Events – Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain

PLEASE NOTE: Online events appear in purple type.

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Society events (members only)

Danell Jones, ‘Everything You Think You Know about the Dreadnought Hoax Is Wrong’

VWSGB Online, Wednesday 15 May, 5.30pm BST

Illustrated talk by Professor Danell Jones about her new book, The Girl Prince: Virginia Woolf, Race and the Dreadnought Hoax, followed by a Q&A chaired by Marielle O’Neill.

Journalists, memoirists and others have been getting the 1910 Dreadnought hoax wrong for more than a century. Even Virginia Woolf’s 1940 talk about the hoax is rife with inaccuracies, exaggerations and misrepresentations. The Girl Prince takes a deep-dive into the famous prank, exploring the often-overlooked diversity of Virginia Woolf’s world and setting the record straight on a practical joke that has been misunderstood for a hundred years.

Danell Jones is a writer and scholar with a PhD in literature from Columbia University. She is the author of The Virginia Woolf Writers Workshop; the poetry collection Desert Elegy; and An African in Imperial London: The Indomitable Life of A.B.C. Merriman-Labor, which won the High Plains Book Award for Nonfiction.

Tickets £6, available to members only (see the Membership page to join)
Email onlinevwsgb@gmail.com for further information and queries.

Online event recordings

The VWSGB holds regular live online events, which are recorded and loaded to the Society’s YouTube channel. Members can access recordings to May 2022 using the password supplied to them. (From July 2022 only ticket holders have access to the event recording.)
Recordings of online events to May 2022
Email onlinevwsgb@gmail.com for further information and queries.

Society events open to non-members

VWSGB AGM and Conference: To the Lighthouse * * * LAST FEW TICKETS! * * *

Saturday 20 April 2024
A one-day conference to be held in central London, on the subject of Woolf’s much-loved 1927 novel.

PROGRAMME

Suzie Plumb: a presentation of Camden Council’s ‘RePresenting Bloomsbury’ project with special reference to the Society’s bust of Virginia Woolf in Tavistock Square by Suzie Plumb, Arts Development Officer, Camden Council. Camden has 70+ statues and memorials commemorating and celebrating individuals, including statues, busts, memorials, public fountains and benches. Find out how our statue fits into the larger plan for the borough.

Kabe Wilson: a screening of Kabe’s film: ‘Looking for Virginia: An Artist’s Journey through 100 Archives’, followed by a Q&A session. Inspired by a Vanessa Bell painting at Charleston and a series of unfolding connections between To the Lighthouse and his own childhood holidays, Kabe Wilson’s new work tells the story of how his painting of Newhaven Lighthouse became the cover image of the Norton Critical Edition of Woolf’s great elegiac novel. Kabe guides us through a multimedia presentation that is part art history documentary and part personal archive quest, a century of archives ( in more than one sense), to show how literature and art can connect different lives across time.
Kabe is a multimedia artist, performance poet and Bloomsbury scholar, whose work seeks to generate new modes of critical and creative adaptation. He has produced several projects based on Virginia Woolf’s works, and his vast project of literary recycling – rearranging the words of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own to create a new work, Olivia N’Gowfri’s Of One Woman or So – has become a vital text in experimental literary criticism. He has performed for the Royal Society of Literature, the British Library, the Institute of International Visual Art (Iniva), and once in Virginia Woolf’s own drawing room. In 2023 he was made the inaugural Artist-in-Residence at the University of Sussex’s Centre for Modernist Studies. See: www.artkabe.com/

LUNCH

AGM for members only, free of charge

Celeste Allen: talk on ‘To the Lighthouse: A Vision of St Ives by Virginia Woolf’, a visual narrative of the Cornish town where Virginia Stephen and her family spent every summer from 1882, the year Virginia was born, to 1895, when Virginia’s mother died. Drawing on photographs from the St Ives Archive and Celeste’s personal experience of living in St Ives, this photo essay explores Woolf’s To the Lighthouse through three lenses: her life, specifically her childhood summers at Talland House; her art, as expressed through To the Lighthouse; and her lasting influence, attributed to her writing’s ability to transcend time and open up readers to new experiences, ideas and possibilities. For as Woolf said herself, ‘[T]he whole world is a work of art […] we are the words; we are the music; we are the thing itself’ (‘A Sketch of the Past’, in Moments of Being).
Celeste is an independent content writer, specialising in digital storytelling within the arts and cultural heritage sector. Originally from New Orleans, Celeste found her calling in London, where she pursued a postgraduate degree in journalism and eventually established her own content marketing business, CBA Content. Celeste’s dedication to cultural enrichment led to a trusteeship at St Ives Archive, where she continues to foster connections between the vibrant community and the institution itself. She is also on the Editorial Committee of the Virginia Woolf Bulletin, which helps to advance scholarly and non-academic dialogue among Virginia Woolf enthusiasts and beyond. See: https://cbacontent.com/

Cost: £40 members, £45 non-members, including coffee on arrival and a buffet lunch.
For further information, email eventsvwsgb@gmail.com

Other events

Virginia Woolf Season IV: Woolf and Freedom (Literature Cambridge)

Live online lectures and seminars organised by Trudi Tate, Literature Cambridge.

Saturday 6 April 2024, 6pm. Lecture 8. Freedom of Thought in Woolf’s Essays, with Beth Rigel Daugherty
Saturday 4 May 2024, 6pm. Lecture 9. Freedom of The Waves (1931), with Angela Harris
Saturday 8 June 2024, 6pm. Lecture 10. Politics and Freedom in Three Guineas (1938), with Claire Davison

Individual lectures: £32 full / £27 students & VWSGB members
Email: info@literaturecambridge.co.uk

Vita and Virginia (play)

Wednesday 3 April 2024, 7.30pm
The Old Joint Stock Pub & Theatre, 4 Temple Row West, Birmingham B2 5NY

Virginia Woolf meets fellow author Vita Sackville-West in London in the 1920s. They embark on a 20-year relationship that inspires one of Virginia’s most famous novels, Orlando. Abridged by the cast from the original play by Eileen Atkins, Vita and Virginia consists entirely of words written by Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf. The production deftly brings to life the real letters and diaries of the two women, revealing deep friendship, wit and passion between the literary genius and the aristocratic yet middlebrow writer.

Directed and produced by Richard Delahaye, NKP Theatre Company

‘A beautifully sensitive portrayal of a remarkable love story’
Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain

‘An astonishing piece of theatre’
Fringe Review

‘Emma Francis and Ruth Cattell smash it!’
Edinburgh Reviews

Tickets £15, including booking fee
Further information

Vita and Virginia (play)

Thursday 4 April 2024, 8pm
Katie Fitzgerald’s, 187 Enville Street, Stourbridge DY8 3TB

Directed and produced by Richard Delahaye, NKP Theatre Company

‘A beautifully sensitive portrayal of a remarkable love story’
Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain

‘An astonishing piece of theatre’
Fringe Review

‘Emma Francis and Ruth Cattell smash it!’
Edinburgh Reviews

Tickets £15.40, including booking fee
Further information

Reading Night and Day in Alfriston, East Sussex (study weekend)

Thursday 11–Sunday 14 April 2024
Wingrove House, High Street, Alfriston, East Sussex BN26 5TD

A four-day immersive study of Night and Day in the beautiful East Sussex countryside, close to Charleston, led by Toby Brothers, founding director of the London Literary Salon, and Woolf scholar Karina Jakubowicz. Close reading sections of the text will allow for deep and thorough understanding of this fascinating early novel, with discussions offering insights into the work and Woolf’s creative development.

Cost: £460, plus accommodation (Wingrove House suggested)
***Special offer for VWSGB members: 15% off (3 spaces available)***
For more information, please email litsalon@gmail.com using ‘Night and Day 2024’ as the subject line. See event listing on our website.

‘On Not Knowing Greek’: Why the Classics Matter Today

Saturday 20 April 2024
81 Gower Street, London WC1E 6HJ & the British Museum

This two-hour study session will consider the centrality of Ancient Greek literature and art to Western culture and why they remain so compelling to us today. Group members are then encouraged to head down the road to the British Museum to view the Parthenon sculptures. Sean Forester, a classically trained painter and literary discussion leader, and Woolf scholar Karina Jakubowicz will lead the discussion, taking as their starting point Virginia Woolf’s 1925 essay ‘On Not Knowing Greek’.

Cost: £60. For more information, please email litsalon@gmail.com using ‘On Not Knowing Greek’ as the subject line. See event listing and booking form on our website.

Gardening Bohemia: Bloomsbury Women Outdoors

Wednesday 15 May–Sunday 29 Sep 2024
Garden Museum, Lambeth Palace Road, London SE1 7LB

Centring on Vita Sackville West, Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell and Lady Ottoline Morrell, Gardening Bohemia will tell the story of the women of the Bloomsbury group and friends through their gardens. Photographs, paintings, textiles, books, and correspondence will explore their interweaving lives and shared garden sanctuaries. Guest-curated by Dr Claudia Tobin.

Tickets £14 (concessions available)
See the Garden Museum website for further information
Phone: 020 7401 8865

Clive Bell: Art, Love & Peace (Charleston Festival 2024)

Saturday 18 May 2024, 7.30pm

Charmingly shambolic, Clive Bell’s significance in the history of modern art is sometimes overlooked. His trailblazing book Art daringly defended new ways of seeing and understanding the world, mirrored by his sister-in-law Virginia Woolf, who was forging her own path as a pioneer in literature. Flirtatious, witty and antagonistic, Woolf and Bell were intellectual equals sparring over the nature of both love and art. Their letters – astute, fierce and very funny – will be brought to life by biographer Mark Hussey and celebrated British actor Toby Jones, recent star of TV’s Mr Bates vs The Post Office.

Tickets £10–£25, from the Charleston Festival website

In the footsteps of Virginia Woolf in Southern Spain

Monday 27 May–Sunday 2 June 2024 (6 nights)
Wednesday 25 September–Tuesday 1 October 2024 (6 nights)

A walking tour to Granada and Yegen where Virginia Woolf spent a holiday in 1923 visiting Gerald Brenan, led by guide Encarna Castillo.

Discover this beautiful lesser known area of Southern Spain, away from the crowds but still with blue skies, warmth and the Spanish joy of life. Follow in the footsteps of Virginia Woolf on her trip to the Alpujarras in 1923. Trek up the mountains, wander round the quaint, quiet village of Yegen, or simply relax and swim in the hotel pool. Stay in the traditional hotel El Rincón de Yegen, with easy access to the paths walked by Gerald Brenan and Virginia Woolf.

Price: £1,250 including accommodation, food, English-speaking specialist guiding, a visit to the Alhambra in Granada, local transport and an airport transfer back to Malaga at the end of the trip.

For further information, visit the website.
Contact us by email contactus@walkingwomen.com or phone 01784 664063.
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33rd Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf

Woolf, Modernity, Technology
Thursday 6–Sunday 9 June 2024
California State University, Fresno, California
Organised by Ashley Foster

This is an in-person conference, and all panel presentations and interactive workshops will be held in person. However, we have been able to arrange a hybrid component of the conference with the keynote events and plenaries. Zoom registration for the keynotes are available for those who cannot come to Fresno. Attendees of the in-person conference do not need to register for the Zoom sessions; the keynotes are included in the in-person registration package.

Early bird registrations until 19 March! Last few places on pre- and post-conference trips to Yosemite National Park and Sequoia/Kings Canyon on 5 and 9 June. Please register at fresnostate.edu/woolf2024. Any questions should be sent to woolf2024@mail.fresnostate.edu or to Ashley Foster at foster@csufresno.edu

Woolf and Childhood: Live Online Summer Course (Literature Cambridge)

Monday 8–Friday12 July 2024 (five-day course)
Live online summer course organised by Trudi Tate, Literature Cambridge

Woolf writes very powerfully about her own childhood in ‘A Sketch of the Past’. A number of her novels explore the experiences and perceptions of childhood. She looks at children’s relations with parents and siblings, children’s resistance to parental tyranny, children’s experiences of grief and loss, the difficulties and joys of passing from childhood into adult life. Participants will spend a week immersed in the great writings and ideas of Virginia Woolf, with a rich programme of lectures, supervisions (tutorials), talks and more.

Set reading
• ‘A Sketch of the Past’ (1939) and selections from Hyde Park News
• Jacob’s Room (1922)
• To the Lighthouse (1927)
• The Waves (1931)
• The Years (1937)

Fees: £580 full price / £540 VWSGB members and students for five-day course
For further information, email: info@literaturecambridge.co.uk or see the Literature Cambridge website

This course is repeated a month later as an in-person residential event in Cambridge. Details below.

Woolf and Childhood: Residential Summer Course in Cambridge (Literature Cambridge)

Sunday 4–Saturday 10 August 2024 (five-day course)
Clare Hall, Herschel Road, Cambridge CB3 9AL
Residential address: Robinson College, Grange Road, Cambridge CB3 9AN (or you can stay elsewhere)
Residential summer course organised by Trudi Tate, Literature Cambridge

Set reading
• ‘A Sketch of the Past’ (1939) and selections from Hyde Park News
• Jacob’s Room (1922)
• To the Lighthouse (1927)
• The Waves (1931)
• The Years (1937)

Fees: £1,200 full price / £1,130 VWSGB members and students for five-day course. Please note that the fee includes all tuition and visits plus a group welcome dinner and closing dinner. Accommodation is a separate cost. Please book your accommodation directly with Robinson College or another venue in Cambridge.
For further information, email: info@literaturecambridge.co.uk or see the Literature Cambridge website

Reading To the Lighthouse in St Ives, Cornwall

Sunday 29 September–Wednesday 2 October 2024
Porthmeor Studios, St Ives, Cornwall TR26 1NL

Although To the Lighthouse is not autobiographical, many find close parallels between Woolf’s early life and the world presented in the book. Led by Toby Brothers, founding director of the London Literary Salon, we will read and discuss the work in Porthmeor Studios, a wonderful location in St Ives, the Cornish town that played such an influential part in Woolf’s childhood. During our visit there will be opportunities to visit Tate St Ives, Godrevy Lighthouse (by boat) and, we hope, Talland House, Woolf’s childhood summer home. To the Lighthouse demonstrates Woolf at play, testing the ability of language to truly reflect human experience through the life of the mind, not just action, helping us to understand the author’s precarious position as a visionary on the edge of a violently changing world.

Cost: £560, plus accommodation (participants are responsible for arranging their own travel and accommodation, we can suggest tried and tested places to stay). For more information, please email litsalon@gmail.com using ‘To the Lighthouse 2024’ as the subject line. See event listing on our website.

Reading Jacob’s Room in St Ives, Cornwall

Friday 4–Monday 7 October 2024
Porthmeor Studios, St Ives, Cornwall TR26 1NL

This study weekend will be led by London Literary Salon founding director, Toby Brothers, and Woolf aficionado Sarah Snoxall. Based in the fabulous Porthmeor Studios in St Ives, we will devote four days to reading and discussing the book that is the linchpin between the more traditional novel form and Woolf’s leap forward into the modernist mode. In Jacob’s Room she lets go of event and character development to make room for the intensity of living – that incredible burning that may look from one angle like inconsequence but from another the very heart of being. During our visit to Woolf’s beloved Cornwall there will also be opportunities to visit Tate St Ives, Godrevy Lighthouse (by boat) and, we hope, Talland House, Woolf’s childhood summer home.

Cost: £560, plus accommodation (participants are responsible for arranging their own travel and accommodation, we can suggest tried and tested places to stay). For more information, please email litsalon@gmail.com using ‘Jacob’s Room 2024’ as the subject line. See event listing on our website.

Leslie Stephen: Thinking with and against His Time (International Conference)

Thursday 24–Friday 25 October 2024
Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris
Organised by Claire Davison and Isabelle Gadoin (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris), and Marie Laniel (Université de Picardie, Amiens)

Early advocate of evolutionism, one of the first openly declared agnostics, editor of the Cornhill Magazine, pioneering mountaineer, moral philosopher, founder and general editor of the Dictionary of National Biography: there are so many more facets to Leslie Stephen (1832–1904) than those recorded by his daughter Virginia Woolf, who memorably paid tribute to his ‘strong’, ‘healthy out of door, moor striding mind’. By unfolding all the contradictions and paradoxes of his character, this first international conference on Leslie Stephen means to reclaim the full complexity of his thought and legacy.

Confirmed keynote speakers
Prof. Terry Gifford (Bath Spa University)
Dr Jane Potter (Oxford Brookes University)
Dr Trudi Tate (Clare Hall, University of Cambridge)

Call for Papers
We welcome contributions focusing on Leslie Stephen, but also on the following topics, connected with his life and times and shedding light on the larger context of his work.
• Victorian encyclopaedism
• Victorian periodicals, print culture, the publishing industry
• Biography, the DNB, ‘hero worship’
• Stephen’s relations to Victorian sages and prophets
• Letters, epistolarity, literary networks
• Cambridge, academia, education and university reform
• Gentlemen’s clubs, sociability
• 18th-century philosophy and literature, the Enlightenment
• Utilitarianism, Science, Evolutionism
• The Clapham Sect, Agnosticism, Scepticism
• War, the anti-slavery movement
• Morality, the ‘science of ethics’
• Mountaineering, athletics, walking, nature and travel writing
• Memory, elegy, mourning, the Mausoleum Book, Virginia Woolf and Leslie Stephen
Abstracts of about 300 words, for 25-minute papers in English, together with a short (100-word) author biography, should be sent to: leslie.stephen.conference@gmail.com. by 31 March 2024. In case of difficulties tracing Stephen’s works, please contact the organisers, who will be happy to share links and resources.

For further information, email leslie.stephen.conference@gmail.com

34th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf

Saturday 5–Tuesday 8 July 2025
University of Sussex, UK (plus an opening event on Friday 4 July at King’s College London)
Organised by Helen Tyson (University of Sussex), with Clara Jones and Anna Snaith (King’s College London)

Monks House

Rodmell, Lewes, East Sussex BN7 3HF
Monks House is open from 29 March 2024 for pre-booked visits only, including National Trust members.

Explore the country retreat of the novelist Virginia Woolf, where she wrote many of most celebrated novels. Leonard and Virginia’s personalities saturate the house and it should feel as if they have just stepped out for a walk. You can explore the house at your own speed and there are room guides on hand to help you to bring the house alive. The beautiful English country garden was designed by Leonard Woolf and has incredible views of the Sussex Downs. Virginia Woolf was greatly influenced by the garden wrote many of her major works in her writing lodge. Her short story ‘The Orchard’ was inspired by the garden. With the tranquility of the Sussex Downs through the window and the garden surrounding her, it was the perfect place to write.

Facilities
There is a small shop selling guidebooks, postcards and some second-hand books. Outdoor privy located in the garden. Dogs are permitted in the garden on a lead, but there are no dog bins at the property. There is a small parking area for cars and bicycles nearby, and the Abergavenny Arms in Rodmell serves tea, coffee and cake when Monks House is open.

Tickets £9.50/£10.50 adult, £4.75/£5.30 child (National Trust members free), on sale every Thursday for bookings for the following four weeks.
For more information, see the Monks House website

Volunteer guides
Would you like to be a volunteer guide at Monks House? Meet other Woolf enthusiasts and work, surrounded by Bloomsbury treasures, in the house where Virginia and Leonard Woolf lived for so many years. Training will be provided. Read more about volunteering for us. If you’re interested, please phone 01273 474760 or email monkshouse@nationaltrust.org.uk

Charleston

Charleston, Firle, Lewes, East Sussex BN8 6LL
Open Wednesday–Sunday/Bank Holiday Monday, 10am–5pm
* Charleston Festival 16–27 May 2024 *

Visit Charleston to explore the art and lives of artists Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant and their contemporaries. Almost as soon as they moved to Charleston in 1916, Bell and Grant began to paint. Not just the walls, but on every surface imaginable, transforming the house into a living, breathing work of art. Over the following decades, Charleston became a gathering point for some of the 20th century’s most radical artists, writers and thinkers known collectively as the Bloomsbury group. It is where they lived out their progressive social and artistic ideals. Today, it continues to be a place that brings people together to engage with art and ideas.

A visitor assistant will accompany you around the house as you explore the individually designed and hand-painted rooms. Entry to the galleries and the house is by timed ticket and pre-booking is recommended. The shop, café and garden are available to visit without purchasing a ticket. To book, see the website and for events, see the What’s On page. You can shop online at the Charleston shop web page.

Tickets £18.50 / £16.50 (Friends of Charleston free)

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Payment (VWSGB events only)

First, book your place at the event by emailing eventsvwsgb@gmail.com

Next, pay for the event by online banking, PayPal, credit/debit card or cheque (sterling only).

1) For online payments, please use the following details.
Bank: Santander
Account Name: Virginia Woolf Society GB
Account No.: 40411044
Sort Code: 09 06 66

2) If you wish to pay by PayPal, please email for details. You may need to add a little extra to cover costs.

3) If you wish to pay by credit/debit card, you can email for a PayPal invoice. You will then be able to pay by Visa/Visa Debit/Visa Electron, Mastercard, Discover, UnionPay, Maestro or American Express.

4) Make out a cheque to ‘Virginia Woolf Society’ and email for details.

Reference: for all payment types, please indicate the event plus your surname (e.g. AGM22 SMITH), so that we can match up the payment with the contact details provided.