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’
* Recording now available to ticket holders *
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 available to members only (see the Membership page to join)
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.
NEW Virginia Woolf and Bloomsbury Reading Group
Friday 30 August 2024, 5pm (online)
Night and Day (1919)
We are pleased to launch a new reading group for VWSGB members who want to talk about the works of Virginia Woolf and some of her Bloomsbury friends and contemporaries, to find connections, influences and similarities between them. The meetings will be a mixture of online and face-to-face discussions. Come prepared to tell us about your experience of reading the work, whether it’s your first or your hundredth time! What themes or motifs did you notice? Did anything surprise, delight, perplex or anger you? What do you think are the best parts, and why?
Email membershipvwsgb@gmail.com to join the Society, or onlinevwsgb@gmail.com for further information and queries about the Reading Group.
Society events open to non-members
Other events
Gardening Bohemia: Bloomsbury Women Outdoors
Wednesday 15 May–Sunday 29 September 2024
Garden Museum, Lambeth Palace Road, London SE1 7LB
Centring on Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell, Vita Sackville-West and Lady Ottoline Morrell, Gardening Bohemia tells the story of the women of the Bloomsbury group and friends through their gardens. Photographs, paintings, textiles, books, and correspondence explore their interweaving lives and shared garden sanctuaries. Guest-curated by Dr Claudia Tobin.
Tickets £15 (concessions available)
See the Garden Museum website for further information
Phone: 020 7401 8865
Vanessa Bell: A Pioneer of Modern Art
Saturday 25 May–Sunday 6 October 2024
Project Space, Floor 2, The Courtauld Institute of Art, Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 0RN
This focused display in the Project Space will be the first devoted to The Courtauld’s significant collection of Vanessa Bell’s work. Comprising three paintings, one woodcut and eight works on paper, it will include her masterpiece A Conversation, as well as the bold, abstract textile designs that Bell produced for the Omega Workshops, led by influential artist and critic Roger Fry in London, which aimed to abolish the boundaries between the fine and decorative arts and bring the arts into everyday life.
Read more online
For pricing structure and to book, see the website
Charlie Porter: Bring No Clothes
Tuesday 3 September 2024, 7pm
Garden Museum, Lambeth Palace Road, London SE1 7LB (next to Lambeth Palace)
To coincide with the current exhibition, Gardening Bohemia. Writer Charlie Porter explores the importance of gardens and nature to our visual understanding of the Bloomsbury group, based on the research for his book Bring No Clothes: Bloomsbury and the Philosophy of Fashion and the recent exhibition he curated at Charleston.
Tickets: £20 Standard; £15 Friends, Young Fronds
Woolf and Politics (Literature Cambridge)
Monthly, September 2024 to June 2025, 6–8pm British time
Join us for unique seasons of lectures and seminars on the major works of Virginia Woolf. Each session has a live online lecture and seminar via Zoom.
Saturday 14 September 2024. Karina Jakubowicz on The Politics of Conquest in The Voyage Out (1915)
Saturday 12 October 2024. Alison Hennegan on The Politics of Flush (1933)
Saturday 23 November 2024. Mark Hussey on Politics in Mrs Dalloway (1925)
Saturday 7 December 2024. Ellie Mitchell on Woolf’s War Diary
Saturday 11 January 2025. Danell Jones on A Room of One’s Own (1929) and Black Britain
Saturday 8 February 2025. Natasha Periyan on Education in The Years (1936)
Saturday 8 March 2025. Trudi Tate on Mrs Dalloway (1925) and the Vote
Saturday 12 April 2025. Varsha Panjwani on The Politics of Orlando (1928)
Saturday 10 May 2025. Angela Harris on The Politics of Jacob’s Room (1922)
Saturday 14 June 2025. Claire Davison on Body Politics and Clothing in Three Guineas (1938)
Fees: £32 per session (£27 VWSGB members and other concessions)
Or book all ten sessions for the price of nine. Offer closes Saturday 14 September 2024 at 4pm BST.
The Slade School of Art 1870 to 1914
Tuesday 17 September 2024, 2.30pm BST
Porthmeor Studios, Back Road West, St Ives, Cornwall TR26 1NG
An illustrated talk by VWSGB Executive Council member Sarah Latham Phillips on the origins of the Slade School of Art from the 1870s until its most famous generation of alumni on the eve of the First World War – among them, several of the Bloomsbury group. Artists discussed include Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant, Dora Carrington, Mark Gertler, Augustus John, Gwen John, Walter Sickert, Bernard Leach, Wyndham Lewis, Henry Tonks, Edward Wadsworth, David Bomberg, Paul Nash and Stanley Spencer.
Tickets £7 in advance
For information and bookings, see the website
Or book by phone: 01726 63513 (9am to 8pm)
Or in person at tourist offices in: Truro, Boscawen Street; St Austell, railway station; Bodmin, Shire Hall; Liskeard, Pike Street
In the footsteps of Virginia Woolf in Southern Spain
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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Gordon Square Society – Festival Fundraising
Saturday 28 September 2024, 6.30pm (local time)
Casa Lozana, Lange Lozanastraat 240, 2018 Antwerp
www.gordonsquaresociety.net
The Gordon Square Society is a newly formed non-profit organisation that promotes the life, work and thoughts of Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury group.
During this fundraising evening, you can learn about the Gordon Square Society, meet its founders and members and join us for an enchanting evening inspired by the tradition of the Bloomsbury group. We offer delights for both body and soul with Bloomsbury cocktails and food in a wonderful setting. The event will be graced with a musical performance by Natascha Petrinsky, the internationally renowned mezzo-soprano, who has performed leading roles in Europe’s most prestigious opera houses.
Participation in this exclusive evening is €100, and your attendance will help get the Gordon Square Society’s first activities off the ground (see ‘Virginia Woolf and Bloomsbury Festival’ below).
For tickets, please enquire at: info@gordonsquaresociety.net
Reading To the Lighthouse in St Ives, Cornwall (LitSalon)
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 (LitSalon)
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.
The Hours (music concert)
Saturday 19 October 2024, 1–2pm BST
The Music Room, 49 Great Ormond Street, London WC1N 3HZ
A costumed song recital with Maryam Wocial (soprano) and Archie Bonham (piano) exploring the mysteries of self-consciousness through the writings of Virginia Woolf and other acclaimed authors. The programme aims to convey what it means to be conscious – a quality often thought to be what differentiates humans from other living beings. A broad range of literary styles will be set to music, including poetry, prose and diary entries. The programme is bookended by songs from Dominick Argento’s cycle From the Diary of Virginia Woolf, which explores the private writings of Virginia Woolf, whose stream-of-consciousness approach is marked through swift changes in subject matter – from war to parental relationships to the recipe for tonight’s dinner. Some songs reflect on shared societal experience while others illustrate private mental dialogues.
FREE event, no booking necessary. See the Bloomsbury Festival web page for more information.
Part of the Bloomsbury Festival, running 18–27 October.
Vanessa Bell: A World of Form and Colour
Saturday 19 October 2024–Sunday 23 February 2025
MK Gallery, 900 Midsummer Boulevard, Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire MK9 3QA
Vanessa Bell (née Stephen; 1879–1961) was a key figure in twentieth-century British art and played a central role in the Bloomsbury group. This exhibition at MK Gallery – the largest-ever solo show of Bell’s work – will provide an overview spanning the artist’s illustrious career, from the Friday Club to Omega Workshops. The exhibition will include all aspects of her practice across fine and applied art. Alongside a significant, carefully selected display of over 70 paintings will be drawings, furniture, ceramics and designs; in all, more than 120 items. Vanessa Bell: A World of Form and Colour is organised by MK Gallery in partnership with Charleston. The exhibition is generously supported by the Jerwood Foundation.
Standard ticket price: £11.50 (book online)
Bloomsbury in Photographs
Tuesday 22 October 2024, 6.30pm BST (yes, still!)
Hatchard’s, 187 Piccadilly, London W1J 9LE
Join Maggie Humm (Vice Chair, VWSGB) for an evening of discussion and illustration to celebrate her new book, The Bloomsbury Photographs, selected from the albums of Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell, Dora Carrington and Lytton Strachey, among others.
Tickets £10 full price, £5 VWSGB and Hatchard’s members, from Eventbrite
Leslie Stephen: Thinking with and against His Time
Thursday 24–Friday 25 October 2024
Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris
International conference, 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)
For further information, email leslie.stephen.conference@gmail.com
Bloomsbury in Photographs – POSTPONED
Sunday 3 November 2024, 3pm GMT
The Star, High Street, Alfriston, East Sussex BN26 5TA
Join Maggie Humm (Vice Chair, VWSGB) for an afternoon of discussion and illustration to celebrate her new book, The Bloomsbury Photographs, selected from the albums of Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell, Dora Carrington and Lytton Strachey, among others. Also featuring Much Ado Books.
ROOM – A Journey into the Creative Mind of Virginia Woolf
3 November 2024, 5pm GMT
Jermyn Street Theatre, 16b Jermyn Street, London SW1Y 6ST
Directed by Dominique Gerrard.
Cambridge University, 1928. Virginia Woolf, the celebrated writer, is abruptly ordered off the grass and refused entry to the library. Her crime? Being a woman. Following this, Woolf interrogates the crushing injustice of women living in 1920s Britain. She slices through notions of gender disparity with an incisive mix of integrity and visceral charm as she forms her ideas about Shakepeare’s Sister, Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte and Aphra Behn, among others.
Heather Alexander brings Virginia Woolf’s iconic text to the stage. In this witty, poignant and provocative adaptation, Alexander reminds us that the issues at the heart of A Room of One’s Own remain as relevant today as they were a hundred years ago.
Tickets £23 (Concessions £21); book on the website.
Dora Carrington: Beyond Bloomsbury
Saturday 9 November 2024–Sunday 27 April 2025
Pallant House Gallery, 8–9 North Pallant, Chichester, West Sussex PO19 1TJ
This will be the first museum exhibition of works by Dora Carrington (1893–1932) in almost 30 years. The Barbican Art Gallery held the last major exhibition of her work in 1995 and in the same year Emma Thompson starred as the free-spirited painter in the film Carrington. Co-curated by Anne Chisholm, editor of Carrington’s Letters (2017), and writer and critic Ariane Bankes, the exhibition will reveal the continued relevance of Carrington’s unconventional life and remarkable work.
As a significant contributor to Modern British art during the interwar years and an associate of the Bloomsbury Group, Carrington was described as ‘the most neglected serious painter of her time’ by former Tate Director Sir John Rothenstein. This exhibition aims to reposition Carrington in the history of Modern British art. Spanning paintings, drawings and prints from across her career, the exhibition will include film and photographs from private and public collections. It will form a powerful portrait of Carrington, exploring her defiance of gender norms and her circle of eminent friends. Taken together, her artworks, many made for her friends, capture a Bohemian way of life: loving, creative, domestic and intimate.
For more information and bookings, see the website
Virginia Woolf and Bloomsbury Festival (Antwerp, Belgium)
Friday 22–Sunday 24 November 2024
The Gordon Square Society (www.gordonsquaresociety.net) would like to welcome you to their inaugural festival, to be held in various locations in Antwerp. Lectures, performances and music at unique and original locations.
Bloomsbury and Music, 22 November, 6.30–10pm
Casa Lozana, Lange Lozanastraat 240, 2018 Antwerp
Includes performances by Belgian soprano Elise Caluwaert and musicians of the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel.
A Room of One’s Own, 23 November, 1.30–5pm
Nottebohm Room of the Hendrik Conscience Heritage Library, Hendrik Conscienceplein 5, 2000 Antwerp
Includes talks by Sarah Vankersschaever (editor, Standaard Der Letteren) and Dr Claire Nicholson (Chair, Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain), and performance by Hilde Van Mieghem, Marie Vinck and Tess Bryant.
Bloomsbury and Fashion, 24 November, 10.30am–1pm
Small Auditorium of the MOMU, Nationalestraat, 28, 2000 Antwerp
Includes talks by Veerle Windels, Virginia Nicholson (Chair, Charleston in Sussex) and Wim Mertens (curator, MOMU)
Bloomsbury Now and Then, 24 November, 1.30–4.45pm
Library of the Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Leopold De Waelplaats, 1, 2000 Antwerp
Includes talk by Maggie Humm (Vice Chair, VWSGB) and Festival Debate on the significance and relevance of A Room of One’s Own today.
For tickets, please enquire at: info@gordonsquaresociety.net
Woolf and Dissidence
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). More details, call for papers and registration coming soon. See the conference website for further details.
Monks House
Rodmell, Lewes, East Sussex BN7 3HF
Monks House is open every Thursday, Friday and Saturday: 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)
Promoting your event
We would be happy to feature your Virginia Woolf event on this page and on social media (Facebook, X/Twitter, Instagram): please email the following to onlinevwsgb@gmail.com.
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–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.
For Facebook, as above, plus at least one image. For X/Twitter, please provide a short post no longer than 280 characters (including spaces), and for Instagram, a 100-word paragraph plus image. Please make sure that these include the date of your event and contact details.
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.