1910 had opened with a minor sensation (the Dreadnought hoax) and concluded with a major one (the Post-Impressionist exhibition). Between had come the summer of mourning for the King. Although her essay made no reference to any of those events, Virginia surely recognised that each had, to some degree, marked a further step away from the Victorian era and its all-too-brief Edwardian coda. That journey, which continued unchecked until 1914, and accelerated dramatically with the outbreak of the First World War, fostered the social, cultural and political conditions that were to define the rest of
...more
