Virginia Woolf and Capitalism

by Clara Jones (Editor)

Overview

Virginia Woolf and Capitalism explores Woolf’s engagement with and critiques of capitalism throughout her life, arguing for its central importance in our understanding of her as an author, activist and publisher. Galvanised by existing scholarship on the place of economics, class, gender and empire in Woolf’s writing, this collection draws attention to her thinking about history, labour and economics and gives space for understandings of Woolf in the context of our own late-capitalist moment. Chapters by leading and emerging scholars range across Woolf's oeuvre in all its generic diversity, from her earliest short fiction and Night and Day to Three Guineas and Between the Acts, showcasing a range of critical approaches from the archival to the creative to the pedagogical. This collection demonstrates how productive and provocative thinking about Woolf’s fiction and non-fiction through the lens of capitalism can be for Woolf scholars.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781399514088
Publisher:	Edinburgh University Press
Publication date:	06/30/2024
Series:	Virginia Woolf - Variations
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x (d)

About the Author

Clara Jones is Senior Lecturer in Modern Literature at King’s College London. She is the author of Virginia Woolf: Ambivalent Activist (2016) and is currently at work on a new book on the politics of interwar women writers and activists, including Rosamond Lehmann, Ellen Wilkinson, Elizbeth Bowen, Sylvia Townsend Warner and Amabel Williams-Ellis.

Table of Contents

List of Figures

Acknowledgements

Series Preface

Abbreviations

Notes on Contributors

Woolf and Capitalism: Introduction, Clara Jones

PART I: CLASS, EMPIRE, CAPITAL

1. ‘The eagle claws other peoples land, & goods’: Virginia Woolf on the desire to dominate, Michèle Barrett

2. Empire, Slavery and Capitalism, Anna Snaith

3. ‘my comfortable capitalistic head’: Virginia Woolf on Consumption, Co-operation and Motherhood, Charlotte Taylor Suppé

4. Biometric Feminism: A Room of One’s Own and The Politics of Intelligence, Natasha Periyan

5. ‘Merchant of this city’: Capitalism and the Liturgies of Peace and War in Jacob’s Room, Charles Andrews

PART II: LABOUR AND THE MARKETPLACE

6. Between the Houses: Woolf and the Property Market, Rachel Bowlby

7. Publishing and Capitalism at the Hogarth Press, Nicola Wilson

8. ‘It’s rather distinguished to be as ordinary as I am.’ Woolf’s Working Women Writers, Bryony Randall

9. The Literary Public Sphere in Virginia Woolf’s Night and Day, Stanislava Dikova

10. Capitalism and Woolf’s Beyond-Work, Evelyn Chan

11. Virginia Woolf: A Sound Investment, Brenda R. Silver

CODA: CRITICAL/CREATIVE APPROACHES

12. Scrapbooking the Present Day: The Three Guineas Scrapbooks, Helen Tyson

13. Work Cut Out, Kabe Wilson

Index

Editorial Reviews

The time is ripe for this exciting collection on Virginia Woolf's economic thinking. Clara Jones has assembled an impressive set of scholars to explore Woolf's efforts, powerful but partial, to critique capitalism from within. Virginia Woolf and Capitalism is at once a resource and a rallying cry.

Anne Fernald