Virginia Woolf and Her Female Contemporaries

Virginia Woolf and Her Female Contemporaries places Virginia Woolf’s writing in context with that of other women writers during the first decades of the twentieth century. The book increases our understanding of many female writers, helping us to comprehend how they contributed to, and complicated, modernist literature. The essays in this book, divided in five parts, explore burgeoning communities and enclaves of women writers who were contemporaneous with Virginia Woolf. The first part, entitled “Who Are Virginia Woolf’s Female Contemporaries,” explores the boundaries of contemporaneity by considering women across time, class and national identity. The second section, “Cultural Contexts,” explores Woolf’s connections to early twentieth-century culture, including film and book societies. The next two sections, “Virginia Woolf’s Contemporaries Abroad” and “Virginia Woolf’s Contemporaries at Home,” illuminate the interlocking network of women writers and artists. Finally, one of the most enticing sections of the volume is a collection of essays presented as a fitting memorial to Jane Marcus. There, three of Marcus’s students celebrate the life, work, and influence of this unparalleled Woolf scholar.