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Introduction

Helen Southworth

in Leonard and Virginia Woolf, The Hogarth Press and the Networks of Modernism

This introductory chapter discusses the Hogarth Press, the publishing company owned by Leonard and Virginia Woolf, first examining the birth and evolution of the Hogarth Press along with a number of ... More

This introductory chapter discusses the Hogarth Press, the publishing company owned by Leonard and Virginia Woolf, first examining the birth and evolution of the Hogarth Press along with a number of other presses of the early twentieth century. It identifies 1922 as the turning point of the future of the Press and explains the rationale behind a focus on the outputs and the network of relationships surrounding the Press. The chapter then places the current study in terms of work conducted in the field of modernist publishing, specifically in terms of the modernist periodical, and finally discusses a network approach that can be used to study the modernist or small press.Less

‘Classics behind plate glass’: The Hogarth Press and the Uniform Edition of the Works of Virginia Woolf

Lise Jaillant

in Cheap Modernism: Expanding Markets, Publishers' Series and the Avant-Garde

In her letter on the Middlebrow collected in The Death of the Moth, Virginia Woolf wrote: “I dislike bound volumes of the classics behind plate glass.” Despite her proclaimed mistrust of the ... More

In her letter on the Middlebrow collected in The Death of the Moth, Virginia Woolf wrote: “I dislike bound volumes of the classics behind plate glass.” Despite her proclaimed mistrust of the “middlebrow” sphere, Woolf was aware that cheap series of reprints could widen her readership and consolidate her literary reputation. In 1928, she wrote the introduction to Laurence Sterne’s Sentimental Journey for the Oxford World’s Classics edition (as explained in Chapter 1). And in 1929, the Hogarth Press started publishing Uniform Editions of her work. As J. H. Willis has argued, “to put a living novelist’s works into a standard edition is to make a claim for the permanence and importance of the writer’s work, to establish a canon, to suggest the classic.” This chapter, based on extensive research in the Hogarth Press archive, argues that the Uniform Editions published by the Hogarth Press achieved at least three things: (1) they reached a wide audience of common readers in Britain; (2) they encouraged Harcourt Brace to issue a similar edition in the United States; and (3) they presented Woolf as a canonical writer whose work deserved to be “collected.” In short, thanks to the Uniform Editions, Woolf’s texts became “classics behind plate glass.”Less

Printing “Prelude”: Virginia Woolf’s Typesetting Apprenticeship and Katherine Mansfield on “Other People’s Presses”

Leslie Kathleen Hankins

in Virginia Woolf and the Common(wealth) Reader

In the first two decades of the twentieth century, the amateur little press and periodical scene was enthusiastic, seductive, and—for the most part—ephemeral. Into this vibrant scene entered Virginia ... More

In the first two decades of the twentieth century, the amateur little press and periodical scene was enthusiastic, seductive, and—for the most part—ephemeral. Into this vibrant scene entered Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield, along with their partners, Leonard Woolf and John Middleton Murry. This chapter considers why these two couples, four writers, were drawn into letterpress printing at this point in time. It shows that private presses were urged into being not only by the pleasures of printing, but by the frets of censorship and the distaste for the tyranny of publishers and editors; Woolf and Mansfield wanted to write freely without the pressures of external editing. In other—a quite complicated—ways, the Woolfs' Hogarth Press was an impetus to the Mansfield/Murry Heron Press, as an example and as, in ways, a censor.Less

Bibliographers, Booksellers, and Collectors of the Hogarth Press

Leslie Arthur

in Virginia Woolf and the World of Books

This chapter considers the treasures of the Hogarth Press available to collectors, including rare, limited edition books hand-printed by the Woolfs. It explores the intellectual pleasures of ... More

This chapter considers the treasures of the Hogarth Press available to collectors, including rare, limited edition books hand-printed by the Woolfs. It explores the intellectual pleasures of collecting objects and touches on the lives of Hogarth Press collectors.Less

Chinese Eyes and Muddled Armenians: The Hogarth Press and British Racial Discourse

Adam Barrows

in Interdisciplinary/Multidisciplinary Woolf

This chapter examines Hogarth Press's catalog in relation to British conceptualizations of the “East.” Leonard and Virginia Woolf's Hogarth Press, beginning to establish its credentials as a ... More

This chapter examines Hogarth Press's catalog in relation to British conceptualizations of the “East.” Leonard and Virginia Woolf's Hogarth Press, beginning to establish its credentials as a dedicated forum for anti-colonial writing in the 1920s, contributed meaningfully to Britain's “Eastern” discourse in ways that shed interesting light on issues of cultural and racial identity in Virginia's fiction. Scholars like Laura Marcus, Kathy J. Philips, and Ursula McTaggart have insisted on the interaction of Virginia Woolf's aesthetics with the political discourse so manifest in the Hogarth catalog. The rest of the chapter contextualizes the limitations of Hogarth's anti-colonial publications and uses Clarissa Dalloway's confusion between “Turks” and “Armenians” in Mrs. Dalloway to highlight Virginia Woolf's skepticism of political models that, while benign, would muddle the ruling class's political certainties and force it to see itself as Other.Less

Redefining Woolf for the 1990s: Producing and Promoting the “Definitive Collected Edition”

Elizabeth Willson Gordon

in Interdisciplinary/Multidisciplinary Woolf

This chapter offers a nostalgic invocation of Virginia Woolf's biography and image in the re-launching of Hogarth Press through the “Definitive Collected Edition” of her novels. The year 1988 is one ... More

This chapter offers a nostalgic invocation of Virginia Woolf's biography and image in the re-launching of Hogarth Press through the “Definitive Collected Edition” of her novels. The year 1988 is one of the key moments in marketing and publishing Woolf because of copyright, academic trends, and changes at the Hogarth Press itself. The rest of the chapter examines the finished product of the definitive collected edition, from the hotly debated cover design and the introductions by Quentin Bell and Angelica Garnett, to the annotations, or lack thereof, and promotion. It also discusses the fascinating vicissitudes of publication and the meaning of Woolf herself at the turn of the decade.Less

“No One Wants Biography”: The Hogarth Press Classifies Orlando1

Claire Battershill

in Interdisciplinary/Multidisciplinary Woolf

This chapter examines resistance to clearcut boundaries as the challenge for Leonard Woolf in terms of marketing Virginia Woolf's Orlando, as well as a moment at which the Hogarth Press's imaginative ... More

This chapter examines resistance to clearcut boundaries as the challenge for Leonard Woolf in terms of marketing Virginia Woolf's Orlando, as well as a moment at which the Hogarth Press's imaginative engagement with the generic business of bookselling becomes evident. In his 1928 essay, “Imaginative Biography,” Leonard Woolf quotes Egerton Brydges, a nineteenth-century man of letters who defines the genre as follows: “By Imaginative Biography, I mean an Imaginary Superstructure on the known facts of the Biography of eminent characters.” Woolf transports his own exploration of literary genre to the realm of the book trade, which is always informed by practical concerns. Woolf's remarks on imaginative biography have particular relevance to Orlando. The chapter then considers the confusion Orlando caused among readers and booksellers, along with Virginia Woolf's concern about the book's reception.Less

The Hogarth Press, Digital Humanities, and Collaboration: Introducing the Modernist Archives Publishing Project (MAPP)

Nicola Wilson, Elizabeth Willson Gordon, Alice Staveley, Helen Southworth, and Claire Battershill

in Virginia Woolf and the Common(wealth) Reader

This chapter discusses the Modernist Archives Publishing Project (MAPP). MAPP aims to use digital technology to create a “super collection” of books and publishing histories that empirically models ... More

This chapter discusses the Modernist Archives Publishing Project (MAPP). MAPP aims to use digital technology to create a “super collection” of books and publishing histories that empirically models theories in book history and literary sociology about the cultural production of texts in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The Hogarth Press offers an ideal pilot study to inaugurate MAPP. The Hogarth Press published over five hundred books during the Woolfs' stewardship up to 1946, and then another five hundred under the aegis first of Chatto & Windus (up to 1987) and then Random House (1987 to present). Digitizing, annotating, and reconfiguring the network relations amongst these diverse texts within the wider public sphere of modernist publishing is where MAPP aims to make a key intervention. The chapter positions The Hogarth Press as both case study and catalyst to a broader understanding of how publishing houses as creative and business enterprises shaped the modernist movement and the discourses of twentieth-century culture. The goal is to digitally reanimate the network history of publishing.Less

“Please Help Me!” Virginia Woolf, Viola Tree, and the Hogarth Press1

Diane F. Gillespie

in Contradictory Woolf

This chapter explores Virginia Woolf's contradictory approach to social behavior by bringing Three Guineas in dialogue with Viola Tree's Can I Help You?, published by Hogarth Press in 1937. Can I ... More

This chapter explores Virginia Woolf's contradictory approach to social behavior by bringing Three Guineas in dialogue with Viola Tree's Can I Help You?, published by Hogarth Press in 1937. Can I Help You? offers a parallel context for Woolf's challenges to conventional values and rules of etiquette, one that also affirms manners as an evolving art form helpful, at best, in fostering harmonious human relationships in lives well lived. Although Woolf's writing has a much broader intellectual scope, Tree's “personal, humorous touch” manages to undermine “hierarchical rituals.” The rest of this chapter discusses Woolf's take on vulgarity and Tree's response to two potential criticisms: that she is a snob and that she is no authority on manners.Less

The Believers: Writers Publishing for Readers, or Preliminary Musings on the Hogarth Press and Mcsweeney’s

Aurelea Mahood

in Interdisciplinary/Multidisciplinary Woolf

This chapter explores the question of marketing and the writer-run press by comparing Hogarth Press and McSweeney's, in terms of their constructions of cultural value, readership, and authorial ... More

This chapter explores the question of marketing and the writer-run press by comparing Hogarth Press and McSweeney's, in terms of their constructions of cultural value, readership, and authorial signature. Through an extended comparative analysis of the Hogarth Press and McSweeney's, the chapter highlights the afterlife of historical modernist values as embodied by the strategies that author-publishers have adopted both then and now; author-run presses as an expression of the writers' conceptualization of readers; and whether recent work on “reading class” versus “reading culture” can afford literary critics a supplementary means of understanding the ongoing significance of adopting modernist modes of presenting value and prescribing frameworks of expectations. It also considers the dual role of Virginia Woolf and Dave Eggers as authors and publishers.Less

Uniforms and Uniformity: Virginia Woolf

Vike Martina Plock

in Modernism, Fashion and Interwar Women Writers

In foregrounding fashion’s involvement with nationalist and corporatist political movements, this chapter on Virginia Woolf focuses on her 1930s writing—especially The Years (1937) and Three Guineas ... More

In foregrounding fashion’s involvement with nationalist and corporatist political movements, this chapter on Virginia Woolf focuses on her 1930s writing—especially The Years (1937) and Three Guineas (1938), as well as related material in the Monks House Papers—to analyze Woolf’s engagement with fascist interventions in identity politics. In focusing on the depiction of women’s sartorial items in her writing, it shows how Woolf examines the relationship between the individual and the collective that fascist movements threatened to restructure by introducing increasingly uniform clothing. But while she revealed the dangers inherent in following regulations that aimed to standardize behavior and clothing, Woolf, this chapter shows, simultaneously embraced other forms of uniformity: her own rise to literary stardom in the 1930s, advanced by the Hogarth Press’ introduction of Uniform Editions of her work, provides a striking counterpoint to her critique of the standardized cultural productions of her time.Less

Alternative Histories: Hogarth Press’s World-Makers and World-Shakers Series

Eleanor McNees

in Virginia Woolf and the World of Books

This chapter considers the World Makers and World-Shakers series published by the Hogarth Press and its place in educational reform.

There Goes the Bride: Virginia Woolf, Julia Strachey, and the Hogarth Press1

Diane F. Gillespie

in Interdisciplinary/Multidisciplinary Woolf

This chapter examines how the ritual of marriage is represented through the intersection of Leonard and Virginia Woolf's personal circle and three works published by Hogarth Press: Woolf's Orlando, ... More

This chapter examines how the ritual of marriage is represented through the intersection of Leonard and Virginia Woolf's personal circle and three works published by Hogarth Press: Woolf's Orlando, Julia Strachey's Cheerful Weather for the Wedding (1932), and Viola Tree's Can I Help You? (1937). “There goes the bride” implies an identity transformation—from unmarried to married. Yet, however idealized the rite of passage, the past remains ever-present, human tendencies to thwart perfection exist, and unpredictable realities of married life lie ahead. The rest of the chapter considers what brides and weddings have to do with the Hogarth Pres and what attracted Woolf, as fiction reader for Hogarth, to Strachey's story.Less

Virginia Woolf, the Hogarth Press and “Short Things”

Aimee Gasston

in Virginia Woolf and the World of Books

This chapter considers the dangers of underestimating the value of short fiction to Woolf's literary career. Gasston argues against Woolf's short fiction being viewed as an infrequently practiced ... More

This chapter considers the dangers of underestimating the value of short fiction to Woolf's literary career. Gasston argues against Woolf's short fiction being viewed as an infrequently practiced hobby rather than serious literary output.Less

The Hogarth Press, a Singular Art Gallery

Virginie Podvin

in Virginia Woolf and the World of Books

This chapter looks at Virginia Woolf's ambiguous relationship with painting. Podvin explores how Woolf uses the techniques of a painter in her novels, including form, colour, light, contrast, framing ... More

This chapter looks at Virginia Woolf's ambiguous relationship with painting. Podvin explores how Woolf uses the techniques of a painter in her novels, including form, colour, light, contrast, framing characters and landscapes, and representing the figure of the painter.Less

Bibliographic Parturition in Orlando: Books, Babies, Freedom and Fame

Alice Staveley

in Sentencing Orlando: Virginia Woolf and the Morphology of the Modernist Sentence

In this chapter’s account of Woolf’s labour as a writer and publisher at the Hogarth Press, Alice Staveley connects the labour of mothers and writers, and the delivery of babies and books. Reading ... More

In this chapter’s account of Woolf’s labour as a writer and publisher at the Hogarth Press, Alice Staveley connects the labour of mothers and writers, and the delivery of babies and books. Reading the converging deliveries of Orlando’s poem ‘The Oak Tree’, her son, and the manuscript of Orlando, Staveley analyses Woolf’s invocation of her own 1919 short story ‘Kew Gardens’ in the novel’s final pages. Sounding the resonances of this story’s published forms, particularly the limited luxury edition issued in 1927, Staveley argues that the Kew Gardens scene turns the ‘narratological modernist motif of closure-as-return into a materialist tribute’.Less

“Wood is a pleasant thing to think about”: William Blake and the Hand-Printed Books of the Hogarth Press

Michael Black

in Virginia Woolf and the World of Books

This chapter explores Woolf's interest in the eighteenth-century poet and visual artist William Blake, arguing his work embodied the avant-gardism to which modernists aspired.

Advise and Reject: Virginia Woolf, The Hogarth Press, and a Forgotten Woman’s Voice

Diane F. Gillespie

in Virginia Woolf and Her Female Contemporaries

In 1939, Virginia Woolf was distracted by writing projects, relocation of living and publishing quarters in London, and another impending world war. Yet she typed on behalf of the Hogarth Press a ... More

In 1939, Virginia Woolf was distracted by writing projects, relocation of living and publishing quarters in London, and another impending world war. Yet she typed on behalf of the Hogarth Press a delayed rejection letter, previously unknown and unpublished, to aspiring novelist Anne Northgrave Tibble. The advice in Woolf’s letter reveals her own definition of the novel. Tibble’s forgotten voice, in her one published novel from this period, challenges, as does Woolf, war and class hierarchies, but from a different perspective. Red-brick-educated, Tibble never forgot her rural roots in North Yorkshire and consistently identified with the working classes. If Tibble is mentioned now, it is for her life writing, including scholarly biographies and a candid three-volume autobiography.Less