Virginia Woolf: An MFS Reader

As the most canonical woman writer of modern English literature, Virginia Woolf has become central to our conceptions of literature, modernist theory, the arts, feminism, and social analysis. The interdisciplinary examinations in this anthology explore Woolf's major novels, her key essays, and the literary tropes that unify her writings.

The essays in the first section look at Woolf’s acute analyses of literary imagining: her explorations of the ways fact, vision, and language interact to create both perceived reality and its representation in fiction. In the second part, the contributors focus on Woolf’s social vision, considering how groups respond to traumatic events and treating both the hazards and the comforts of community. The third section brings together seven of the most challenging accounts of Woolf’s ethical and political imagination, reflecting upon her representations of other minds, in particular the minds of those who differ from her according to early twentieth-century notions of class, race, and empire. An afterword by Mark Hussey sketches possible future directions for studies of her work.

This revealing collection sheds new light on one of Britain's most innovative writers. It will be a welcome addition to the library of any scholar of modernism and can easily be adapted for courses on Woolf and modern literature.

Maren Linett is an associate professor of English at Purdue University and the author of Modernism, Feminism, and Jewishness.