Description
Book SynopsisCriticism of Woolf is often polarised into viewing her work as either fundamentally progressive or reactionary. In Virginia Woolf and the Victorians, first published in 2007, Steve Ellis tracks Woolf's response to the Victorian era through her fiction and other writings, arguing that Woolf can be seen as more 'Post-Victorian' than 'modernist'.
Trade Review'There is … a fascinating and thought-provoking examination, recurring throughout the book, of light and shadow in her work.' Virginia Woolf Bulletin
'… refreshingly unassuming, accessible style, Virginia Woolf and the Victorians is really a grand sweep of a book, a comprehensive and evolutionary look at the ambivalent response to the Victorian period contained in Woolf's fiction, essays, letters and diaries. … Ellis convincingly argues for a new and more balanced evaluation of the Woolfian retrospect as 'a complex relationship of difference and debt'.' Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen
'… Virginia Woolf and the Victorians contains much of genuine interest to neo-Victorian researchers, as well as scholars of Woolf and Modernism.' Marie-Luise Kohlk, Swansea University
'The conclusion of this study, which is both well referenced and carefully considered, is that Virginia Woolf's 'deep sense of the unchanging' overshadows her commitment to the modern.' Contemporary Review
'… an extremely well thought out, provoking and highly scholarly study …' Cuadernos de Literatura Inglesa y Norteamericana
'… helpful, suggestive, and important study … a keystone text in Virginia Woolf's lifelong fascination with her Victorian inheritance.' Woolf Studies Annual
Table of ContentsIntroduction; 1. Reclamation: Night and Day; 2. Synchronicity: Mrs Dalloway; 3. Integration: To the Lighthouse; 4. Disillusion: The Years; 5. Incoherence: the final works; Conclusion.
