Synopses & Reviews
Far from the lady in the modernist ivory tower, Virginia Woolf was very comfortable with the commercial side of the literary world . Virginia Woolf and the Literary Marketplace is an exciting collection of fifteen new essays, by both renowned and up-and-coming scholars, exploring the many roles Woolf played in the world of commodity culture. As these contributors show, even after she became famous for her fiction, Woolf continued to engage with the market in its manifold facets, including marketing, production, pricing, copyright, technology, readership, reviews, and more.
Review
"Virginia Woolf and the Literary Marketplace provides a rich overview of the complexity of Woolf's publication history . . . the volume's contributions reflect just how many dimensions there are to the literary marketplace and complicate existing conversations regarding publication history, composition practices, marketing, and modernism." - Woolf Studies Annual
"This collection of essays is the first to focus on Virginia Woolf at the heart of the literary marketplace . . the volume succinctly bridges the divide between high art and mass culture, challenging the notion of Modernism as only a reactionary movement against consumerism and commodity culture." - Forum for Modern Language Studies
"This inspiring new collection brings sharply into focus the consummate skill, astute expertise, and canny know-how with which Woolf negotiated, critiqued, and made use of the literary marketplace, maintaining both her 'brand' and her distance. Injecting renewed energy into this fascinating area of Woolf studies, these essays explore Woolf's unique position as writer, reviewer, and publisher, and set into productive dialogue the complex and contradictory impulses at work in her multifaceted engagement with the fluctuations of a varied and shifting economic context." - Kathryn Simpson, Senior Lecturer, University of Birmingham and author of Gifts, Markets, and Economies of Desire in Virginia Woolf
"Virginia Woolf and the Literary Marketplace vividly presents a Woolf we've only infrequently glimpsed until now: one with printer's ink all over her hands. Dubino has assembled an impressive and diverse group of writers who, together, sketch for us a portrait of the artist as willing and savvy marketer.Woolf's writing and reputation will forever look different as a result." - Kevin J. H. Dettmar, Pomona College and Editor of the Oxford University Press Modernist Literature & Culture book series and General Editor of the Longman Anthology of British Literature
"Virginia Woolf is the lens through which these essays survey a rich cultural landscape, taking in periodical studies, translation, the economics and ideology of editing, entrepreneurship and marketing, the culture of censorship, and many other topics that will stimulate new conversations within modernist studies about the intersections of art and commerce. This is a fascinating and wide-ranging collection that will be of interest to anyone in modernist studies." - Mark Hussey, Professor of English, Pace University and General Editor, Harcourt Annotated Edition of the Works of Virginia Woolf
Synopsis
Although best known as a novelist, Virginia Woolf wrote nearly six hundred essays and reviews for several dozen publications. These unique essays focus primarily on Woolfs nonfiction and consider her in the context of the modernist marketplace. With research based on new archival material, this volume makes important new contributions to the study of the "gift economy."
Synopsis
These unique essays focus primarily on Woolf's non-fiction and considers her in the context of the modernist marketplace. With research based on new archival material, this volume makes important new contributions to the study of the 'gift economy.'
About the Author
Jeanne Dubino is a Professor of English at Appalachian State University. She is the co-editor of Virginia Woolf and the Essay (with Beth Rosenberg) and has published articles and essays on Woolf, travel literature, popular culture, and postcolonial writers.
Table of Contents
Introduction * PART I: Woolfs Engagement with the Marketplace * Reading, Taking Notes, and Writing: Virginia Stephens Reviewing Practice—Beth Rigel Daugherty * Accessing Woolf: From Book to Reader—Virginia Woolfs Roles in Hogarth Press Distribution—Elizabeth Gordon * Circulating Ideas and Selling Periodicals: Leonard Woolf, the Nation and Athenaeum, and Topical Debate—Elizabeth Dickens * Woolfs Editorial Self-Censorship and Risk-Taking in Jacobs Room— Vara Neverow * Between Writing and Truth: Woolfs Positive Nihilism—Jeanette McVicker * PART II: Woolfs Relationship to the Marketplace * How to Strike a Contemporary: Mansfield and Woolf on the Market—Katie Macnamara * Something of a Firebrand: Virginia Woolf and the Literary Reputation of Emily Brontë—Heather Bean * Virginia Woolf and Gertrude: Commerce, Bestsellers, and the Jew—Karen Leick * PART III: Woolfs Marketplaces * Middles and Middlebrows: Virginia Woolf and the Market of the Familiar Essay—Caroline Pollentier * Woolf Studies and Periodical Studies—Patrick Collier * The “Keystone Public” and Virginia Woolf: A Room of Ones Own, Time and Tide, and Cultural Hierarchies—Melissa Sullivan * “Murdering an Aunt or two”: Textual Practice and Narrative Form in Virginia Woolfs Metropolitan Market—John Young * PART IV: Marketing Woolf * The Grand Lady of Literature: Virginia Woolf in Italian Literary Periodicals under Fascism— Elisa Bolchi * Virginia Woolf, Orlando, Milan, Mondadori, 1933—Sara Villa * Virginia Woolf and The Bookman—Yuzu Uchida * Dont Judge a Cover by Its Woolf: Book Cover Images and the Marketing of Virginia Woolfs Work—Jennie-Rebecca Falcetta