Modernism Archives - Page 8 of 15

Mark Gertler biography

September 20, 2009 by Roy Johnson

the only working-class Bloomsbury artist

Mark Gertler (1896—1939) was born in Spitalfields in London’s East End, the youngest son of Jewish immigrant parents. When he was a year old, the family was forced by extreme poverty back to their native Galicia (Poland). His father travelled to America in search of work, but when this plan failed the family returned to London in 1896. As a boy he showed a marked talent for drawing, and on leaving school in 1906 he enrolled in art classes at Regent Street Polytechnic, which was the first institution in the UK to provide post-school education for working people.

Once again, because of his family’s poverty, he was forced to drop out after only a year and take up work as an apprentice in a stained glass company. However, he continued with his interest in art, and after gaining third place in a competition he submitted his drawings to the Slade and was granted a scholarship by Sir William Rothenstein.

His contemporaries during four years at the Slade included David Bomberg, Paul Nash, Edward Wadsworth, Christopher Nevinson and Stanley Spencer. More fatefully for his private life, he also met and fell in love with Dora Carrington. They had a turbulent and anguished relationship which lasted a number of years.

Meanwhile, he won prizes and scholarships, then left the Slade in 1912 to paint full time. He was patronised by Lady Ottoline Morrell who introduced him to Walter Sickert, Augustus John, and the Bloomsbury Group. He became moderately successful as a society portrait painter, but suffered in such company because of his relative poverty, his working-class origins, and his Jewishness.

In 1914 he was also taken up by Edward Marsh an art collector who was later to become secretary to Winston Churchill. Even this relationship became difficult, since Gertler was a pacifist, and he disapproved of the system of patronage. He broke off the relationship, and around this time painted what has become his most famous painting – The Merry-Go-Round.

In 1915 he became the love object of Lytton Strachey, but he continued his own pursuit of Dora Carrington for five years before she finally agreed to have a sexual relationship with him. For a time, he shared her with Strachey, with whom Carrington had meanwhile fallen in love. When she eventually left him to set up home with Strachey, Gertler was crushed and mortified.

As a young man, he projected a personal magnetism which fascinated many of his contemporaries. He is the model for the sinister sculptor Loerke in D.H. Lawrence’s novel Women in Love, the dashing Byronic hero of Aldous Huxley’s Chrome Yellow, and the egotistical painter of Katherine Mansfield’s story Je ne parle pas Francais.

The first symptoms of tuberculosis appeared in 1920, and he was forced to enter a sanatorium. Nevertheless, despite his poor health, he continued to have yearly exhibitions at the Goupil Gallery in Regent Street.

In 1930 Gertler married Marjorie Hodgkinson, and they had a son in 1932. Their marriage was often difficult, and Gertler suffered from the same feelings of ill-ease that undermined relationships with his patrons. Edward Marsh continued to buy Gertler’s paintings, even though he admitted that he no longer liked or understood them. But in order to supplement his intermittent income from painting, Gertler was forced to become a part-time teacher at the Westminster School of Art .

Throughout the 1930s he had difficulty in selling his paintings, even though he had a few loyal supporters such as J.B. Priestly and Aldous Huxley. But depressed by what he saw as his own failure, his ill-health, and the fear of another imminent world war, he committed suicide in June 1939. He is buried in Willesden Jewish Cemetery.

This biography of Mark Gertler reappraises an extraordinary artist. Gertler was admired and encouraged by Walter Sickert, Vanessa Bell, Roger Fry and Henry Moore. His magnificent and haunting pictures were keenly collected by London society and yet at 48, feeling alienated, he killed himself. Sarah MacDougall explores the life of this complex man, whose powerful images, like the “Merry-go-round” or the “Creation of Eve” have lost none of their disturbing eloquence.

Mark Gertler – But the book at Amazon UK

Mark Gertler – Buy the book at Amazon US

Sarah McDougall, Mark Gertler, London: John Murray, 2002, pp.413, ISBN: 0719557992

Bloomsbury Group – web links

Hogarth Press first editions
Annotated gallery of original first edition book jacket covers from the Hogarth Press, featuring designs by Vanessa Bell, Roger Fry, and others.

The Omega Workshops
A brief history of Roger Fry’s experimental Omega Workshops, which had a lasting influence on interior design in post First World War Britain.

The Bloomsbury Group and War
An essay on the largely pacifist and internationalist stance taken by Bloomsbury Group members towards the First World War.

Tate Gallery Archive Journeys: Bloomsbury
Mini web site featuring photos, paintings, a timeline, sub-sections on the Omega Workshops, Roger Fry, and Duncan Grant, and biographical notes.

Bloomsbury: Books, Art and Design
Exhibition of paintings, designs, and ceramics at Toronto University featuring Hogarth Press, Vanessa Bell, Dora Carrington, Quentin Bell, and Stephen Tomlin.

Blogging Woolf
A rich enthusiast site featuring news of events, exhibitions, new book reviews, relevant links, study resources, and anything related to Bloomsbury and Virginia Woolf

Hyper-Concordance to Virginia Woolf
Search the texts of all Woolf’s major works, and track down phrases, quotes, and even individual words in their original context.

A Mrs Dalloway Walk in London
An annotated description of Clarissa Dalloway’s walk from Westminster to Regent’s Park, with historical updates and a bibliography.

Women’s History Walk in Bloomsbury
Annotated tour of literary and political homes in Bloomsbury, including Gordon Square, University College, Bedford Square, Doughty Street, and Tavistock Square.

Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain
News of events, regular bulletins, study materials, publications, and related links. Largely the work of Virginia Woolf specialist Stuart N. Clarke.

BBC Audio Essay – A Eulogy to Words
A charming sound recording of a BBC radio talk broadcast in 1937 – accompanied by a slideshow of photographs of Virginia Woolf.

A Family Photograph Albumn
Leslie Stephens’ collection of family photographs which became known as the Mausoleum Book, collected at Smith College – Massachusetts.

Bloomsbury at Duke University
A collection of book jacket covers, Fry’s Twelve Woodcuts, Strachey’s ‘Elizabeth and Essex’.

More on art
More on biography
More on the Bloomsbury Group
Twentieth century literature

Marriage a la Mode

December 30, 2014 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, plot, and web links

Marriage a la Mode was one of a group of six stories commissioned from Katherine Mansfield by Clement Shorter, the editor of the Sphere, a fashionable illustrated newspaper targeted at British citizens living in the colonies. The story was written in August 1921 and published in December the same year. It was later reprinted in The Garden Party and Other Stories published in 1922.

Marriage a la Mode – William Hogarth

Marriage a la Mode – critical commentary

Anthony Alpers, Katherine Mansfield’s biographer, describes Marriage a la Mode as a ‘shallow … bill-paying’ story whose lack of depth and subtlety is a result of her badly needing money to pay doctors’ fees during her illness whilst living in Montana-sur-Sierre in Switzerland.

It is certainly true that the story requires very little close reading or interpretive skill to yield its single meaning. William is a crushed husband figure whose tender feelings for his family are completely trampled upon by his wife’s selfishness, her social climbing, and her self-indulgent bohemianism. He is more or less excluded socially from his own home by her empty-headed friends. When he is driven by necessity to communicate his love for her by letter, she responds by reading it out for the amusement and mockery of her house guests. When she realises what a heartless and vulgar thing she has done, there is a momentary impulse to reach out to her husband in response – but instead she chooses to rejoin her friends.

It is a sceptical, if not jaundiced view of marriage, but it is to Mansfield’s credit that as a writer who so often reveals masculine foibles and insensitivities in her work, she creates here a sympathetic account of a working man and a scathing portrayal of his selfish and empty-headed wife.

Plagiarism?

A number of commentators have pointed to the similarities between Marriage a la Mode and a story by Anton Checkhov called Not Wanted (1886). In fact the most severe of these critics have accused her of direct plagiarism.

In Checkhov’s story a Court official Pavel Zaikin is travelling out to his summer cottage by train in the summer heat. He complains to a fellow traveller in ‘ginger trousers’ about the cost and inconvenience, which he attributes to ‘women’s frivolity’.

He finds his son alone in the cottage: his wife is attending the rehearsal of a play and has not prepared any dinner. Zaikin feels anger gnawing at him and in bad temper he scolds his son without reason – then regrets having done so.

His wife Nadyezhda returns from the rehearsal with her friend Olga and two men. She sends the servant out for ‘sardines, vodka, and cheese’. The thespians then begin noisy rehearsals until late, after which she invites the two men to stay the night. She also moves Zaikin out of his own bed to accommodate Olga. In the early morning Zaikin gets dressed and goes out into the street, where he meets the man in ginger trousers again. He too has a houseful of unexpected visitors.

The similarities in the two stories are the working husband who is abused by a self-indulgent wife; the train journey; the houseful of disruptive bohemians; and the fact that the man is treated like an outsider in his own home.

But this was not the first time Katherine Mansfield had re-told a story by Checkhov. Her early piece The-Child-Who-Was-Tired is taken from Checkhov’s Sleepyhead (1888) and her plagiarism was the subject of a debate on her conscious or unconscious borrowings in the pages of theTimes Literary Supplement in the 1950s.

However, she composed so many original and outstanding stories of entirely her own invention, that it is unlikely these accusations will cause the damage to her reputation some people hope for and others fear. But there is one telling detail in Marriage a la Mode that nails the story inescapably to its Russian origins – and that is the choice of sardines for the improvised evening meal. Isabel’s arty friends consume sardines and whisky, whilst Checkhov’s amateur theatricals have their sardines and vodka. There is simply no escaping the fact that this detail is copied. Fish and vodka are entirely native to Russian culture, but would be exceptional in English social life.

Marriage a la Mode – study resources

Katherine Mansfield’s Collected Works
Three published collections of stories – Kindle edition – Amazon UK

The Collected Short Stories of Katherine Mansfield
Wordsworth Classics paperback edition – Amazon UK

The Collected Stories of Katherine Mansfield
Penguin Classics paperback edition – Amazon UK

Katherine Mansfield Megapack
The complete stories and poems in Kindle edition – Amazon UK

Katherine Mansfield’s Collected Works
Three published collections of stories – Kindle edition – Amazon US

The Collected Short Stories of Katherine Mansfield
Wordsworth Classics paperback edition – Amazon US

The Collected Stories of Katherine Mansfield
Penguin Classics paperback edition – Amazon US

Katherine Mansfield Megapack
The complete stories and poems in Kindle edition – Amazon US

Marriage a la Mode – plot summary

A London solicitor William is returning home on Saturday afternoon to his fashionable and demanding wife Isabel. He feels anxious about not having bought presents for his two sons, but buys them a melon and pineapple instead. He reads through legal papers, but is distracted by thoughts of his wife, who has cooled in her feelings towards him. They have moved from a modest to a much bigger house, and Isabel has made new friends, but William thinks back to their earlier days when he was happier.

Isabel is waiting for him at the station, but she is accompanied by some party-loving friends. She appropriates the fruit, and they buy sweets for the boys instead, meanwhile making asinine comments. When they arrive at the house, the party go off swimming, leaving William to reflect critically on the way the house is being run. Returning from the swim, they eat sardines and drink whisky, disattending to William.

The following day William is preparing to return to London. He has not seen his sons and has had no opportunity to talk to Isabel. When he gets to his train he decides to write to her instead.

The next day Isabel and her friends are lazing about in the sun when William’s letter arrives. It is a long love letter in which he reveals his feelings for her, and says he doesn’t want to stand between her and her happiness. She reads it out aloud to her friends, who scoff and make fun of the letter. Isabel suddenly feels ashamed of what she has done, and has the impulse to write a reply, but when the friends invite her to go swimming, she leaves with them instead.

Katherine Mansfield – web links

Katherine Mansfield at Mantex
Life and works, biography, a close reading, and critical essays

Katherine Mansfield at Wikipedia
Biography, legacy, works, biographies, films and adaptations

Katherine Mansfield at Online Books
Collections of her short stories available at a variety of online sources

Not Under Forty
A charming collection of literary essays by Willa Cather, which includes a discussion of Katherine Mansfield.

Katherine Mansfield at Gutenberg
Free downloadable versions of her stories in a variety of digital formats

Hogarth Press first editions
Annotated gallery of original first edition book jacket covers from the Hogarth Press, including Mansfield’s ‘Prelude’

Katherine Mansfield’s Modernist Aesthetic
An academic essay by Annie Pfeifer at Yale University’s Modernism Lab

The Katherine Mansfield Society
Newsletter, events, essay prize, resources, yearbook

Katherine Mansfield Birthplace
Biography, birthplace, links to essays, exhibitions

Katherine Mansfield Website
New biography, relationships, photographs, uncollected stories

More on Katherine Mansfield
Twentieth century literature
More on the Bloomsbury Group
More on short stories

Memoirs of a Novelist

February 27, 2011 by Roy Johnson

Virginia Woolf’s earliest stories and experiments

Memoirs of a Novelist is a charming collection of short stories written in the earliest phase of Virginia Woolf’s career as a writer of modernist fiction when she was only twenty-four years old. Up to that point she had only produced essays and book reviews. And in fact the spirit of the essay lingers over these meditations and fictional constructs which have in common the role of women in society. It is interesting to note the continuity between these early exercises and the same themes she pursued in her mature works.

Phyllis and Rosamond for instance introduces many of the issues she explored in her later writings – the apparently empty lives of ordinary young women who went unrecognised by history; everyday life as a subject for fiction; the inequality of the sexes; and (almost as if Jane Austen were a contemporary) the ambiguous prospect of marriage as the only possible career structure for young females.

The authorial voice is witty and allusive, and the narrative sparkles with clever generalisations and quasi-philosophic reflections offered in a satirical mode.

They seem indigenous to the drawing-room, as though, born in silk evening robes, they had never tread a rougher earth than the Turkey carpet, or reclined on a harsher ground than the arm chair or the sofa To see them in a drawing room full of well dressed men and women, is to see the merchant in the Stock Exchange, or the barrister in the Temple.

Another story, The Mysterious Case of Miss V deals with the theme she would develop later in her 1924 essay Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown – the unknown life of an ordinary person. In this version the narrator reflects on the life of a woman whom she has seen occasionally but knows nothing about. Fired by a sudden inclination to discover at least something about her, she visits the building where she lives – only to discover that she has just died.

The longest piece in the collection is The Journal of Mistress Joan Martyn It was written when Woolf was visiting Blo’ Norton Hall in Norfolk, and conjures up a picture of the idealised fictional past she was to bring to a state of high art in Orlando. Mistress Joan feels a deep rapport with the rhythms and concerns of everyday life as she faces the prospect of leaving her status as a single woman behind (which is something Woolf would do only a few years later).

The finest item in the collection is its title story Memoirs of a Novelist, which is a complex meditation on the nature of biography, something she would go on exploring throughout her life. The complexity comes from Woolf’s deft handling of the layers of fictionality within the story.

An unnamed narrator gives us an account of a two volume biography of a Victorian lady novelist Miss Willatt, written by her friend Miss Linsett (both of course completely fictitious). In ony a few pages Woolf manages to conjure up an amusingly unflattering picture of the author, and by criticising the conventions of biography as it was conducted in the late nineteenth century, she offers a critique of both the biographer herself and what can be known about human being from the record left by others. These were issues that Woolf would pursue in her own fiction and biographies (Orlando, Flush, Roger Fry) throughout the rest of her life.

The story was turned down by the Cornhill Magazine when she submitted it for publication. Since that time Virginia Woolf has established a reputation which far outstrips the writers they accepted. This is a unique glimpse into the workshop of an artist who went on to become the greatest writer of her generation, and one of the most important innovators in the genre of the short story.

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Virginia Woolf, Memoirs of a Novelist, London: Hesperus, 2006, pp.96, ISBN: 1843914239

More on Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf – web links
Virginia Woolf – greatest works
Virginia Woolf – criticism
More on the Bloomsbury Group

Metamorphosis

February 2, 2010 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, characters, video, study resources

Metamorphosis (1915) is truly one of Kafka’s masterpieces – a stunning parable which lends itself to psychological, sociological, or existential interpretations. It’s the tale of a man who wakes up one morning and finds himself transformed into a giant insect. His family are horrified, gradually disown him, and he dies of neglect, with a rotting apple lodged in his side.

Franz Kafka is one of the most important and influential fiction writers of the early twentieth century. He was a novelist and writer of short stories whose works, only after his death, came to be regarded as one of the major achievements of twentieth century literature.

Franz Kafka

Metamorphosis – plot summary

Gregor Samsa awakes one morning to find himself transformed from a human being into a giant insect. Rather than lament his transformation, Gregor worries about how he will get to his job as a traveling salesman; Gregor is the sole financial provider for his parents and sister, Grete, and their comfort is dependent on his ability to work.

When Gregor’s supervisor arrives at the house and demands Gregor come out of his room, Gregor manages to roll out of bed and unlock his door. His appearance horrifies his family and supervisor; his supervisor flees while his family chases him back into his room.

Grete attempts to care for her brother by providing him with milk and the stale, rotten food he now prefers. Gregor also develops the fears of an insect, being effectively shooed away by hissing voices and stamping feet. However, Gregor remains a devoted and loving son, and takes to hiding beneath a sofa whenever someone enters his room in order to shield them from his horrifying appearance. When alone, he amuses himself by looking out of his window and crawling up the walls and on the ceiling.

No longer able to rely on Gregor’s income, the other family members take on jobs and Grete’s caretaking deteriorates. One day, when Gregor emerges from his room, his father chases him around the dining room table and pelts him with apples. One of the apples becomes embedded in his back, causing an infection. Due to his infection and his hunger, he is soon barely able to move at all.

Later, his parents take in lodgers and use Gregor’s room as a dumping area for unwanted objects. Gregor becomes dirty, covered in dust and old bits of rotten food. One day, Gregor hears Grete playing her violin to entertain the lodgers. Gregor is attracted to the music, and slowly walks into the dining room despite himself, entertaining a fantasy of getting his beloved sister to join him in his room and play her violin for him. The lodgers see him and give notice, refusing to pay the rent they owe, even threatening to sue the family for harboring him while they stayed there. Grete determines that the monstrous vermin is no longer Gregor, since Gregor would have left them out of love and taken their burden away. She suggests that they must get rid of it. Gregor retreats to his room and collapses, finally succumbing to his wound, and dying alone.

The point of view shifts as, upon discovery of his corpse, the family feels an enormous burden has been lifted from them, and start planning for the future again. The family discovers that they aren’t doing financially badly at all, especially since, following Gregor’s demise, they can take a smaller flat. The brief process of forgetting Gregor and shutting him from their lives is quickly completed.

Study resources

Metamorphosis – Oxford World Classics – Amazon UK

Metamorphosis – Oxford World Classics – Amazon US

Metamorphosis – Dover Thrift – Amazon UK

Metamorphosis – Dover Thrift – Amazon US

Metamorphosis – Norton Critical Editions – Amazon US

Metamorphosis – Cliffs Notes – Amazon UK

Metamorphosis – Max Notes – Amazon UK

Metamorphosis – eBook format at Project Gutenburg

Metamorphosis – audioBook version at LibriVox

Metamorphosis – A Study: Nabokov on Kafka – 1989 Peter Medak film

The Cambridge Companion to Kafka – Amazon UK

Franz Kafka: Illustrated Life This is a photographic biography that offers an intimate portrait in an attractive format. A lively text is accompanied by over 100 evocative images, many in colour and some previously unpublished. They depict the author’s world – family, friends, and artistic circle in old Prague – together with original book jackets, letters, and other ephemera. This is an excellent starting point for beginners which captures fin de siecle Europe beautifully.
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Principal characters

Gregor Samsa	travelling salesman who supports his family
Mr Samsa	his lazy father, who owes money to Gregor’s boss
Grete Samsa	Gregor’s younger sister, who tends him at first
Mrs Samsa	Gregor’s mother, who cannot bear to look at him
The chief clerk	Gregor’s boss, to whom Mr Samsa owes money
Tenants	three tenants who provide an income for the family

Vladimir Nabokov – Lecture on Metamorphosis

Metamorphosis – A Study: Nabokov on Kafka

Vladimir Nabokov’s copy of Metamorphosis

Photomontage

Kafka, family photos, and old Prague

a page of Kafka’s manuscript

Other works by Franz Kafka

The Trial is Kafka’s one indisputably successful novel – a haunting and original study in existential anxiety, paranoia, and persecution. Joseph K is accused one day of being guilty – but not told what crime he has committed. He wrestles hopelessly with legal officials and a nightmare-like court which acts on arbitrary rules, striving to find justice. In the end he fails, only to be killed ‘like a dog’. Kafka gave expression to modern anxiety three decades before most people even started feeling it. This is a novel which stands outside literary norms – a superb achievement of literary modernism. Be prepared for black humour as well as mind-bending contradictions and deeply etched literary expressionism. Read the stories and The Trial as a start and a minimum.
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Amerika (also known as The Man who Disappeared) is Kafka’s first attempt at a novel. He is renowned for documenting the horrors of modern life, but Kafka also had a lighter and amusing side. This is incomplete, like so much else he wrote. It’s the story of Karl Rossmann who after an embarrassing sexual misadventure is expelled from his European home and goes to live in an imaginary United States (which of course Kafka had never visited). The story is deeply symbolic – as usual – and an interesting supplement to the central texts. In fact it’s a reverse ‘Rags to Riches’ story, because Karl starts his engagement with the American Dream quite successfully – but by the end of the novel he is destitute. The first chapter is frequently anthologised as ‘The Stoker’.
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Franz Kafka – web links

Franz Kafka at Mantex
Biographical notes, book reviews and study guides on the major works, video presentations and documentaries, adaptations for cinema and television, and links to Kafka archives.

Franz Kafka at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of free eTexts in a variety of formats – in both English and German.

Franz Kafka at Wikipedia
Biographical notes, social background, survey of the stories and novels, publishing history, translations, critical interpretation, and extensive bibliographies.

Franz Kafka at the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations for the cinema and television – in various languages. Full details of directors, actors, production features, box office, film reviews, and even quizzes.

Kafka in Love
Video photomontage featuring portraits of Kafka, his friends and family, and locations in Prague – with a rather schmaltzy soundtrack in Yiddish and English.

Kafka-Metamorphosis
A public Wiki dedicated to Kafka and his work, featuring the short stories, interpretations, and further web links.

Kafka Society of America
Academic group with annual meetings and publications. Also features links to other Kafka-related sites

Oxford Kafka Research Centre
Academic group based at Oxford University that tracks current research and meetings. [Doesn’t seem to have been updated since 2012.]

The Kafka Project
Critical editions and translations of Kafka’s work in several languages, plus articles, literary criticism, bibliographies.

Tribute to Franz Kafka
Individual fan site (created by ‘Herzogbr’) featuring a collection of texts, reviews, and enthusiast essays. Badly in need of updating, but contains some interesting gems.

Finding Kafka in Prague
Quirky compilation of photos locating Kafka in his home town – with surrealist additions and weird sound track.

Who Owns Kafka?
Essay by Judith Butler from the London Review of Books on the contentious issues of ownership of Kafka’s manuscripts where they are currently held in Israel – complete with podcast.

The Kafka Archive – latest news
Guardian newspaper report on the suitcase full of Kafka and Max Brod’s papers released by Israeli library.

Franz Kafka: an illustrated life
Book review of a charming short biography with some unusual period photos of Kafka and Prague.

More on Franz Kafka
More on the novella
More on literary studies
More on short stories

Metamorphosis and Other Stories

July 18, 2009 by Roy Johnson

Franz Kafka is one of the most original and idiosyncratic writers of the twentieth century. He published very little during his own lifetime; he lived for literature (in fact he said “I am literature”); he wasn’t formally a great novelist or writer of short stories; and yet he put his stamp on literature to such an extent that his name has become an adjective – and we now speak of Kafkaesque situations and circumstances.

These tend to be scenarios in which the individual is trapped in madly contradictory situations, confronted by bureaucratic and totalitarian forces over which he has no control. That’s why Kafka’s reputation soared in the 1930s and 1940s. He prophesied the sort of state which condemned individuals as guilty – but didn’t tell them of what they were being accused. He spelled out the mad logic of the show trials long before they took place, and he is quite rightly regarded as a precursor of modern existentialism..

Metamorphosis is a superb piece of imaginative fiction. A young commercial salesman wakes up one morning to find that he has been transformed into giant insect. He is horrified – and so is his family, who shun him, neglect him, and eventually kill him. The tale admits to several levels of interpretation, and like most pieces of rich fiction it is dense with contextual symbols, metaphors, and suggestive allusions.

This collection also includes three other major short works – The Judgement, In the Penal Colony, and Letter to his Father. The first was written in a single creative burst during one night and concerns an Oedipal conflict between father and son which ends with the father condemning the son to death. The second is a horrifying account of someone undergoing torture in a way which prophecies what was to happen in the concentration camps (of both Russia and Germany) only a few years later. The famous letter to his father (which was never posted) is yet another a soul-searching psychological investigation of the relation between father and son. And for those who have not come across the lighter side of his writing, there’s also a collection of his first-ever published works – fragmentary pieces, to which he gives the title ‘Meditations’.

I was glad to see that in his introduction, Ritchie Robertson mentioned Nadine Gordimer’s magnificent short story Letter to his Son, which presents his father Herman Kafka’s hypothetical response to his neurotic son’s letter from beyond the grave. It’s a marvellous presentation of the other side of the picture.

The translation notes make very pertinent reference to the difficulty of rendering Kafka’s extraordinarily complex syntax. His writing is an odd mixture of startlingly dramatic images or situations, surrounded by endlessly convoluted descriptions and speculations, with deeply nested conditional clauses that can lead on from one page to the next in huge Teutonic paragraphs.

These new editions from OUP offer full value in terms of critical apparatus surrounding the text. There’s a lengthy introduction, a chronology of Kafka’s life, an essay on the new translation, explanatory notes, and an extended bibliography. This volume is an ideal starting point for anyone who has not read Kafka before.

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Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis and Other Stories, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009, pp.146, ISBN 0199238553

More on Franz Kafka
More on the novella
More on literary studies
More on short stories

Mikhail Bulgakov – a guide

September 17, 2009 by Roy Johnson

major works in English translation

Apart from the relatively straightforward and restrained Checkhovian style of his early work, A Country Doctor’s Notebook, most of Mikhail Bulgakov’s writing is characterised by a florid prose style, rich images, and startling metaphors. He also plays freely with science fiction, political allegory, and sudden shifts into the absurd.

You might keep in mind that almost all of what he wrote was either censored, banned, or simply not published in his own lifetime. Even though some of his work was popular when it appeared in the 1920s, his reputation as a major Russian writer has only been established since his writing has been gathered together and published in the post-1960s.

The Heart of a Dog (1925) A rich, successful Moscow professor befriends a stray dog and attempts a scientific experiment by transplanting into it the testicles and pituitary gland of a recently deceased man. A worryingly human animal is then turned on the loose, and the professor’s hitherto respectable life becomes a nightmare beyond endurance. An absurd and superbly comic story, this classic novel can also be read as a fierce parable of the Russian Revolution.

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Black Snow: A Theatrical Novel (1920s) When Maxudov’s bid to take his own life fails, he dramatises the novel whose failure provoked the suicide attempt. To the resentment of literary Moscow, his play is accepted by the legendary Independent Theatre and he plunges into a vortex of inflated egos. With each rehearsal more sparks fly and the chances of the play being performed recede. This is a back-stage novel and a brilliant satire on his ten-year love-hate relationship with Stanislavsky and the Moscow Arts Theatre.
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A Country Doctor’s Notebook (1925) With the ink still wet on his diploma, the twenty-five year old Dr Mikhail Bulgakov was flung into the depths of rural Russia which, in 1916-17, was still largely unaffected by such novelties as the motor car, the telephone or electric light. How his alter-ego copes (and fails to cope) with the new and often appalling responsibilities of a lone practitioner in a vast country practice – in blizzards, pursued by wolves and on the eve of Revolution – is described in Bulgakov’s delightful blend of candid realism and imaginative exuberance.
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The Fatal Eggs (1924) Professor Persikov discovers a new form of light ray whose effect is to accelerate growth in primitive organisms. But when this ray is shone on the wrong batch of eggs, the Professor finds himself both the unwilling creator of giant hybrids, and the focus of a merciless press campaign. For it seems the propaganda machine has turned its gaze on him, distorting his nature in the very way his ‘innocent’ tampering created the monster snakes and crocodiles that now terrorise the neighbourhood. An inspired work of science fiction and a biting political allegory.
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The Master and Margarita (1940/1973) is a wonderful mixture of realism and fantasy which offers a satirical view of communist Russia. The story involves the arrival of the Devil into Moscow, interspersed with chapters dealing with Pontius Pilate and the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, plus other sections related to an artist and his relationships with his art and his lover. All three layers of the story are blended with spellbinding imaginative force. The novel is a multilayered critique of the Soviet society in general and its literary establishment specifically. It begins with Satan visiting Moscow in 1935, joining a conversation of a critic and a poet, busily debating the existence of Jesus Christ and the Devil. It then evolves into a whole scale indictment of the corruption, greed, narrow-mindedness, and widespread paranoia of Stalinist Russia. Banned but widely read, the novel firmly secured Bulgakov’s place among the pantheon of the greatest of Russian writers.
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Mikhail Bulgakov biography

September 17, 2009 by Roy Johnson

life, works, political persecution

Mikhail Bulgakov (1891—1940) was born in Kiev in the Ukraine into a family of intellectuals. His father was a professor at the Theological Academy. From 1901 to 1904, Mikhail attended the First Kiev Gymnasium. The teachers of the Gymnasium exerted a great influence on the formation of Mikhail’s literary taste, and his favourite authors became Gogol, Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Saltykov-Shchedrin, and Dickens. He graduated as a doctor from Kiev University, specialising in venereology. In 1913 he married Tatyana Lappa, and moved into provincial villages, where he practised as an itinerant doctor. For a short time he became addicted to morphine, but his wife helped him kick the habit. During the revolution he was drafted by the White Army and worked as a field doctor, but then gave up medicine for literature. In his autobiography, Bulgakov recalls how he started writing : “Once in 1919 when I was travelling at night by train I wrote a short story. In the town where the train stopped, I took the story to the publisher of the newspaper who published the story”.

In 1921 he moved to Moscow and wrote for emigrée newspapers and worked for the literary department of the People’s Commissariat of Education. His journalism was also published in Berlin, which was the main centre for Russian emigration at the time. (Vladimir Nabokov lived and worked there at the same period.) In 1924 he divorced his first wife and married Liubov Evgenevna Belozerskaia. Bulgakov began writing the story about the Civil War in Ukraine in 1923, which he published in the journal Rossiia under the title The White Guard.

From 1925 onwards, Bulgakov was closely associated with the Moscow Arts Theatre, which was dominated by the figure of its founder Konstantin Stanislavsky and his theories of method acting. By 1928 he had three plays running in Moscow theatres, one of which — The Day of the Turbins — was a favourite of Stalin’s, even though it presented a sympathetic portrayal of White (counter-revolutionary) officers. Nevertheless, as Stalin’s reactionary grip on power tightened, Bulgakov’s work was increasingly criticised, and then banned. In 1929 he wrote a letter appealing for help to Maxim Gorky, who was in favour with the authorities:

All my plays have been banned; not a line of mine is being printed anywhere; I have no work ready, and not a kopeck of royalties is coming in from any source; not a single institution, not a single individual will reply to my applications…

He also wrote to the Soviet government requesting permission to emigrate, and as a result of this received a personal telephone call from Stalin. But he was never allowed out of the country, and never saw the rest of his family again. They had all settled in Paris – the ‘second’ centre of Russian emigration at that time.

Bulgakov began writing Master and Margarita in 1928, and the novel still shows some traces of its earliest drafts. But he burned the manuscript along with all his other works in progress in a Gogolian fit of despair in 1930. However, by 1933 he had resumed work on it.

In 1932 he married for the third time to Elena Sergeevna Shilovskaia. During the 1930s Bulgakov was employed as an assistant producer at the Moscow Arts Theatre, and he was also librettist and consultant at the Bolshoi Theatre. Stalin’s favour protected him from the worst of the arrests, torture, and executions which characterised the reign of terror at that time – but his works remained unpublished and banned.

In 1937 he diagnosed his own neurosclerosis and predicted that he would die in 1939. He was correct to within only three months. He spent the last years of his life working on what was to be his masterpiece, The Master and Margarita.

Modern Architecture: a critical history

August 12, 2010 by Roy Johnson

an illustrated history of architecture 1900-2000

This is a scholarly history of modern architecture which has gone through a number of editions and has been kept up to date with obvious enthusiasm from the author, who is an authority on the subject. Peter Frampton starts with three short chapters that give the historical background to the modern era. That is, the architectural thinking, urban planning, and the technological developments after 1750 that led to the twentieth century, when what we call modern began.

The narrative proper begins with the Arts and Crafts movement in England, then moves on to the Americans Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright. Both of them started their careers in Chicago, which was rebuilding itself as a city following the Great Fire of 1871. Next comes Gaudi, who I had not realized was influenced by Ruskin, Richard Wagner, and the French architectural theorist Viollet-le-Duc.

I rather like Frampton’s approach of devoting one short chapter to each style or designer, because there is just enough to assimilate without being over faced, and the succinct form encourages comprehension of the subject.

The celebrated James Rennie McIntosh went from spectacular early success to a very sad late career decline and an end in near obscurity. This is surprising, given the enduring popularity of his work. It would seem that even architecture has its shooting stars.

There are chapters on the Vienna Secession and Italian futurism, and in addition to these movements he includes studies of individual designers such as Adolf Loos, Henry van der Velde, Tony Garnier, and Auguste Perret. Some of these movements produced more designs than finished buildings, but Frampton includes their plans on the grounds that some were more influential than completed projects.

It is interesting to note that almost all the architectural visionaries he discusses were politically radical and leftist of one stripe or another. But none of them was able to reconcile the fact that their most celebrated products as artists were beautifully luxurious homes for rich bourgeois patrons.

The Bauhaus and Neue Sachlichkeit movements generated some amazingly innovative designs and buildings, until the Stock Market collapse of 1929 and the political swing to the right caused many of its stars to flee both east and west (only the latter survived). It’s quite surprising that many of their buildings look remarkably similar to those being built in major western cities today, almost one hundred years later.

Frampton sees Le Corbusier as the most important figure of mid century modern architecture, though it should be kept in mind that many of the high-rise social housing projects built under his influence (with their disastrous elevated walkways, vandalized lifts, and rubbish-strewn communal areas) have since been demolished, not long after they were first built.

A chapter on Soviet architecture does its best to show radical ideas emerging from the early years of the Proletkult, but finally has to admit that all creativity was crushed by the dead hand of Stalinism from 1930 onwards.

The latter part of the book plots the development of those people he sees as seminal influences – Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, Phillip Johnson, and Buckminster Fuller. And although he includes a chapter called ‘The New Brutalism’ which largely features the work of Alison and Peter Smithson in the UK, it’s fairly clear that this is precisely the sort of work which has given architecture and publicly commissioned work a bad name in the latter part of the last century.

For this fourth edition Kenneth Frampton has added a major new chapter that explores the effects of globalization on architecture in recent years, the rise of the celebrity architect, and the way in which practices worldwide have addressed such issues as sustainability and habitat. The bibliography has also been updated and expanded, making this volume more complete and indispensable than ever.

The book has a comprehensive critical apparatus and huge bibliography, but it would also benefit from a glossary of architectural jargon. I had to look up the meaning of terms such as trabeated. atectonic, entasis, celerestory, oneric, lithic and phalantsery. Be warned: it’s not an easy read, but it’s excellent value.

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Kenneth Frampton, Modern Architecture: a critical history, London: Thames and Hudson, 4th revised edn, 2000, pp.424, ISBN: 0500203954

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Modernism – a very short introduction

September 1, 2010 by Roy Johnson

radical developments in the arts 1900-1930

As a critical term ‘modernism’ needs careful use and understanding. For it refers not to things that are modern, but to the general movement of experiment in the arts that took place in the period 1900-1930. Modernism is the loose term we use for discussing Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway, and Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. Christopher Butler offers as background reasons for these radical artistic developments the loss of religious belief, the growth of science and technology, the spread of mass culture, and radical changes in gender roles and relationships.

He starts his survey of the period very wisely by presenting and analysing three iconic modernist works – James Joyce’s Ulysses, Fernand Leger’s La Ville, and Berthold Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera, explaining how they ‘work’ in terms of their use of new techniques including fragmentation, collage, strange juxtapositions, abstraction, parody, allusions, and referentiality.

Then he looks at the theories that were advanced as attempts to underpin these developments. This is a tricky area, because what artists say or claim about their own work is not necessarily to be taken at face value. There are other problems too. Picasso and Braque for instance invented cubism without writing a single word explaining the process.. Many other artists on the other hand wrote manifestos full of complex notions and theories that turn out to be entirely unconnected with the works of art they produced.

Schoenberg thought his twelve tone system would assure the dominance of world music by Germany for the next one hundred years [sounds familiar?] but within a short time most listeners had tired of atonality. Writers such as Joyce, Woolf, and Eliot fared better in explaining their methods because literature is a medium which must faux de mieux be articulated via language.

The range of Butler’s references and examples discussed is enormous – though I was not persuaded by his attempts to recruit Wallace Stephens and William Faulkner into the Pantheon of Significance. It’s surprising how quickly some artistic reputations fade or in some cases are revealed as completely bogus – Wyndham Lewis, Aldous Huxley, Herman Broch, Andre Gide, and Gertrude Stein spring to mind as candidates.

He devotes an entire chapter to the creation of a subjective point of view and its counterpart in modern fiction, the Epiphany. Literature naturally dominates here, but he compensates for this by including a section on surrealism, in which painting is the main art form. Interestingly enough, even though it was a short-lived phenomenon, it still lives on in occasional appearances in the visual arts, whereas in literary forms it is as dead as the dodo.

He brings all his arguments together with a quite refreshing examination of modernism and politics. This starts with the surrealists who half-heartedly tried to ally themselves to the Communist Party, then passes on to show how the communist orthodoxy of Socialist Realism chimed exactly with the Nazi policy on the arts. He also includes a lively critique of Berthold Brecht, who often escapes censure for his Stalinist propaganda, disguised as it often is beneath historical allegory.

He concludes with arguments that are quite contemporary in their scepticism. No matter which critical approach we take for instance, it is simply not possible to say which parts of Women in Love, The Firebird, or Guernica are ‘progressive’ or contribute to social development or enrichment. But what is more interesting is that these great modernist works still speak to us as vibrant examples of artistic achievement long after the historical and political events that provide their context have passed.

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Christopher Butler, Modernism: a very short introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010, pp.117, ISBN: 0192804413

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Monday or Tuesday

March 29, 2013 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, plot, and web links

Monday or Tuesday was written in October 1920 and first appeared in Monday or Tuesday (1921) – a collection of experimental short prose pieces Virginia Woolf had written between 1917 and 1921. It was published by the Hogarth Press and also included A Society, A Haunted House, An Unwritten Novel, The String Quartet, Blue and Green, and Solid Objects.

In the tutorial notes below, the full text of the story is followed by a synopsis (which is a form of interpretation) then by a detailed commentary on its component parts.

Virginia Woolf

Monday or Tuesday – critical commentary

A close reading

Lazy and indifferent
This captures the slow and unhurried flight of a heron, which will return in the last line of the story, giving structure to the narrative and bookending its fragments of the passage of a single day.

knowing his way
This is an echo of the snail in Kew Gardens which ‘appeared to have a definite goal’ and is contrasted with the irregular movements of the human beings in the story.

the sky covers and uncovers
It is worth noting that the story begins and ends in the sky, dipping down into city life during its central portion.

A lake?
It is not clear who is posing this question, or where the consciousness of events is located. Unlike most stories, there is no attempt to establish either an omniscient third person narrator or a named fictional character from whose point of view events will be revealed.

This was one of a number of stories Woolf wrote around this time which feature a static and disembodied consciousness reflecting (The Mark on the Wall, The Fascination of the Pool) on ideas, observations, and evens in a quasi-philosophic manner.

A mountain?
The imaginative consciousness is constructing pictures from cloudscapes – in the same way that people often do when staring into fires – something which occurs later in the story.

Down that falls
This is ambiguous. It could mean ‘that particulr picture collapses’ (because of the cloud movements) or it could mean ‘the clouds look like down (small feathers) that is falling’.

Ferns then, or white feathers
These are alternative shapes and images caused by the appearance of the clouds.

for ever and ever —
Each of the first five paragraphs of the story ends with either a question or a sense of ongoingness which suggest a creative consciousness at work, dwelling upon the fragments of sense-impression which make up the nature of everyday life.

Virginia Woolf was very partial to the use of the dash, particularly in her diaries and letters. Here she incorporates it into imaginative and experimental prose as a note of discontinuity.

Desiring truth
There is further radical punctuation and very complex syntax in what follows. Almost the entire paragraph is technically one long sentence, but it has two long parentheses within it, one of which itself contains separate sentences.

In terms of content the paragraph combines further conscious speculations (‘Desiring truth’) the activity of writing (‘distilling a few words’) and sense impressions (‘a cry starts to the left’).

the clock asseverates with twelve distinct strokes that it is midday
If it is midday in the middle of the story and night at the end, it is reasonable to assume that the story began in the morning and therefore encompasses the time span of a single day.

A small interesting point here is that Woolf used exactly the same phrase in another story – Sympathy – which was probably written the previous year. It is not clear if this was conscious or unconscious self-plagiarism.

Radiating to a point
The location of events switches to men and women in conversation indoors.

gold encrusted
This is the third occurrence of ‘gold’ in the story (‘the sun gold, ‘light sheds gold scales’). Like her use of repeated primary colours in Kew Gardens this is a form of poetic repetition Woolf used to infuse something of the prose poem into her own brand of literary modernism. She used the same device in her novel Jacob’s Room which she was writing at the same time.

The commonwealth of the future
In reaction to the horrors of the first world war, Woolf’s husband Leonard had laid the political foundations for the formation of the League of Nations, which was eventually to become the United Nations Organisation. Political discussions were part of their everyday life.

whilst outside
The setting appears to have changed to a distinctly urban location, with mention of vans, clerks (‘Miss Thingummy’) and upper-class shops.

Flaunted, leaf-light
This string of present and past participles lacks a definite and expressed grammatical subject, but suggests the pieces, the movement, and the arbitrary nature of life, for which some sort of understanding (‘and truth?’) is still being sought.

Now to recollect
The person whose consciousness were are being invited to follow is now reading by the fireside. The words in the book ‘rise’ from the ‘ivory’ coloured pages and make their effect in the reader’s mind.

The reader however stops reading and gazes instead into the fire, imagining exotic scenes (‘minarets’ and ‘Indian seas’) whilst outside the stars have appeared.

The search for some sort of understanding goes on – but now at the end of the day there is a temptation to relinquish the search and accept the domestic comfort of the fireside (‘content with closeness?)

Finally the heron flies back across the sky and the stars signify the onset of night.

Monday or Tuesday – study resources

The Complete Shorter Fiction – Vintage Classics – Amazon UK

The Complete Shorter Fiction – Vintage Classics – Amazon US

The Complete Shorter Fiction – Harcourt edition – Amazon UK

The Complete Shorter Fiction – Harcourt edition – Amazon US

Monday or Tuesday and Other Stories – Gutenberg.org

Kew Gardens and Other Stories – Hogarth reprint – Amazon UK

Kew Gardens and Other Stories – Hogarth reprint – Amazon US

The Mark on the Wall – Oxford World Classics edition – Amazon UK

The Mark on the Wall – Oxford World Classics edition – Amazon US

The Complete Works of Virginia Woolf – Kindle edition

The Cambridge Companion to Virginia Woolf – Amazon UK

Virginia Woolf – Authors in Context – Amazon UK

The Cambridge Introduction to Virginia Woolf – Amazon UK

Monday or Tuesday – the full text

Lazy and indifferent, shaking space easily from his wings, knowing his way, the heron passes over the church beneath the sky. White and distant, absorbed in itself, endlessly the sky covers and uncovers, moves and remains. A lake? Blot the shores of it out! A mountain? Oh perfect — the sun gold on its slopes. Down that falls. Ferns then, or white feathers, for ever and ever. —

Desiring truth, awaiting it, laboriously distilling a few words, for ever desiring — (a cry starts to the left, another to the right, Wheels strike divergently. Omnibuses conglomerate in conflict) — for ever desiring — (the clock asseverates with twelve distinct strokes that it is midday; light sheds gold scales; children swarm) – for ever desiring truth. Red is the dome; coins hang on the trees; smoke trails from the chimneys; bark, shout cry ‘Iron for sale’ — and truth?

Radiating to a point men’s feet and women’s feet, black or gold encrusted &mdash (This foggy weather — Sugar? No, thank you — The commonwealth of the future) — the firelight darting and making the room red, save for the black figures and their bright eyes, whilst outside a van discharges, Miss Thingummy drinks tea at her desk, and plate glass preserves fur coats —

Flaunted, leaf-light, drifting at corners, blown across the wheels, silver-splashed, home or not home, gathered, scattered, squandered in separate scales, swept up, down, torn, sunk, assembled — and truth?

Now to recollect by the fireside on the white square of marble. From ivory depths, words rising shed their blackness, blossom and penetrate. Fallen the book; in the flame, in the smoke, in the momentary sparks — or now voyaging, the marble square pendant, minarets beneath and the Indian seas, while space rushes blue and stars glint — truth? or now, content with closeness?

Lazy and indifferent, the heron returns; the sky veils her stars; then bares them.

Studying Fiction is an introduction to the basic concepts and the language you will need for studying prose fiction. It explains the elements of literary analysis one at a time, then shows you how to apply them. The guidance starts off with simple issues of language, then progresses to more complex literary criticism.The volume contains stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, Katherine Mansfield, Thomas Hardy, Joseph Conrad, D.H. Lawrence, and Charles Dickens. All of them are excellent tales in their own right. The guidance on this site was written by the same author.
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Monday or Tuesday – story synopsis

An unidentified ‘consciousness reflects on fragments of life during an average day. They begin with a bird flying across the sky and musings on the shapes of clouds.

The consciousness then reflects on its own search for meaning, whilst registering sounds and images of daily life and the passage of time.

An interlude later in the same day records snapshots and snippets of social life in an urban setting.

Finally, the story records what we take to be the same person reading by the fireside, and musing on pictures in the fire.

The story closes with the return of the bird and the onset of night.

Monday or Tuesday – first edition

Cover design by Vanessa Bell

Other works by Virginia Woolf

Jacob’s Room (1922) was Woolf’s first and most dramatic break with traditional narrative fiction. It was also the first of her novels she published herself, as co-founder of the Hogarth Press. This gave her for the first time the freedom to write exactly as she wished. The story is a thinly disguised portrait of her brother Thoby – as he is perceived by others, and in his dealings with two young women. The novel does not have a conventional plot, and the point of view shifts constantly and without any signals or transitions from one character to another. Woolf was creating a form of story telling in which several things are discussed at the same time, creating an impression of simultaneity, and a flow of continuity in life which was one of her most important contributions to literary modernism.
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Kew Gardens is a collection of experimental short stories in which Woolf tested out ideas and techniques which she then later incorporated into her novels. After Chekhov, they represent the most important development in the modern short story as a literary form. Incident and narrative are replaced by evocations of mood, poetic imagery, philosophic reflection, and subtleties of composition and structure. The shortest piece, ‘Monday or Tuesday’, is a one-page wonder of compression. This collection is a cornerstone of literary modernism. No other writer – with the possible exception of Nadine Gordimer, has taken the short story as a literary genre as far as this.
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Virginia Woolf is a readable and well illustrated biography by John Lehmann, who at one point worked as her assistant and business partner at the Hogarth Press. It is described by the blurb as ‘A critical biography of Virginia Woolf containing illustrations that are a record of the Bloomsbury Group and the literary and artistic world that surrounded a writer who is immensely popular today’. This is an attractive and very accessible introduction to the subject which has been very popular with readers ever since it was first published..
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Virginia Woolf – web links

Virginia Woolf at Mantex
Biographical notes, study guides to the major works, book reviews, studies of the short stories, bibliographies, web links, study resources.

Blogging Woolf
Book reviews, Bloomsbury related issues, links, study resources, news of conferences, exhibitions, and events, regularly updated.

Virginia Woolf at Wikipedia
Full biography, social background, interpretation of her work, fiction and non-fiction publications, photograph albumns, list of biographies, and external web links

Virginia Woolf at Gutenberg
Selected eTexts of her novels and stories in a variety of digital formats.

Woolf Online
An electronic edition and commentary on To the Lighthouse with notes on its composition, revisions, and printing – plus relevant extracts from the diaries, essays, and letters.

Hyper-Concordance to Virginia Woolf
Search texts of all the major novels and essays, word by word – locate quotations, references, and individual terms

Orlando – Sally Potter’s film archive
The text and film script, production notes, casting, locations, set designs, publicity photos, video clips, costume designs, and interviews.

Women’s History Walk in Bloomsbury
Tour of literary and political homes in Bloomsbury – including Gordon Square, Gower Street, Bedford Square, Tavistock Square, plus links to women’s history web sites.

Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain
Bulletins of events, annual lectures, society publications, and extensive links to Woolf and Bloomsbury related web sites

BBC Audio Essay – A Eulogy to Words
Charming sound recording of radio talk given by Virginia Woolf in 1937 – a podcast accompanied by a slideshow of photographs.

A Family Photograph Albumn
Leslie Stephen compiled a photograph album and wrote an epistolary memoir, known as the “Mausoleum Book,” to mourn the death of his wife, Julia, in 1895 – an archive at Smith College – Massachusetts

Virginia Woolf first editions
Hogarth Press book jacket covers of the first editions of Woolf’s novels, essays, and stories – largely designed by her sister, Vanessa Bell.

Virginia Woolf – on video
Biographical studies and documentary videos with comments on Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group and the social background of their times.

Virginia Woolf Miscellany
An archive of academic journal essays 2003—2014, featuring news items, book reviews, and full length studies.

More on Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf – short stories
Virginia Woolf – greatest works
Virginia Woolf – criticism
Virginia Woolf – life and works

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the only working-class Bloomsbury artist

Bloomsbury Group – web links

tutorial, commentary, study resources, plot, and web links

Marriage a la Mode – critical commentary

Marriage a la Mode – study resources

Marriage a la Mode – plot summary

Katherine Mansfield – web links

Virginia Woolf’s earliest stories and experiments

tutorial, characters, video, study resources

Metamorphosis – plot summary

Study resources

Principal characters

Vladimir Nabokov – Lecture on Metamorphosis

Vladimir Nabokov’s copy of Metamorphosis

Photomontage

Further reading

Other works by Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka – web links

major works in English translation

life, works, political persecution

an illustrated history of architecture 1900-2000

radical developments in the arts 1900-1930

tutorial, commentary, study resources, plot, and web links

Monday or Tuesday – critical commentary

Monday or Tuesday – study resources

Monday or Tuesday – the full text

Monday or Tuesday – story synopsis

Monday or Tuesday – first edition

Further reading

Other works by Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf – web links

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