Subtitle: Letters on the Death of Virginia Woolf
Author: Sybil Oldfield
Subject: Literary Studies/Biography/Womens Studies
Cloth ISBN 0-8135-3560-3
Pages: 272 pp. 18 b&w illus.
Description:

Praise for Afterwords

"What a compelling story! Sybil Oldfield's deft editing and delightfully informative notes allow the reader to watch the drama of Virginia Woolf's death played out without the least bit of ghoulishness. It is actually liberating to find that she was mourned so deeply as a passionate friend and a major public intellectual both by her friends and by masses of common readers, political comrades of the Labor Party left, pacifists and feminists. Virginia Woolf would have made a novel out of these condolence letters. Sybil Oldfield has made a fast-paced and gripping drama."-Jane Marcus, author of Hearts of Darkness: White Women Write Race

"Written in the darkest days of World War II, these moving letters eloquently testify to the surprising breadth of Virginia Woolf's literary and personal appeal. As a whole, the correspondence is a unique contribution to British cultural history."-Mark Hussey, general editor of Harcourt Annotated Works of Virginia Woolf

On 28 March, 1941, at the height of Hitler's victories during the Second World War, Virginia Woolf filled her pockets with stones and drowned herself in the River Ouse near her home in Sussex. At the time of her death some voices in the press attacked her for showing cowardice in the face of the enemy and for setting a bad example to the general population. Woolf's suicide has been the subject of controversy for the media, for literary scholars, and for her biographers ever since.

Just when it may seem that nothing else could be said about Virginia Woolf and the ambiguous details of her suicide, Afterwords provides an entirely fresh perspective. It makes available to a wide readership for the first time letters sent to Leonard Woolf and Vanessa Bell (Virginia Woolf's sister) in the aftermath of the event. This unique volume brings together over two hundred letters from T. S. Eliot, H. G. Wells, May Sarton, Vita Sackville-West, Edith Sitwell, E. M. Forster, Radclyffe Hall, and many others, including political figures and religious leaders. In addition, informative annotations reveal the identities of many unexpected condolence-letter writers from among the general public.

In her introduction, editor Sybil Oldfield confronts the contemporary controversy over Woolf's suicide note, arguing that no one who knew Woolf or her work believed that she had deserted Britain. The ensuing collection of letters supports Oldfield's assertion. In elegant prose that rises to the stature of the occasion, these writers share remembrances of Virginia Woolf in life, comment on the quality of her work and her antifascist values, and reveal previously unknown facets of her capacity for friendship.

A richly deserved tribute to the life of an extraordinary woman as well as a testimony to the human capacity for sympathy, Afterwords is essential reading for anyone interested in the life, death, and enduring impact of Virginia Woolf.

Sybil Oldfield is a Research Reader in English at the University of Sussex. She is the author of Spinsters of This Parish: The Life and Times of F. M. Mayor and Mary Sheepshanks, Women against the Iron Fist: Alternatives to Militarism, 1900-1989, and Women Humanitarians, 1900-1950.