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Victory

September 28, 2012 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, further reading, and web links

Victory (1915) was first conceived by Conrad as a short story to be called The Dollars. But like many of his planned fictions it expanded as soon as he started writing, and went on to become one of his longest novels. The original manuscript was much longer than the final work, which was first published in serial form in Munsey’s Magazine (New York).

Joseph Conrad

Victory – critical commentary

Narrative

Part I of the novel is introduced by an un-named outer narrator who recounts events largely passed on to him by Captain Davidson from his travels and knowledge of the region in which the novel is set. This type of indirect narrative strategy will be familiar to anyone who has read Conrad’s other works, such as Lord Jim (1900), Falk: A Reminiscence (1903), and Under Western Eyes (1911). It supplies what might be called the ‘back story’ to the events which will follow in Parts II-IV.

Readers are forced to conceptualise the portrait of Axel Heyst through the double filter of Davidson’s and the narrator’s point of view – whilst keeping in mind that both of these are fictional constructs created by Conrad himself.

But from Part II onwards, the outer-narrator disappears, and events are presented in a third person omniscient narrative mode. It is as if Conrad has forgotten his own original narrative structure and has reverted to the more traditional and flexible mode of story-telling. Davidson makes a credulity-straining re-appearance like some deus-ex-machina in the final pages of the novel – but the outer-narrator never re-appears.

In fact the last few pages of the novel are an account written in third-person omniscient mode of Davidson’s interview with a government official – so in logical terms Conrad does not supply any credible means by which this information is reaching the reader.

Even if the reader accepts this blurring of distinctions between a first and third-person narrator, there remain problems with the narrative logic. In Part I of the story Davidson is puzzled and curious regarding Lena, and a great deal is made of the fact that he doesn’t know what she looks like.

But either a third-person omniscient narrator must know what she looks like, or the disappearance of the un-named outer narrator needs to be explained.

More seriously, there is no plausible route (other than via a third person omniscient narrator) for information regarding Heyst’s and Lena’s feelings about each other, and their anxieties during the dramatic finale – since they are both dead at of the end of the novel.

This is a problem of narrative logic which affects many of Conrad’s major novels. Similar issues affect Chance, Lord Jim, and Under Western Eyes. Readers and serious critics of his work seem to accept these compositional flaws in exchange for the dramatic intensity of his stories.

Doubles

The central drama of the novel is provided by the battle of wills and war of nerves as Mr Jones and Ricardo invade Heyst’s secure retreat and corner him in an attempt to steal his ‘treasure’. Jones wants Heyst’s money (which doesn’t really exist), and Ricardo wants to steal Lena from him.

Yet Jones and Heyst are curiously similar. Both of them have been restless wanderers, detatched from society, and both have adopted a negative attitude to the world. Heyst wishes to escape into solitude, and Jones spends most of his time alone, nursing his febrile state of being. Jones has murdered Antonio, Pedro’s brother, and Heyst is (falsely) accused of ‘murdering’ his business partner Morrison when he sends him back to England.

In another sense they are the opposite of each other. Heyst is a robust, masculine figure whose physical presence is repeatedly emphasised. Jones on the other hand is thin, etiolated and feminised. He has ‘long, feminine eyelashes’, ‘beautifully pencilled eyebrows’, and he last appears ‘tightly enfolded in an old but gorgeous blue silk dressing gown’.

Victory – study resources

Victory – Oxford World Classics – Amazon UK

Victory – Oxford World Classics – Amazon US

Victory – Kindle eBook

Victory – DVD film adaptation at Amazon [Region 1]

Victory – eBook at Project Gutenberg

Complete Works of Joseph Conrad – Kindle £1.92

Victory – film details at International Movie Database

The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad – Amazon UK

Routledge Guide to Joseph Conrad – Amazon UK

Oxford Reader’s Companion to Conrad – Amazon UK

Victory – plot summary

Part I

As a sudden gesture of generosity, the Swedish recluse Axel Heyst pays the shipping fine incurred by Morrison, an Englishman he has only just met. They then go into a business partnership trading in coal for the newly developed steamships. Morrison returns to England but dies there. Heyst is appointed general manager of the Tropical Belt Coal Company, and at first prospers. But the company goes into liquidation, and disillusioned with life in general Heyst becomes almost a hermit on the remote island of Samburan.

His colleague Captain Davidson passes on news of Heyst, then brings him in person to Schomberg’s hotel in Surabaya. When he returns to pick him up again, he learns from Mrs Schomberg that Heyst has run off with a young girl from a visiting all-female orchestra. When Davidson next visits Samburan, Heyst asks him to return Mrs Schomberg’s shawl with which she has aided their escape. Davidson returns the shawl but fails to learn anything further about the girl.

Part II

Heyst meets Lena playing in the orchestra at Schomberg’s hotel in Surabaya where she is being bullied by the leader’s wife and pursued by hotelier Schomberg. Heyst and Lena rendezvous in the garden at night where she pleads for his assistance and offers herself to him sexually. Schomberg is eaten up with jealousy regarding this liaison.

The two desperados Jones and Ricardo arrive at the hotel with their servant Pedro. They bully Schomberg into accepting their scheme for gambling on the premises. Ricardo eventually recounts their history to Schomberg – an account which involves deception, theft, and murder as the backdrop to their joint life as wandering gamblers. In order to get them out of his hotel, Schomberg tells them that Heyst has killed his business partner Morrison, stolen all his money, and is now a rich man living in vulnerable isolation on Samburan.

Part III

On Samburan Heyst recounts to Lena how he first set himself up on the island with his Chinese servant Wang. He also explains the powerful influence of his father, a writer-philosopher who has inculcated him with a defensive and rather negative attitude to life. When he also reveals to her his past business with Morrison, Lena tells him of the malicious lies Schomberg has been spreading amongst hotel guests. They discuss his pessimistic views and his inability to express the protective love he feels towards her.

Then Jones, Ricardo, and Pedro arrive at the island. Heyst gives them shelter, but immediately becomes apprehensive regarding their intrusion into his relationship with Lena. When his revolver disappears, he immediately suspects his servant Wang (which proves to be correct). Jones and Ricardo discuss the prospects for success in their venture to steal Heyst’s ‘treasure’.

Part IV

Ricardo sneaks around looking for Lena, then attacks her in the bungalow. She fights him off, then helps him to escape in order to protect Heyst. Meanwhile Wang, having witnessed the attack, announces to Heyst that he is leaving. Heyst holds inconclusive talks with Jones, who insists that Pedro become his servant. Heyst decides to look for Wang, whilst Jones plans to gamble with Heyst to secure all his money.

Heyst seeks Wang’s help, but it is refused. Heyst realises that he is powerless and is trapped. Ricardo arrives to invite Heyst to see Jones, who is feigning illness. Heyst urges Lena to escape to the other side of the island, then visits Jones, where he reveals the truth of their situation, including the presence of Lena. Since Jones is a profound misogynist, this turns him against Ricardo. When they return to Heyst’s bungalow, Jones shoots at Ricardo, but kills Lena who has remained to protect Heyst. At this very moment Davidson suddenly arrives. Jones tracks down Ricardo and kills him, then apparently commits suicide. Heyst creates a funeral pyre for himself and Lena by setting the bungalow on fire.

Principal characters

I	the un-named outer narrator
Axel Heyst	a Swedish former manager of the Tropical Belt Coal company
Morrison	the English owner of trading ship Capricorn
Wilhelm Schomberg	a German hotel proprietor in Surabaya (45)
Mrs Schomberg	his ugly, wooden-like wife
Captain Davidson	captain of the merchant vessel, the Sissie
Julius Tesman	trading agent in Surabaya
Lena	a beautiful violin player (20) (also called Alma and Magdalena)
Sgr Zangiacomo	leader of the all-female orchestra
Sgra Zangiacomo	his obnoxious and bullying wife
Mr Jones	a gambler and murderer
Martin Ricardo	his ‘secretary’ – a desperado
Pedro	a Colombian alligator hunter, their servant
Antonio	Pedro’s brother, who is shot by Jones
Wang	Heyst’s Chinese servant

Biography

Setting

The first part of the novel is set in Surabaya, a provincial capital in East Java. The remainder and majority of the events take place on the ficticious island of Samburan, which is located somewhere in the Malaysian archipelago.

Joseph Conrad’s writing

Manuscript page from Heart of Darkness

Other works by Joseph Conrad

Lord Jim (1900) is the earliest of Conrad’s big and serious novels, and it explores one of his favourite subjects – cowardice and moral redemption. Jim is a ship’s captain who in youthful ignorance commits the worst offence – abandoning his ship. He spends the remainder of his adult life in shameful obscurity in the South Seas, trying to re-build his confidence and his character. What makes the novel fascinating is not only the tragic but redemptive outcome, but the manner in which it is told. The narrator Marlowe recounts the events in a time scheme which shifts between past and present in an amazingly complex manner. This is one of the features which makes Conrad (born in the nineteenth century) considered one of the fathers of twentieth century modernism.
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Heart of Darkness (1902) is a tightly controlled novella which has assumed classic status as an account of the process of Imperialism. It documents the search for a mysterious Kurtz, who has ‘gone too far’ in his exploitation of Africans in the ivory trade. The reader is plunged deeper and deeper into the ‘horrors’ of what happened when Europeans invaded the continent. This might well go down in literary history as Conrad’s finest and most insightful achievement, and it is based on his own experiences as a sea captain. This volume also contains ‘An Outpost of Progress’ – the magnificent study in shabby cowardice which prefigures ‘Heart of Darkness’.
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Oxford World Classics offers the best editions of Conrad’s work. They are largely based on the most accurate versions of the texts; and they feature introductory essays, a biography, explanatory notes, textual variants, a bibliography of further reading, and in some cases missing or deleted chapters. They are also terrifically good value.

Nostromo (1904) is Conrad’s ‘big’ political novel – into which he packs all of his major subjects and themes. It is set in the imaginary Latin-American country of Costaguana – and features a stolen hoard of silver, desperate acts of courage, characters trembling on the brink of moral panic. The political background encompasses nationalist revolution and the Imperialism of foreign intervention. Silver is the pivot of the whole story – revealing the courage of some and the corruption and destruction of others. Conrad’s narration is as usual complex and oblique. He begins half way through the events of the revolution, and proceeds by way of flashbacks and glimpses into the future.
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Joseph Conrad links

Joseph Conrad at Mantex
Biography, book reviews, study guides, videos, web links,

Joseph Conrad at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of free eTexts

Joseph Conrad at Wikipedia
Biography, major works, further reading, and web links

Joseph Conrad at the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations for the cinema and television – in various languages

Works by Joseph Conrad
HTML texts, digital scans, and eTexts versions

The Joseph Conrad Society (UK)
Conradian journal, reviews. and scholarly resources

Hyper-Concordance of Conrad’s works
Locate a word or phrase – in context

More on Joseph Conrad
Twentieth century literature
More on Joseph Conrad tales

Vile Bodies

March 11, 2018 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, study guide, commentary, web links

Vile Bodies (1930) was Evelyn Waugh’s second novel, published as a follow-up to the success of his first – Decline and Fall (1928). It uses the same formula of presenting a farcical and deeply satirical portrait of the 1920s and the Wild Young Things who became the upper-class celebrities of the decade. It also features other aspects of modern society which help to fuel the culture of fashionable excess – tabloid journalism, artificially cultivated publicity, and the cinema.

first edition – design by Evelyn Waugh

Vile Bodies – commentary

Narrative presentation

The most interesting thing about the narrative is the manner in which so much of it is presented via short and very rapidly changing scenes. The effect is almost like the abrupt editing of cinema film to produce ‘jump cuts’ – and probably reflects the influence of moving pictures at that time. It is a style perfectly suited to the frivolous and erratic behaviour of the characters in the story.

Waugh was setting out to capture the irresponsible and anarchic behaviour amongst the youthful offspring of a privileged elite in the 1920s – which in America was labelled ‘the Jazz Age’. This featured mis-spent wealth, reckless self-indulgence, warped ambitions, greed, and sexual libertinism – all fuelled on a heady mixture of alcohol and (some) drugs. It was also a culture in which Evelyn Waugh had plenty of first hand experience.

Indeed, crass and unprofessional film production becomes one of the objects of satire towards the end of the novel. And Waugh takes great delight in presenting the two people who own the production company (Mr Isaacs and Colonel Blount) as interested in little else except trying to get rid of what is obviously a financial loss-maker by selling the business on to somebody else.

Waugh treats newspaper journalism in a similar fashion – concentrating on the frivolous and inconsequential parts of popular newspaper gossip columns. The upper-class journalists merely record the names of so-called celebrities who have been ‘seen’ at fashionable events in society. And if they are stuck for news, they invent it. When Adam becomes ‘Mr Chatterbox’ on the Daily Excess, the paper is being sued by various celebrities for libel, and who therefore cannot be mentioned. (This is almost one hundred years before the Leveson Enquiry into phone hacking and the ethics of the British press.)

Adam spices up the flagging column with a series of ‘Notable Invalids’ – well known people who are deaf, bald, disabled, one-legged, and certified insane. When he has exhausted this line of entertainment, he begins to invent celebrities who do not actually exist. He creates the society beauty Imogen Quest and fills his column with her spectacular successes and designer clothes. Eventually she becomes so popular that the editor of The Daily Excess Lord Monomark wants to meet her. Adam is forced to despatch the Quest family to Jamaica the same day.

Waugh had worked as a journalist for Lord Beaverbrook, the Canadian-born owner of the Daily Express – and he used the joke about journalists inventing what we now call ‘fake news’ in his later novel Scoop (1938).

The ending

There are two curious features in the conclusion of the novel. The first is the fact that all the farcical goings-on of the plot are brought to an abrupt stop by the declaration of war. For a book published in 1930, the reader is forced to wonder ‘What war is that?’ The text does does not refer to the war of 1914-18, and the Second World War was still a decade away. It turns out to be an imaginary war, which does not sit easily with the essentially realistic mise en scene of the remainder of the novel.

The antics of the Bright Young Things might be comically exaggerated, but they are set in a credible world of London and the home counties – of Mayfair, Shepherd’s Market, Fitzrovia, and Manchester Races. But a war which had not taken place is a different fictional – and moral – universe altogether.

The second curiosity is the abrupt shift in tone – from frivolous satire to an almost apocalyptic vision of battleground Europe – largely constructed of images derived from the trench warfare of 1914-1918. It has often been remarked that Evelyn Waugh’s rather painful divorce from his first wife (who was also called Evelyn) occurred during the composition of Vile Bodies. This may be a reasonable biographical explanation for the sudden change of mood, but it does not repair the damage done to the novel’s structural coherence.

Vile Bodies – study resources

Vile Bodies – Penguin – Amazon UK

Vile Bodies – Penguin – Amazon US

Evelyn Waugh: A Life Revisited – Amazon UK

Evelyn Waugh – by Henry Lamb

Vile Bodies – plot summary

Returning from France, Adam Fenwick-Symes has the manuscript of his autobiography seized and burnt by the border customs officers. His publishers give him a new contract, but with crippling conditions. He cancels his engagement to Nina Blount, but then wins a thousand pounds in a hotel bar, so he renews the engagement.

He puts the money on a horse racing bet with a ‘Major’ who promptly disappears with the money. Adam goes to a fancy dress party where he meets Nina. They ‘go on’ afterwards to continue their revelries, staying with a girl who turns out to be the Prime Minister’s youngest daughter. The party-goers at Number 10 Downing Street are all reported in the morning newspapers.

Nina suggests that Adam ask her father for money to enable them to get married. Adam travels out beyond Aylesbury where the absent-minded Colonel Blount gives him an elaborate lunch and a cheque for one thousand pounds. Adam and Nina drive out and stay overnight at a pub in Arundel. In the morning, Nina point out that the cheque has been signed with the name ‘Charlie Chaplin’.

Gossip journalist Simon Balcairn wants to get into Margot Metroland’s party, but she refuses to admit him. Instead, he gets horsewhipped by the angry father of a girl he has written about. Lady Metroland gives her party, where she tries to recruit young girls for her nightclubs in South-America. Balcairn gatecrashes the party disguised in a false beard, but he is found out and expelled. He files completely invented stories about the guests to his newspaper, then commits suicide.

Adam replaces Balcairn as Mr. Chatterbox on the Daily Excess. He writes about famous people who are disabled, and then begins to invent ficticious celebrities. He meets ‘Ginger’ Littlejohn at Manchester Races and puffs him as a rich colonial in his column. They go to a party held in a tethered hot air balloon and then go on to a dingy night club. There are lots of complaints in society about the reckless behaviour of the Younger Generation.

Adam goes off to see Colonel Blount again. A cheap historical film is being shot at the house. Blount deliberately misunderstands Adam again, and thereby avoids giving him any money. Adam is fired from his job on the paper.

Adam and friends drive out to see some motor races. They stay at a boarding house and leave without paying. Amidst much confusion at the race, Adam meets the drunk Major, who claims he has got Adam’s winnings – at odds of thirty-five to one. The Major borrows money from him then disappears again. Miss Runcible drives a racing car whilst drunk, crashes it, and is taken to a nursing home.

Next day Nina announces that she is going to marry Ginger. The Young Things meet at the nursing home where Agatha Runcible is recovering. A party starts up in her room. When Nina has dinner with Adam, it makes Ginger jealous – so Adam offers to sell Nina to Ginger for £100. Agatha dies.

Nina returns from her honeymoon and Ginger is recalled to his regiment. She takes Adam to her father’s house for Christmas. Colonel Blount shows boring extracts from his film at the vicar’s house and causes an electrical power failure. He tries to sell the film company to Adam. Suddenly, war is declared.

During the war Nina returns to Ginger. As a soldier Adam is fighting in France. He meets the drunken Major. They share confiscated Champagne with one of Lady Metroland’s nightclub hostess girls, who has become a camp follower.

Vile Bodies – principal characters

Adam Fenwick-Symes	a young would-be writer and journalist
Nina Blount	Adam’s fiancee, a spoilt and frivolous young woman
Colonel Blount	Nina’s father, a confused and confusing country gent
Lottie Crump	the dipsomaniac landlady of Shepheard’s Hotel
The Drunken Major	a confidence trickster and n’er do well
Ginger Littlejohn	a friend of Adam’s and rival for Nina
Simon Balcairn	an aggressive young journalist who commits suicide
The Honourable Agatha Runcible	a drunken and raffish young woman who kills herself in a racing car
Mrs Melrose Ape	an American evangelist with a troupe of girl followers
Lady Metroland	(a recurrent figure in Waugh’s novels)
Mr Isaacs	owner of The Wonderfilm Company

More on Evelyn Waugh
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Virginia Woolf – A Room of One’s Own

October 4, 2009 by Roy Johnson

Hogarth Press first edition book jacket designs

Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own (1929) Cover design by Vanessa Bell.

This has become one of the cornerstone’s of feminist theory in relation to literature. It’s a sparkling, critical, and wide-ranging expose of male privilege and the way in which women have been excluded from cultural life. However, as John Willis argues in his study of the text, Woolf omitted to mention the work of other women writers on the same subject which had appeared prior to her own.

“There was more fiction than fact in Woolf’s most famous and beloved feminist polemic. The occasion was an address to the young women of Newham and Girton colleges on the subject of women and fiction, which she subsequently rewrote into the expanded form of the published book. Woolf’s form followed function. She created clever and pointed fictions before their eyes, inventing, among others, Shakespeare’s thwarted sister Judith and the young modern novelist Mary Carmichael. There were few facts partly because she presumed to dislike them and partly because the works on women containing the facts (all erroneous) had been written by men. Woolf chose not to recognise the existence of useful, accurate, and understanding accounts of women by women. Nor did she mention directly the achievements of women such as [Millicent Garrett] Fawcett, [Ray] Strachey, or [Margaret Llewellyn] Davis. Strachey’s The Cause: A Short History of the Women’s movement in Great Britain (1928) was a year old when Woolf created her story of her own room and an inheritance of £500 per year, yet there is only a brief quotation from it, identified in a footnote. Facts aside, the wit and irony of her writing, her satirical exposure of patriarchal attitudes, her leaps of intuitive understanding, [and] her subjective experience made the book memorable and influential.”

J.H. Willis Jr, Leonard and Virginia Woolf as Publishers: The Hogarth Press 1917-1941

The first one hundred copies of [the first, limited edition] were for sale by the Hogarth Press, and the price was substantial. The Hogarth Press’s trade edition, issued at the same time, was priced at 5s; the print run was 3,040 copies. The press published a number of books that come at the same question of women’s lives and positions in different ways. One of particular interest is Life As We Have Known It (1931), a collection of autobiographical sketches of guildswomen, for which Woolf wrote an introductory letter.

Elizabeth Willson Gordon, Woolf’s-head Publishing: The Highlights and New Lights of the Hogarth Press

Hogarth Press studies

Woolf’s-head Publishing is a wonderful collection of cover designs, book jackets, and illustrations – but also a beautiful example of book production in its own right. It was produced as an exhibition catalogue and has quite rightly gone on to enjoy an independent life of its own. This book is a genuine collector’s item, and only months after its first publication it started to win awards for its design and production values. Anyone with the slightest interest in book production, graphic design, typography, or Bloomsbury will want to own a copy the minute they clap eyes on it.

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Leonard and Virginia Woolf as Publishers: Hogarth Press, 1917-41 John Willis brings the remarkable story of Leonard and Virginia Woolf’s success as publishers to life. He generates interesting thumbnail sketches of all the Hogarth Press authors, which brings both them and the books they wrote into sharp focus. He also follows the development of many of its best-selling titles, and there’s a full account of the social and cultural development of the press. This is a scholarly work with extensive footnotes, bibliographies, and suggestions for further reading – but most of all it is a very readable study in cultural history.

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Virginia Woolf – Between the Acts

October 5, 2009 by Roy Johnson

Hogarth Press first edition book jacket designs

Virginia Woolf, Between the Acts (1939) Cover design by Vanessa Bell.

“Leonard Woolf decided after Virginia’s death to publish Between the Acts as she had written it, editing only for spelling and minor textual errors. John Lehmann supported him completely in this decision. The critical success and popularity of the book give evidence that Virginia had found her way into a new fusion of form and vision after The Years. After her death, Leonard carefully planned for the future, husbanding her stories, essays, and letters for judiciously timed collections. Over the next seventeen years, through 1958, Leonard published eight posthumous collections of Virginia’s writing, releasing a volume every two or three years on a schedule that approximated her production when alive. In this way Leonard kept Virginia’s name before the public and assisted in her growing critical acclaim. Even in death, Virginia Woolf remained the most productive and profitable of the Hogarth Press writers.”

J.H. Willis Jr, Leonard and Virginia Woolf as Publishers: The Hogarth Press 1917-1941

Hogarth Press studies

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Virginia Woolf – Jacob’s Room

October 4, 2009 by Roy Johnson

Hogarth Press first edition book jacket designs

Virginia Woolf, Jacob’s Room (1922) Cover design by Vanessa Bell

This was the first of Virginia Woolf’s novels to be self-published. She took the opportunity of being free from someone else’s editorial control to push the boundaries of her experimental literary technique. It thus marked an important step in modernism and a breakthrough to a greater degree of self-confidence in her work.

“Virginia’s Jacob’s Room was our first major work, a full-length novel. 1,200 copies of it were printed for us by R. and R. Clark of Edinburgh. [It] was published in October 1922 and began at once to sell fairly briskly, and I had a second impression of 1,000 copies printed by Clark. By the end of 1923 we had sold 1,413 copies; the cost of printing and publishing up to that date had been £276 1s. 6d. and the receipts had been £318 6s. 0d., so that our publisher’s profit was £42 4s. 6d. We though that we had done extremely well.”

Leonard Woolf, An Autobiography

The publication of Jacob’s Room includes a series of firsts in and of itself. It is the first novel published by the Press: it is also the first book to have a dust jacket…The dust jacket for Jacob’s Room was a “collaborative effort: Vanessa made the drawing, Virginia chose the terra-cotta colouring, and Leonard Woolf advised alterations to the lettering”. The dust jacket, however, was not well received. Leonard recalls that because the design “did not represent a desirable female or even Jacob or his room, and it was what in 1923 many people would have called reproachfully post-impressionist. It was almost universally condemned amongst the booksellers”.

Elizabeth Willson Gordon, Woolf’s-head Publishing: The Highlights and New Lights of the Hogarth Press

Hogarth Press studies

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Virginia Woolf – Kew Gardens

October 3, 2009 by Roy Johnson

Hogarth Press first edition book jacket designs

Virginia Woolf, Kew Gardens (1919)

This publication contained only ten pages of text, with illustrations by Vanessa Bell.

“In 1918 we printed two small books: Poems by T.S. Eliot and Kew Gardens by Virginia. Of Kew Gardens we printed about 170 copies (the total sold of the first edition was 148). We published it on 12 May 1919 at 2s. When we started printing and publishing with our Publication No. 1, we did not send out any review copies, but in the case of Prelude, Tom’s Poems, and Kew Gardens we sent review copies to The Times Literary Supplement. By 31 May we had sold forty-nine copies of Kew Gardens On Tuesday 27 May, we went to Asham and stayed there for a week, returning to Richmond on 3 June. In the previous week a review of Kew Gardens had appeared in the Literary Supplement giving it tremendous praise. When we opened the door of Hogarth House, we found the hall covered with envelopes and postcards containing orders from booksellers all over the country. It was impossible for us to start printing enough copies to meet these orders, so we went to a printer, Richard Madely, and got him to print a second edition of 500 copies, which cost us £8 9s. 6d. It was sold by the end of 1920 and we did not reprint.”

Leonard Woolf, An Autobiography

Hogarth Press studies

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Virginia Woolf – Monday or Tuesday

October 4, 2009 by Roy Johnson

Hogarth Press first edition book jacket designs

Virginia Woolf, Monday or Tuesday (March, 1921) Cover design and woodcut illustrations by Vanessa Bell

This was a collection of seven short stories. It contains: ‘A Haunted House’, ‘A Society’, ‘Monday or Tuesday’, ‘An Unwritten Novel’, ‘The String Quartet’, ‘Blue and Green’, and ‘Solid Objects’.

“At the end of the first year, April 1922, the book had sold a total of 503 copies, showing a deficit to the press of £8 3s. 9d. During the next two years, the book averaged 70 copies per year. When Leonard Woolf closed out the account at the end of March 1924, Monday or Tuesday in three years had sold only 643 copies and made a slim profit of £18 17s. 10d. Virginia, as author, was awarded approximately one fifth of the third year’s profit, amounting to £2 16s. 5d. With such modest returns, the press and its authors just managed to stay afloat during the first five years of existence.”

J.H. Willis Jr, Leonard and Virginia Woolf as Publishers: The Hogarth Press 1917-1941

Hogarth Press studies

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Virginia Woolf – Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown

October 4, 2009 by Roy Johnson

Hogarth Press first edition book jacket designs

Virginia Woolf, Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown (1924) Cover design by Vanessa Bell. The Hogarth Essays, First Series, No.1. First impression of 1,000 copies, Printed by Hazel, Watson and Viney, 2s.6d.

This was part of the first series of Hogarth Essays, which were published between 1924 and 1925. It was first written as a response to Arnold Bennett’s criticism of Jacob’s Room which appeared in Cassell’s Weekly in March 1923, and first published in the literary pages of the Nation and Athenaeum which was edited by Leonard Woolf. Later, it was re-worked and extended, then delivered as a lecture to an undergraduate literary society in Cambridge and published as ‘Character in Fiction’ in Eliot’s Criterion.

“In 1924 the Woolfs also started their first series, the Hogarth Essays, by publishing four pamphlets: Virginia Woolf’s Mr. Bennet and Mrs. Brown (October); Roger Fry’s The Artist and Psycho-Analysis (November)’ a thorough and knowledgeable defense of the artist against Freud’s reductive theories; Theodora Bosanquet’s Henry James at Work (November); and T.S. Eliot’s Homage to John Dryden (November).

With the advantage of hindsight, we can see that Virginia Woolf’s essay number one and Eliot’s essay number four in the Hogarth series were two of the most significant statements by the early modernists in the refashioning of attitudes towards fiction and poetry. They have become minor classics, their terminology passing into the vocabulary of criticism.”

J.H. Willis Jr, Leonard and Virginia Woolf as Publishers: The Hogarth Press 1917-1941

Hogarth Press studies

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Virginia Woolf – Mrs Dalloway

October 4, 2009 by Roy Johnson

Hogarth Press first edition book jacket designs

Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway (1925) Dust jacket designed by Vanessa Bell.

This novel appeared only a few weeks after the publication of The Common Reader and although the reviews were mixed, the book had sold 2,000 copies by the end of the year.

This is the first of Virginia Woolf’s three great masterpieces (along with To the Lighthouse and The Waves. In it, she developed the experimental literary techniques which had been tried out in Jacob’s Room and brought them to an achievement of a high order.

“The reviews when they came were mixed, and so was Bloomsbury’s reaction. E.M. Forster praised Mrs Dalloway and Virginia, gallantly kissing her hand and telling her the novel was better than Jacob’s Room and he was very pleased; but Vita Sackville-West was doubtful; and Lytton Strachey, admiring The Common Reader more, thought the novel was a flawed stone. Readers bought the book, however, and the sales were brisk. By June 18, one month after publication, Virginia noted that 1,250 copies had been sold … Leonard issued a second impression of 1,000 copies in November 1925.”

J.H. Willis Jr, Leonard and Virginia Woolf as Publishers: The Hogarth Press 1917-1941

Vanessa Bell’s design for the jacket of the novel features a bouquet of flowers. Diane Gillespie notes that the “design in which first the white, then the black dominates, the cover anticipates, if only in a general way, the alternating exhilaration and fear, sanity and insanity, as well as life and death which pervade the book”.

Elizabeth Willson Gordon, Woolf’s-head Publishing: The Highlights and New Lights of the Hogarth Press

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Virginia Woolf – Reviewing

October 4, 2009 by Roy Johnson

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Virginia Woolf, Reviewing (1939)

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Hogarth Press first edition book jacket designs

Hogarth Press studies

Hogarth Press first edition book jacket designs

Hogarth Press studies

Hogarth Press first edition book jacket designs

Hogarth Press studies

Hogarth Press first edition book jacket designs

Hogarth Press studies

Hogarth Press first edition book jacket designs

Hogarth Press studies

Hogarth Press first edition book jacket designs

Hogarth Press studies

Hogarth Press first edition book jacket designs

Hogarth Press studies

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