Book Series Virginia Woolf: A Writer’s Reading Notes, vol. 1

Virginia Woolf’s Reading Notebooks 14 and 46

Daniel Ferrer, Anne-Laure Rigeade, Monica Latham, Frédérique Amselle, Catherine Rovera (eds)

  • Pages: approx. 357 p.
  • Size:216 x 280 mm
  • Illustrations:5 b/w, 13 col., 1 tables b/w.
  • Language(s):English
  • Publication Year:2026


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Virginia Woolf’s reading notebooks published and presented in this volume (used for the preparation of “Phases of Fiction”, one of her most original works, and for several essays and reviews) provide a stimulating demonstration of practical intertextuality in progress.

Subject(s)
BIO

Daniel Ferrer is Directeur de recherche émérite at the Institut des Textes et Manuscrits modernes (ITEM), France.

Anne-Laure Rigeade holds a PHD in Comparative Literature and is Chercheuse associée at ITEM, France.

Monica Latham is a Professor of British literature at the Université de Lorraine, France.

Frédérique Amselle is a Senior Lecturer in British literature at the University of Valenciennes, France.

Catherine Rovera is a senior lecturer at the Université Paris-Dauphine and head of the James Joyce research team at ITEM, France.

Summary

Virginia Woolf’s reading notes offer a fascinating insight into her mind at work, reading “with a pen and notebook, seriously”, engaging in a lively dialogue with the literary tradition, receptive to the books she is reading and preparing at the same time the critical work that she intends to produce. The two notebooks published and presented in this volume, notebooks XIV and XLVI (according to Brenda Silver’s classification) were used for the preparation of “Phases of Fiction”, one of her most original works, and for several essays and reviews. They include quotations, comments on the spur of the moment, and tentative planning for the writing in progress. This edition situates the notes in the immediate context of Woolf’s writing project and in the general context of her relationship to the authors being read. It provides a full transcription of each note and whenever possible quotes the passage in the source from which it derives, and identifies the place where it has been used. It offers a stimulating demonstration of practical intertextuality in progress.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Reading with pen and notebook
Editing the Notebooks
Reading Notebooks 14 and 46
‘Phases of Fiction’
Layout and contents of the notebooks
Conventions for this edition

Transcription of Notebook 14
Notes on Sidney Lee, Principles of Biography
Notes on Harold Nicolson, Some People
Notes on Ann Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho
Notes on Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
Notes on Charles Dickens, Bleak House
Notes on John Ruskin, Præterita
Notes on The Letters of Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield
Notes on Lord Chesterfield’s Characters
Notes on review of Matrix by Dorothy Wellesley
Notes on Charles Dickens, Bleak House
Notes on George Eliot, Silas Marner
Notes on Henry James, What Maisie Knew
Notes on Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way
Notes on Feodor Dostoevsky, The Possessed
Notes on Thomas Love Peacock, Crotchet Castle
Notes on Tristram Shandy
Notes on Herman Melville, Moby Dick
Notes on the novel
Notes on Florence Emily Hardy, The Early Life of Thomas Hardy
Notes for ‘Phases of Fiction’
Notes on Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way

Transcription of Notebook 46
Notes on The Letters of Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield
Notes on life in fiction
Notes on Ann Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho
Notes on George Meredith, The Ordeal of Richard Feverel
Notes on George Meredith, Beauchamp’s Career
Notes on George Meredith, The Adventures of Harry Richmond
Notes on George Meredith, The Egoist, A Comedy in Narrative
Notes on The Letters of George Meredith
Notes on Laurence Sterne’s Letters
Notes on Wilbur L. Cross, The Life and Times of Laurence Sterne
Notes on Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey
Notes on Charles Dickens, Bleak House
Notes on Frances Burney’s Diary and Other Writings
Notes on Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
Notes on Feodor Dostoevsky, The Possessed
Notes on Charles Hughes, Mrs. Piozzi’s Thraliana
Notes on Hester Lynch Piozzi, Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson
Notes on Lady Dudley’s obituary
Notes on Anthony Trollope, The Small House at Allington

Table of correspondence to Brenda R. Silver
Virginia Woolf’s Reading Notebooks

Colour facsimiles of selected notebook pages