PLEASE NOTE: Online events appear in purple type.
Face-to-face events are subject to change.
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Society events (members only)
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 ticket holders only have access to the event recording.)
Recordings of online events to May 2022
Email onlinevwsgb@gmail.com for further information and queries.
Woolf Winter Readings
Wednesday 6 December, 5.30pm GMT
FREE online event, members only
An evening of readings about winter from the writings of Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury group, read by members of the Virginia Woolf Society of GB.
Members will be emailed further details about the event.
Not a member but would like to be? See the Membership page
For more on Woolf and winter, see ‘Virginia Woolf’s Christmas Diaries’ by Zoe Wolstenholme on Paula Maggio’s Blogging Woolf
Society events open to non-members
23rd Annual Birthday Lecture 2024: ‘Endgame: The Untidy Deaths of Katherine Mansfield and Virginia Woolf’, by Dr Gerri Kimber
Saturday 27 January 2024, 2pm
Birkbeck, University of London, Torrington Square, Bloomsbury, London WC1E 7JL
The Virginia Woolf Society is pleased to announce its Annual Birthday Lecture 2024. The lecture will be given by Dr Gerri Kimber, Visiting Professor in the Department of English at the University of Northampton. This lecture will discuss the last three or so months of the lives of Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield, and the ‘after-life’ of their deaths, which, in both cases, was an untidy affair.
Gerri is a world specialist on the author Katherine Mansfield, and was Chair of the Katherine Mansfield Society for ten years (2010–2020). She has written or edited nearly 40 books, in addition to numerous journal articles and reviews. She has made numerous appearances on national radio and television, and has been invited as a keynote speaker all over the world. She is currently writing a biography of Katherine Mansfield.
The lecture will be followed by a birthday cake and wine reception. Attendees will receive a printed copy of the lecture at no extra charge.
Tickets £30 members, £35 non-members
Email eventsvwsgb@gmail.com for further details and to book
Members have received priority booking details by email.
Other events
Bring No Clothes: Bloomsbury and Fashion
Running until 7 January 2024
Charleston Lewes, Southover Road, Lewes, East Sussex BN7 1AB
Wednesday–Sunday/Bank Holiday Monday, 10am–5pm
How did Virginia Woolf navigate her disdain for fashion alongside her love of clothing? What can we read about queerness and patriarchy in the clothing of Duncan Grant, E. M. Forster and John Maynard Keynes? How did Vanessa Bell’s handmade clothing form part of her creative life? And what makes the Bloomsbury group such a rich source of inspiration for 21st-century fashion design?
The exhibition is curated by writer Charlie Porter, so expect a multi-layered experience featuring catwalk fashion by Dior, Fendi, Burberry, Comme des Garçons, Erdem and S. S. Daley, personal items belonging to members of the Bloomsbury group including Virginia Woolf and Lady Ottoline Morrell, never-before-seen portraits by artists Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell, plus new commissions and interventions by contemporary fashion designers Jawara Alleyne and Ella Boucht.
Tickets £12.50 (concessions available)
Book a morning (10am–1.30pm) or afternoon (1.30–5pm) slot
Find out more about the new Charleston venue
Max Beerbohm: The Price of Celebrity (New York)
New York Public Library, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, Sue and Edgar Wachenheim III Gallery, Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street, New York 10018
Until Sunday 4 February 2024
This exhibition maps the career of Max Beerbohm in relation to the idea of celebrity, following him from his early days in the Decadent circles of Oscar Wilde and Aubrey Beardsley through his late career as a radio performer on BBC broadcasts during the Second World War. Along the way, he knew, drew and wrote about many other celebrities, from Henry James to Virginia Woolf and George Bernard Shaw to members of the Royal Family. A section of the exhibition is devoted to Beerbohm’s relationship with Virginia Woolf, comprising an exchange of letters, pages from Woolf’s diary recording a meeting with Beerbohm, and a Beerbohm self-caricature modelled on Vanessa Bell’s cover for Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown.
FREE: all welcome
For further information, email: juliecarlsen@nypl.org
Virginia Woolf Season IV: Woolf and Freedom (Literature Cambridge)
Monthly to June 2024
Live online lectures and seminars organised by Trudi Tate, Literature Cambridge.
Saturday 11 November 2023, 6pm. Lecture 3. Women and Freedom in To the Lighthouse (1927), with Alison Hennegan
Saturday 9 December 2023, 6pm. Lecture 4. Women’s Freedoms through The Years (1937), with Ellie Mitchell
Saturday 6 January 2023, 6pm. Lecture 5. To the Lighthouse (1927), Art and the Freedom of Movement, with Kabe Wilson
Sunday 4 February 2024, 6pm. Lecture 6. A Room of One’s Own (1929): Intelligence and Intellectual Freedom, with Natasha Periyan
Saturday 23 March 2024, 6pm. Lecture 7. Shakespeare’s Sister and Creative Freedom in A Room of One’s Own (1929), with Varsha Panjwani
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
Bloomsbury and the Art of Being Modern
Thursday 21–Sunday 24 March 2024
Christ Church, St Aldates, Oxford OX1 1DP
This year’s conference will take Virginia Woolf and the cohort loosely grouped around her in Bloomsbury and beyond to explore the modernist creative explosion of the early twentieth century. Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, E. M. Forster, D. H. Lawrence, Rupert Brooke; Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant, Clive Bell, Roger Fry; Maynard Keynes, Bertrand Russell, G. E. Moore. The Woolfs were at the centre of a group of writers, artists and thinkers who between them in the decades after 1910 transformed the cultural landscape. Between them they translated and published Freud in Britain; they forged new ways of living against a background of war; they risked imprisonment by living openly as homosexuals; they fought for ideals of internationalism that resulted in the League of Nations.
Cost: Various prices depending on room option. Single Ensuite Room Package £830, Single Standard £730, Twin Standard £1,460, Twin/Double Ensuite £1,560. All meals included. Day delegate package, no accommodation or breakfast £600.
For further information and to book, see the website
Contact: specialinterest@chch.ox.ac.uk
Phone: 01865 276174
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
The call for papers and conference website announcements will follow. There will be pre- and post-conference trips to Yosemite National Park and Sequoia/Kings Canyon on 5 and 9 June. Any questions should be sent to woolf2024@mail.fresnostate.edu or to Ashley Foster at foster@csufresno.edu
34th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf
Date TBC 2025
University of Sussex, UK
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 currently closed and will reopen on 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/£9.90 adult, £4.50/£5 child (National Trust members free), on sale every Thursday for bookings for the following four weeks.
For more information, see the 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
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 £14.50 / £12.30 concessions / free to Friends of Charleston
Promoting your event
If you would like your Virginia Woolf event featured on the website and social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram), please email the following details to onlinevwsgb@gmail.com. Events are listed in date order and will be deleted when expired, so please make sure all the relevant details appear for each event separately.
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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
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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.