[Vwoolf] A New York Times Book Review that resonates with Woolf but does not mention her

Sun May 14 17:40:20 EDT 2023

Dear Peter,
Thanks so much for weighing in. The reflections I shared about Leonard's negotiations with the Berg come from Mark Hussey's essay, and your take is of great interest. I am relying on Mark's argument, so perhaps he will join the conversation.
Just for clarity, I was not referring to Woolf's reception during her lifetime. She was quite well received (with many fans and, of course, a number of enemies), but Woolf's reception did start to wane shortly after her death and her "renaissance" really didn't start to emerge until the 60s (but in the US and Canada and not in the UK). And you yourself know all too well the tensions that arose when Jane Marcus and Quentin Bell started to spar in Critical Inquiry and in the Miscellany in the mid-1980s. I am sorry that I wasn't making that important point evident!
Vara

Vara Neverow
(she/her/hers)
Professor, English Department and Women’s and Gender Studies Program
Managing Editor, Virginia Woolf Miscellany
Southern Connecticut State University
New Haven, CT 06515
203-392-6717
neverowv1 at southernct.edu

I acknowledge that Southern Connecticut State University was built on traditional territory of the indigenous peoples and nations of the Paugusett and Quinnepiac peoples.
________________________________
From: Peter D L Stansky <stansky at stanford.edu>
Sent: Sunday, May 14, 2023 5:23:05 PM
To: Neverow, Vara S. <neverowv1 at southernct.edu>; vwoolf listerve <vwoolf at lists.osu.edu>
Subject: RE: [Vwoolf] A New York Times Book Review that resonates with Woolf but does not mention her

This is very interesting but I’m not sure that I agree with Vara’s analysis. Was VW neglected and marginalized in her life time? Although not as prominent as she is now I think that during her life time and after she was always a well respected and quite well known author, in many ways at the top of her profession. In terms of her archives going to the Berg collection through an American agent I think that was Leonard’s decision not primarily that he thought she would get more attention in the US but it was a much better financial deal than he was likely to get in the UK, which was true. Also probably a UK buyer would not have agreed with Leonard’s wish to be paid but would not need to deliver the papers until after his death. And I think his prediction was wrong. If the Archive were the UK I am sure it would be far from neglected. Best, Peter

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From: Neverow, Vara S. via Vwoolf<mailto:vwoolf at lists.osu.edu>
Sent: Sunday, May 14, 2023 11:20 AM
To: vwoolf listerve<mailto:vwoolf at lists.osu.edu>
Subject: [Vwoolf] A New York Times Book Review that resonates with Woolf but does not mention her

Greetings, Holland Cotter's "The Pariah of Paris," a review of Picasso: The Foreigner by Annie Cohen-Solal, was published in the Sunday, May 14, 2023, print issue of the New York Times Book Review. It is evocative of the reception

Greetings,

Holland Cotter's "The Pariah of Paris," a review of Picasso: The Foreigner by Annie Cohen-Solal, was published in the Sunday, May 14, 2023, print issue of the New York Times Book Review. It is evocative of the reception of Woolf in Great Britain after her death in some respects (note: there are two iterations of the review—the first one, titled "Pablo Picasso, the Pariah of Paris," was published online on 1 April 2023 and has more illustrations: https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/01/books/picasso-the-foreigner-annie-cohen-solal.html__;!!KGKeukY!0k9vq69cJ266-aPSgypAmBVlEBaaymZya9vLB6XqHVVAqCm1ddDDzn0tk1UjkDZuJNI4FCo3JnyTZJrkWAGMnn0XxYfV$ <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.nytimes.com/2023/04/01/books/picasso-the-foreigner-annie-cohen-solal.html__;!!KGKeukY!3aaCpAit6nuA5W2CQFWAk6j9lTVrzlpLQu86_WUM8azsOC7GP7hd3MvgL5vueej-6AMNcn3_q8L1GvcG4jzCZ3zLHrZV$>).

The review is very interesting and well worth reading (I do hope the link is function) and so seems the book itself in which Picasso's life as an outsider in France is detailed. The rejection of Picasso's artwork in France, cast aside by the "tradition-minded French cultural establishment" (as per Cotter), echoes the marginalization of Woolf's work (despite Leonard Woolf's attempts to keep Virginia's work visible and viable and, after Leonard's death, Quentin Bell's own continuing efforts to write a biography, however contested, and also maintain Virginia's literary status by publishing her letters and diaries).

Outright rejection and neglect are closely related in terms of marginalizing artists and writers. With regard to reception, one can relish in retrospect how extremely embarrassing it is that the Louvre rejected Picasso's offer of Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), which the Museum of Modern Art in New York happily acquired in 1939 (https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.moma.org/research/conservation/demoiselles/history.html__;!!KGKeukY!0k9vq69cJ266-aPSgypAmBVlEBaaymZya9vLB6XqHVVAqCm1ddDDzn0tk1UjkDZuJNI4FCo3JnyTZJrkWAGMnjaD24dy$ <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.moma.org/research/conservation/demoiselles/history.html__;!!KGKeukY!3aaCpAit6nuA5W2CQFWAk6j9lTVrzlpLQu86_WUM8azsOC7GP7hd3MvgL5vueej-6AMNcn3_q8L1GvcG4jzCZ-1ZdBC9$>).

It was the New York Public Library that acquired Woolf's archival work. As Mark Hussey highlights in his essay "Virginia Woolf in America" (A Room of Their Own: The Bloomsbury Artists in American Collections, 2009), Leonard Woolf believed that Virginia was not going to be recognized or respected in her home country and wrote in a letter to his brother that, "if the MSS went to Cambridge or Oxford, they would be stuffed away somewhere and no one would ever look at them again except that one would be shown from time to time to the public under a glass case." Mark continues: "Thus the bulk of Woolf's archive found its way to the Berg Collection of the New York Public Library" (49). (The first wave of archival materials was acquired in 1958; the New York Times refers to this early acquisition in article on William Beekman's amazing artifacts that were purchased for the Berg Collection in 2019: https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/20/arts/virginia-woolf-nypl.html__;!!KGKeukY!0k9vq69cJ266-aPSgypAmBVlEBaaymZya9vLB6XqHVVAqCm1ddDDzn0tk1UjkDZuJNI4FCo3JnyTZJrkWAGMnntEAZoL$ <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.nytimes.com/2019/11/20/arts/virginia-woolf-nypl.html__;!!KGKeukY!3aaCpAit6nuA5W2CQFWAk6j9lTVrzlpLQu86_WUM8azsOC7GP7hd3MvgL5vueej-6AMNcn3_q8L1GvcG4jzCZ5_HBzsF$>; the recent Berg exhibition included many of these materials).

Of course, Picasso was truly a foreigner in France while Woolf was, after her own death, neglected in her own country for a significantly long period of time (of course, Brenda Silver's 1999 Virginia Woolf Icon is of particular value in tracing Woolf's emergence as a global pop star).

Much more could be said....

Vara

Vara Neverow

(she/her/hers)
Professor, English Department

Editor, Virginia Woolf Miscellany
Southern Connecticut State University
New Haven, CT 06515
203-392-6717
neverowv1 at southernct.edu

I acknowledge that Southern Connecticut State University was built on traditional territory of the indigenous peoples and nations of the Paugussett and Quinnipiac peoples.

Recent Publications:

Lead editor, Virginia Woolf: Critical and Primary Sources (Bloomsbury, 2020; with Jeanne Dubino, Kathryn Simpson, and Gill Lowe); Editor, Volume One, 1975-1984, Virginia Woolf: Critical and Primary Sources (Bloomsbury, 2020); Co-editor, The Edinburgh Companion to Virginia Woolf and Contemporary Global Literature (Edinburgh, 2020; with Jeanne Dubino, Paulina Pająk, Catherine Hollis, and Celiese Lypka)

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