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<div style="direction:ltr; font-family:Tahoma; color:#000000; font-size:10pt">This makes me realize how fortunate I was. I did a bachelor's and a master's at Leeds University in England, and encountered quite a lot of Woolf on the way. One of my teachers was
Arnold Kettle, who has a chapter on <i>To the Lighthouse</i> in his book on the novel, so that may have helped to get it on the syllabus. We were also advised to look at the chapter on the same novel in Auerbach's
<i>Mimesis</i>, a chapter (and a book) that has more than stood the test of time. By the time I had finished my master's I had read
<i>Mrs Dalloway</i> and <i>The Waves</i> as well. I suppose that the down side of starting in this way was that going on to
<i>Night and Day</i> and <i>The Years</i> once I started teaching was something of an anti-climax. But
<i>Between the Acts</i> I found wonderful. I think that some neglect of Woolf in the UK at this time may be related to Leavis's lack of enthusiasm for her, but that can hardly explain the neglect in the US. It may be that a comparable lack of enthusiasm on
E M Forster's part (aimed especially at Woolf's feminism) also deterred some readers and teachers.<br>
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Jeremy Hawthorn<br>
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<div id="divRpF589671" style="direction:ltr"><font color="#000000" face="Tahoma" size="2"><b>From:</b> vwoolf-bounces+jeremy.hawthorn=ntnu.no@lists.service.ohio-state.edu [vwoolf-bounces+jeremy.hawthorn=ntnu.no@lists.service.ohio-state.edu] on behalf of Marcia
Childress [woolf@virginia.edu]<br>
<b>Sent:</b> 27 August 2013 16:39<br>
<b>To:</b> vwoolf@lists.service.ohio-state.edu<br>
<b>Subject:</b> [Vwoolf] Discovering Woolf<br>
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<div>Like many of you, I never encountered Woolf's writings in a college English literature course; she simply wasn't widely taught. Rather, midway through my senior year in college, in 1969-1970, two housemates--one a psychology major, the other studying philosophy--were
suddenly raving about a novel they'd just read for a philosophy course (I don't recall which philosophy course). Since I was the English major in the house, they insisted I drop everything and read this novel too. It was <i>To the Lighthouse</i>. So, like
many of you, I read it all in one day, in pretty much a single sitting, swept up and along by the powerful rhythms of Woolf's prose. What I recall about finishing the book is a shiver, then tears, then a strong impression of a blur of green and blue, like
moving water. I'm not sure I could have said then and there what the book was <i>about</i>; I only knew that I had had an extraordinary life-experience through written words.
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<div>I next read Woolf the following year as a graduate student in literature, but she was assigned only in a course on comparative fiction, as an English writer whose stylistic experiments influenced twentieth-century Continental novelists. I recall the professor
almost apologizing for making us read <i>Mrs. Dalloway</i>, as, in his view, Woolf was "a second-rate novelist." Compared to giants like Joyce and Tolstoy and Balzac, he maintained, Woolf was rather a poor hand at representing "the stuff of real life," like
war and its aftermath, politics, urban life, and human relationships. (Oh.)</div>
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<div>How good that we now see it otherwise. Thanks, Virginia!</div>
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<div>Marcia Day Childress, Ph.D.</div>
<div>Associate Professor of Medical Education</div>
<div>Director, Programs in Humanities</div>
<div>Center for Biomedical Ethics and Humanities</div>
<div>University of Virginia School of Medicine</div>
<div>PO Box 800761</div>
<div>Charlottesville VA 22908-0761</div>
<div>Voice: 434.924.9581</div>
<div>Fax: 434.982.3971</div>
<div>Email: <a href="mailto:woolf@virginia.edu" target="_blank">woolf@virginia.edu</a> OR
<a href="mailto:mdf4e@virginia.edu" target="_blank">mdf4e@virginia.edu</a></div>
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