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Thank you, Melba! I second Mark. What a hilarious discovery. I am grateful that your cousin researched this oddity and that you brightened my day.</div>
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Mark, I think if you may need to select "reply all" to respond not just to Melba but to everyone. Your setting may be just to send to one person (and it's a safer choice to have that as the setting rather than "reply all"!). </div>
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<div class="PlainText" style=""><font face="'Times New Roman', Times, serif" size="3" style="">Vara Neverow<br>
Department of English<br>
Southern Connecticut State University<br>
New Haven, CT 06515<br>
203-392-6717<br>
neverowv1@southernct.edu</font></div>
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<div id="divRplyFwdMsg" dir="ltr"><font face="Calibri, sans-serif" color="#000000" style="font-size:11pt"><b>From:</b> Vwoolf <vwoolf-bounces@lists.osu.edu> on behalf of Mark Hussey via Vwoolf <vwoolf@lists.osu.edu><br>
<b>Sent:</b> Monday, December 28, 2020 11:11 AM<br>
<b>To:</b> vwoolf@lists.osu.edu <vwoolf@lists.osu.edu><br>
<b>Subject:</b> Re: [Vwoolf] Tallest Woman Writer Award</font>
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<div class="PlainText">Thank you Melba--this is so funny! (Clearly VW would have been an NBA draft<br>
pick had she been alive today...)<br>
<br>
[Ps does anyone know why when one clicks "reply" to posts on the VW list it<br>
only goes to the sender and not to the list address?]<br>
<br>
-----Original Message-----<br>
From: Vwoolf <vwoolf-bounces+mhussey=verizon.net@lists.osu.edu> On Behalf Of<br>
Melba CuddyKeane via Vwoolf<br>
Sent: Monday, December 28, 2020 11:03 AM<br>
To: vwoolf@lists.osu.edu<br>
Subject: [Vwoolf] Tallest Woman Writer Award<br>
<br>
A cousin, a retired college librarian, writes:<br>
<br>
My bedtime reading this week is the Penguin Book of Modern Humorous<br>
Quotations ("modern" = 1986) where I came across this pronouncement by Alan<br>
Bennett:<br>
"Of all the honours that fell upon Virginia's head, none, I think, pleased<br>
her more than the Evening Standard Award for the Tallest Woman Writer of<br>
1927, an award she took by a neck from Elizabeth Bowen."<br>
<br>
The quote was immediately suspect because (1) Bennett is a former Beyond the<br>
Fringe comedian, (2) he's a playwright and (3) the quote is from one of his<br>
plays (Forty Years On).<br>
<br>
Nevertheless I immediately thought, wouldn't it be nice if (a) the story was<br>
true or, better, if (b) the story was false but swallowed whole by<br>
unsuspecting transmitters. At Red River College the walls are festooned<br>
with huge colourful posters portraying various eminent people and captioned<br>
with inspirational quotations of which about half turned out to be spurious<br>
or at best doubtful.<br>
<br>
I did a google search and was disappointed to see that all but two of the<br>
results dutifully attributed the Virginia Woolf story to Alan Bennett. <br>
One of the two that didn't was an interview with Tom Stoppard who said:<br>
"Well, in my opinion, Virginia Woolf was the tallest woman writer of the<br>
twenties."<br>
"Are you quite sure?"<br>
"Yes, yes. My information is that Katherine Mansfield was only four foot<br>
eleven and Edith Sitwell was only five foot three. But Virginia Woolf was<br>
six foot eight, a fact not generally known." (Jon Bradshaw, "Tom Stoppard,<br>
Nonstop: Word Games with a Hit Playwright," New York Magazine, January 10,<br>
1977, p. 48).<br>
<br>
A story told by one playwright may be dubious but when it's corroborated by<br>
a second playwright you can be sure that it's complete hogwash. Anyway I did<br>
another google search (Virginia Woolf how tall) and learned, Stoppard<br>
notwithstanding, that she was 1.7 metres or 5 feet 6.929134 inches tall<br>
(rounded to the nearest millionth of an inch).<br>
<br>
The second search result that did not cite Bennett was an article by Zaria<br>
Glover entitled "Virginia Woolf Breaks the Mold for Women Writers." <br>
According to Glover: "Because Virginia Woolf died before she could see a<br>
time when her works would be accepted, the only known award she received was<br>
the Tallest Woman Writer Award in 1927 by the London Evening Standard<br>
newspaper."<br>
<br>
Of course, Zaria Glover was only 13 years old when she wrote this. Her<br>
article was published in the Wright Free Press, a web site that helps<br>
teachers help students write and publish their school essays as news<br>
reports.<br>
<br>
>From the evidence, Virginia Woolf's award-winning height is making rather<br>
slow progress toward acceptance as indisputable historic fact. But thanks<br>
to budding journalists like Zaria Glover, there is hope.<br>
<br>
(Melba adds: hope this offered some enjoyable holiday reading, And hope<br>
(again, and fervently) that we all have a Happ(ier) New Year!)<br>
<br>
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