-

 TODAY IN LITERARY HISTORY:
Birthday of Virginia Woolf (1882)  
An English writer and one of the foremost modernists of the twentieth century.

More than seventy years after her death, Virginia Woolf continues to be a source of inspiration, analysis, interest, and admiration.

Emphasis on a small number of famous events in her lifetime has turned her into a mythological figure that, at times, may have little resemblance to the flesh-and-blood woman behind the brand. 

Did You know:

In April 1935, Virginia and Leonard Woolf decided to drive through Germany as part of their annual holiday. Although they made light of the possible dangers of this endeavor, in Bonn they found the streets lined with Nazi supporters awaiting the arrival of Hermann Goering.

Leonard would later recall that, for miles, he ‘drove between two lines of frenzied Germans’ who, at the sight of their pet monkey Mitz, delightedly shouted ‘Heil Hitler!’ and ‘gave her (and secondarily Virginia and me) the Hitler salute with outstretched arm.’ Virginia, for her part, raised her hand and waved back.

And a FUN FACT

When Virginia and Leonard Woolf, who together ran the Hogarth Press, received the manuscript of the first chapters of James Joyce’s Ulysses, they turned it down for publication because it was impossible to print the entire book on their handpress.

An often told, and no doubt often embellished family anecdote recalled how James Pattle, Virginia Woolf’s great-grandfather on her mother’s side, notoriously drank himself to death. As a member of the Bengal Civil Service, Pattle had to be sent back to England in a cask of rum. During a storm, however, the cask exploded, and his widow, at the shock of seeing her late husband’s body in such a state, died instantaneously. The soldiers aboard the ship, or so the disputed story goes, drank the rum.


Building Great Collections, One Fine Book at a Time
Visit us at BlindHorseBooks.com


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

-
Image
 Today in Literary History: BIRTH OF G. K. CHESTERTON (1874 – 1936)   G.K. Chesterton was a fascinating figure in literary history, known for his wit, intellect, and prolific writing career a lay theologian, poet, philosopher, dramatist, journalist, orator, literary and art critic, biographer, and Christian apologist. Chesterton is often referred to as the "prince of paradox."      Time magazine has observed his writing style: "Whenever possible Chesterton made his points with popular sayings, proverbs, allegories—first carefully turning them inside out."       Chesterton's writing had a significant impact on various literary figures, including J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. Both Tolkien and Lewis credited Chesterton's works as influential in their own writings and philosophical development. Did You Know.....  ..... Chesterton was a large man, standing at around 6 feet 4 inches (193 cm) tall and weighing over 300 pounds He had a...
Read more
-
Image
 TODAY IN LITERARY HISTORY: April 19 Welsh writer Richard Hughes (1900 – 1976) was born Richard Hughes was brought up in the West Indies in Jamaica and only wrote only four novels, the most famous of which is The Innocent Voyage (1929), or A High Wind in Jamaica, as Hughes renamed it soon after its initial publication.   Set in the 19th century, it explores the events which follow the accidental capture of a group of English children by pirates: the children are revealed as considerably more amoral than the pirates (it was in this novel that Hughes first described the cocktail Hangman's Blood, recipe below). During 1938, he wrote an allegorical novel In Hazard based on the true story of the S.S. Phemius that was caught in the 1932 Cuba hurricane for 4 days during its maximum intensity. He also wrote volumes of children's stories, including The Spider's Palace, plays and poetry.   A High Wind in Jamaica was made into a film of the same name in 1965. The book was initially ...
Read more
-
Image
TODAY IN LITERARY HISTORY April 24 1905 Birth of Robert Penn Warren, Novelist, America’s First Poet Laureate. He is the sole individual to have earned Pulitzer Prizes in both fiction and poetry. His novel All the King's Men (1946) garnered him the 1947 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, while he received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in both 1958 and 1979. Warren's work spans both poetry and prose, and his ability to excel in both fields sets him apart. His poetry, characterized by its intellectual depth and emotional resonance, earned him two Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry (1958, 1979). As a novelist, his most famous work, All the King's Men (1946), won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1947 and is considered one of the greatest American novels. The novel’s exploration of political corruption and moral ambiguity remains a key text in American literary studies. Warren was one of the founding figures of New Criticism, a dominant literary movement in the mid-20th century. This approach ...
Read more