Virginia Woolf and the Victorians

by Steve Ellis

Criticism of Woolf is often polarised into viewing her work as either fundamentally progressive or reactionary. In this 2007 book, Steve Ellis argues that her commitment to anxiety about modernity coexists with a nostalgia and respect for aspects of Victorian culture threatened by radical social change. Ellis tracks Woolf's response to the Victorian era through her fiction and other writings, arguing that Woolf can be seen as more 'Post-Victorian' than 'modernist'. He explains how Woolf's emphasis on continuity and reconciliation related to twentieth-century debates about Victorian values, and he analyses her response to the First World War as the major threat to that continuity. This detailed and original investigation of the range of Woolf's writing attends to questions of cultural and political history and fictional structure, imagery and diction. It proposes a fresh reading of Woolf's thinking about the relationships between the past, present and future.

224 pages, Paperback

First published November 15, 2007

Reviews

[Lorraine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Argh! Feel slightly ripped off. This was published in 2007 -- I had made VERY similar arguments in an essay in 2004, for one of my undergrad modules. But it is well argued, perceptive and well written, though I'm not sure I agree with everything