4.5
Three Guineas
In 1928 Virginia Woolf gave two speeches at Newnham and Girton Colleges on the subject of 'Women and Fiction' - speeches which went on to become A Room of One's Own, one of the most important feminist texts of all time. Following the success of its publication, Woolf began to craft a follow-up novel-essay with which she intended to tie up the 'loose ends' left by her earlier work. The structure and shape of this follow-up title continued to evolve, however, and it was nearly a decade before Three Guineas appeared in print. Written in response to three letters - an educated gentleman's letter asking for her help in his efforts to prevent war, a letter asking for funds to rebuild a women's college and a letter asking for support for a charity aiding women in finding work - Woolf's three guineas on war, education and work are a level-headed and compassionate voice of reason in a storm of anger and repression. 'An eloquent and impish attack on patriarchal structures.' (Jill Liddington)
Literary CollectionsEssaysLiterary CriticismPhilosophySocial ScienceSociology
RELEASED2023
PUBLISHERRenard Press Limited
LENGTH224
LANGUAGEEN
Virginia Woolf was an English novelist, essayist, diarist, epistler, publisher, feminist, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century. ([Source][1].) [Comment from Ursula Le Guin on The Guardian][2]: > You can't write science fiction well if you haven't read it, though not all who try to write it know this. But nor can you write it well if you haven't read anything else. Genre is a rich dialect, in which you can say certain things in a particularly satisfying way, but if it gives up connection with the general literary language it becomes a jargon, meaningful only to an ingroup. Useful models may be found quite outside the genre. I learned a lot from reading the ever-subversive Virginia Woolf. > I was 17 when I read [Orlando][3]. It was half-revelation, half-confusion to me at that age, but one thing was clear: that she imagined a society vastly different from our own, an exotic world, and brought it dramatically alive. I'm thinking of the Elizabethan scenes, the winter when the Thames froze over. Reading, I was there, saw the bonfires blazing in the ice, felt the marvellous strangeness of that moment 500 years ago – the authentic thrill of being taken absolutely elsewhere. > How did she do it? By precise, specific descriptive details, not heaped up and not explained: a vivid, telling imagery, highly selected, encouraging the reader's imagination to fill out the picture and see it luminous, complete. > In [Flush][4], Woolf gets inside a dog's mind, that is, a non-human brain, an alien mentality – very science-fictional if you look at it that way. Again what I learned was the power of accurate, vivid, highly selected detail. I imagine Woolf looking down at the dog asleep beside the ratty armchair she wrote in and thinking what are your dreams? and listening . . . sniffing the wind . . . after the rabbit, out on the hills, in the dog's timeless world. > Useful stuff, for those who like to see through eyes other than our own. [1]:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Woolf [2]: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/may/14/science-fiction-authors-choice [3]: http://openlibrary.org/works/OL39360W/Orlando [4]: http://openlibrary.org/works/OL39320W/Flush
4.5
Three Guineas
In 1928 Virginia Woolf gave two speeches at Newnham and Girton Colleges on the subject of 'Women and Fiction' - speeches which went on to become A Room of One's Own, one of the most important feminist texts of all time. Following the success of its publication, Woolf began to craft a follow-up novel-essay with which she intended to tie up the 'loose ends' left by her earlier work. The structure and shape of this follow-up title continued to evolve, however, and it was nearly a decade before Three Guineas appeared in print. Written in response to three letters - an educated gentleman's letter asking for her help in his efforts to prevent war, a letter asking for funds to rebuild a women's college and a letter asking for support for a charity aiding women in finding work - Woolf's three guineas on war, education and work are a level-headed and compassionate voice of reason in a storm of anger and repression. 'An eloquent and impish attack on patriarchal structures.' (Jill Liddington)
Literary CollectionsEssaysLiterary CriticismPhilosophySocial ScienceSociology
RELEASED2023
PUBLISHERRenard Press Limited
LENGTH224
LANGUAGEEN
Virginia Woolf was an English novelist, essayist, diarist, epistler, publisher, feminist, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century. ([Source][1].) [Comment from Ursula Le Guin on The Guardian][2]: > You can't write science fiction well if you haven't read it, though not all who try to write it know this. But nor can you write it well if you haven't read anything else. Genre is a rich dialect, in which you can say certain things in a particularly satisfying way, but if it gives up connection with the general literary language it becomes a jargon, meaningful only to an ingroup. Useful models may be found quite outside the genre. I learned a lot from reading the ever-subversive Virginia Woolf. > I was 17 when I read [Orlando][3]. It was half-revelation, half-confusion to me at that age, but one thing was clear: that she imagined a society vastly different from our own, an exotic world, and brought it dramatically alive. I'm thinking of the Elizabethan scenes, the winter when the Thames froze over. Reading, I was there, saw the bonfires blazing in the ice, felt the marvellous strangeness of that moment 500 years ago – the authentic thrill of being taken absolutely elsewhere. > How did she do it? By precise, specific descriptive details, not heaped up and not explained: a vivid, telling imagery, highly selected, encouraging the reader's imagination to fill out the picture and see it luminous, complete. > In [Flush][4], Woolf gets inside a dog's mind, that is, a non-human brain, an alien mentality – very science-fictional if you look at it that way. Again what I learned was the power of accurate, vivid, highly selected detail. I imagine Woolf looking down at the dog asleep beside the ratty armchair she wrote in and thinking what are your dreams? and listening . . . sniffing the wind . . . after the rabbit, out on the hills, in the dog's timeless world. > Useful stuff, for those who like to see through eyes other than our own. [1]:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Woolf [2]: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/may/14/science-fiction-authors-choice [3]: http://openlibrary.org/works/OL39360W/Orlando [4]: http://openlibrary.org/works/OL39320W/Flush
