Introduction

pp. 1-15

in: Anna Snaith, Palgrave advances in Virginia Woolf studies, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007

Abstract

Virginia Woolf haunts our culture. Images of Woolf, particularly the famous 1902 Beresford photograph, resurface in unexpected places, redolent with meaning. She has become a ready signifier of highbrow modernism, bohemian London, 1970s feminism, elitism, aestheticism, madness, and the drive to suicide. Her persona has been used to market products ranging from Bass ale to the New York Review of Books (Silver 1999, 8) to the new Waitrose supermarket at the Brunswick Centre in London's Bloomsbury.¹ Her cultural influence is eclectic: inspiring Dries Van Noten's 2004 fashion collection and graffiti art in London's Vauxhall (Barkway 2005, 36 and 2002, 29). Fans and detractors alike feel the need to declare their position, often intensely held and heavy with assumptions about art, class and feminism. Few writers, in fact, have triggered such passionate responses. While this is a book about the academic response to Woolf — what we might call Woolf studies — intensity and polarity of response are still to be found. This sense of commitment — Woolf is a writer who matters — makes her reception endlessly fascinating. And her controversial status is a result of her interest in culturally troubling questions, those that still preoccupy us in the twenty-first century. In addition, the plurality of approaches to Woolf speaks to the richness of her writing. That she came at life from so many angles — sexual, political, historical, and psychological — facilitates corresponding critical approaches. Each of these approaches has, in its own way, revolutionized the way one might read Woolf.