[Vwoolf] "Orlando" and the kiddies

[Stuart N. Clarke]

William Collins (now part of HarperCollins publishers) have long published classics (no need to pay royalties) and have also specialised in books for schools.  Their 2014 edn of “Orlando” (Collins Classics) has been brought to my attention.  There is no index, no sub-title, no preface, no illustrations, no notes.

There is a 5-page anonymous intro., which is Woolf-bashing to an extent I never thought to see these days, even in the UK.  It’s difficult to pick out an example, since it is *all* terrible, but here goes: “Woolf is a classic case of an artist whose creative expression was bad for their health.  Had she abandoned writing in favour of an occupation that took her mind away from her obsessive thoughts, she would undoubtedly have lived a happier and more fulfilled life, but instead she became the author of her own undoing.”

Also, the author can’t write: 

“the Bloomsbury Set ... were all goldfish in the same bowl, looking out at the world around them with a similar artistic palette.”

“the Dreadnought Hoax ... was an elaborate plan to gain egress to the battleship”

Woolf was an “intelligentsium” (this is a non-existent word, which the author obviously thinks is the singular of “intelligentsia” and is therefore cod-Latin; “intelligentsia” comes from the Russian and has the same singular and plural, although I’m not sure how you could use it in the singular)

Didn’t Tom Lehrer say that he liked to tour around, undoing all the good that Billy Graham had done?

Teachers: you may have your work cut out.

Stuart
“Some can gaze and not be sick,
But I could never learn the trick.”
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