. A Postscript. Folios of New Writing 3: 42–46.
Livesey, R. 2007. Socialism in Bloomsbury: Virginia Woolf and the Political Aesthetics of the 1880s. The Yearbook of English Studies 37 (1): 126–144.
Llewelyn Davies, M. 1912. Colleges for Working Women. The Cooperative News, 10 August, 1003.
———. (ed.). 2012. Life as We Have Known It: The Voices of Working Class Women. London: Virago.
Marcus, J. 1977. ‘No More Horses’: Virginia Woolf on Art and Propaganda. Women’s Studies 4: 265–90.
Periyan, N. 2017. ‘Altering the Structure of Society’: An Institutional Focus on Virginia Woolf and Working-Class Education in the 1930s. Textual Practice, published online 25 January. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0950236X.2017.1280075. Date accessed 5 June 2017.
———. 2018. The Politics of 1930s British Literature: Education, Gender, Class. London: Bloomsbury.
Rose, J. 2001 The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes. London: Yale University Press.
Snaith, A. 2000. Virginia Woolf: Public and Private Negotiations. Basingstoke: Macmillan.
Snaith, A., and C. Kenyon-Jones. 2010. Tilting at Universities: Virginia Woolf at King’s College London. Woolf Studies Annual 16: 1–44.
Southworth, H. 2010. ‘Going over’: The Woolfs, The Hogarth Press and Working-Class Voices. In Leonard and Virginia Woolf: The Hogarth Press and the Networks of Modernism, ed. H. Southworth, 206–233. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Unsigned Article. 1913. Congress on Tuesday Morning. The Cooperative News, 21 June, 768–771.
———. 1913. Wednesday at Congress. The Cooperative News, 21 June, 794–798.
Unsigned Review. 1931. New Books and Reprints. The TLS, 2 April, 272.
Wood, A. 2014. Facing Life as We Have Known It: Virginia Woolf and the Women’s Cooperative Guild. Literature & History 23 (2): 18–34.
Woolf, L. 1914. Women’s Cooperative Guild Papers for Guides January 1914: Education and the Cooperative Movement. London: Women’s Cooperative Guild.
———. 1964. Beginning Again. London: Hogarth Press.
Woolf, V. 1976. The Letters of Virginia Woolf Volume II 1912–1922, ed. N. Nicolson. London: Hogarth Press.
———. 1978. The Letters of Virginia Woolf Volume IV 1929–1931, ed. N. Nicolson. London: Hogarth Press.
———. 1980. The Diary of Virginia Woolf 1925–1930, ed. A.O. Bell and A. McNeillie. London: Hogarth Press.
———. 1994a. The Common Reader. In The Essays of Virginia Woolf Volume IV 1925–1928, ed. A. McNeillie, 19. London: Hogarth Press.
———. 1994b. The Niece of an Earl. In The Essays of Virginia Woolf Volume IV 1925–1928, ed. A. McNeillie, 559–563. London: Hogarth Press.
———. 2000. A Room of One’s Own and Three Guineas. London: Penguin.
———. 2009a. Introductory Letter to Margaret Llewelyn Davies. In The Essays of Virginia Woolf Volume 5 1929–1932, ed. S. Clarke, 225–241. London: Hogarth Press.
———. 2009b. Memories of a Working Women’s Guild. In The Essays of Virginia Woolf Volume 5 1929–1932, ed. S. Clarke, 176–194. London: Hogarth Press.
———. 2009c. The Niece of an Earl. In The Essays of Virginia Woolf Volume 5: 1929–1932, ed. S. Clarke, 529–34. London: Hogarth Press.
———. 2011. The Leaning Tower. In The Essays of Virginia Woolf Volume 6: 1933–1941, ed. S. Clarke, 259–283. London: Hogarth Press.
Woolf, V., H. Baerlein, A. Bennett, J.D. Beresford, H. Fyfe, J. Galsworthy, C. Mackenzie, A. Ollivant, J. Oxenham, E. Phillpotts, and H. Walpole. 1924. What Is a Good Novel? A Symposium. The Highway 16 (Summer): 100–110.
Woolmer, J.H. 1976. A Checklist of the Hogarth Press 1917–1938. London: Hogarth Press.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to the Cooperative Society for the use of their archives and to Clara Jones who offered feedback on a section of this work.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Periyan, N. (2018). Democratic Art or Working-Class Literature? Virginia Woolf, the Women’s Cooperative Guild and Literary Value in the ‘Introductory Letter’. In: Clarke, B., Hubble, N. (eds) Working-Class Writing. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96310-5_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96310-5_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-96309-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-96310-5
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)