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        <div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">Oh dear, wouldn't Mr Sampson be kicking himself now? This bit really made me ROFL:<br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><div>'Virginia Woolf has small invention and her characters are the transient and embarrassed phantoms of her ideas.'<br><br><div>From the same school of thought that brought you 'guitar groups are on their way out' and 'Schoolboy wizards will never sell'.</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">Sarah M. Hall</div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">Virginia Woolf Society of GB<br></div></div><div><br></div></div><div><br></div>
        
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                    On Sunday, 20 June 2021, 10:47:03 BST, Stuart N. Clarke via Vwoolf <vwoolf@lists.osu.edu> wrote:
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<div><span>George Sampson, <i>The Concise 
Cambridge History of English Literature</i> (Cambridge at the University Press, 
1941), p. 975: ‘Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), daughter of Leslie Stephen, is 
another [like Rose Macaulay in the previous paragraph] of “books in the 
blood”.<span>  </span>Such novels of limited 
renown as <i>Jacob’s Room</i> (1922), <i>Mrs. Dalloway</i> (1925), <i>To the Lighthouse</i> (1927), <i>Orlando</i> (1928) and <i>The Waves</i> (1931) have been greeted as 
original experiments in a new technique of fiction—the exploration of 
consciousness replacing the exploitation of event.<span>  </span>Actually they are the attempts of an 
essayist not instinctively a novelist to use fiction as a means of 
expression.<span>  </span>Virginia Woolf has 
small invention and her characters are the transient and embarrassed phantoms of 
her ideas.<span>  </span>A better measure of her 
quality can be gained from her critical studies, <i>The Common Reader</i>, first series (1925), 
second series (1932) and <i>A Room of One’s 
Own </i>(1929).<span>  </span><i>Three Guineas</i> (1938) proved 
disappointingly unconstructive.<span>  </span>Her 
essays in criticism, traditional in form and theme, have far more genuine 
impulse than her novels, which carry little conviction as vital 
creations.</span></div>
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<div><span>Mrs Woolf rises from her grave to comment: </span><span>“An 
illiterate, underbred book it seems to me: the book of a self taught working 
man, & we all know how distressing they are, how egotistic, insistent, raw, 
striking & ultimately nauseating.”</span></div>
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<div><span><font style="background-color: inherit;" color="#000000">George Sampson (1873-1950) was the “<span style="WHITE-SPACE:normal;WORD-SPACING:0px;TEXT-TRANSFORM:none;FLOAT:none;ORPHANS:2;WIDOWS:2;DISPLAY:inline !important;LETTER-SPACING:normal;TEXT-INDENT:0px;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-color:initial;">fourth 
and youngest child of<span> </span></span><span class="ydpe574ab72yiv4696164025name" style="border-color: currentcolor; border-style: none; border-width: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; text-transform: none; float: none; outline-width: 0px; padding: 0px; outline-style: none; margin: 0px; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; font-stretch: inherit;">Thomas 
Sampson</span><span style="WHITE-SPACE:normal;WORD-SPACING:0px;TEXT-TRANSFORM:none;FLOAT:none;ORPHANS:2;WIDOWS:2;DISPLAY:inline !important;LETTER-SPACING:normal;TEXT-INDENT:0px;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-color:initial;">, 
mariner ... </span><span style="WHITE-SPACE:normal;WORD-SPACING:0px;TEXT-TRANSFORM:none;FLOAT:none;ORPHANS:2;WIDOWS:2;DISPLAY:inline !important;LETTER-SPACING:normal;TEXT-INDENT:0px;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-color:initial;">Poor 
health prevented him from going to school until nearly eleven and circumstances 
compelled him to leave before he was sixteen. He was then set to work for London 
matriculation and was trained as an elementary schoolteacher at Southwark Pupil 
Teacher School and Winchester Training College. ... <span style="WHITE-SPACE:normal;WORD-SPACING:0px;TEXT-TRANSFORM:none;FLOAT:none;ORPHANS:2;WIDOWS:2;DISPLAY:inline !important;LETTER-SPACING:normal;TEXT-INDENT:0px;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-color:initial;">the<span> </span></span><span class="ydpe574ab72yiv4696164025work" style="border-color: currentcolor; border-style: none; border-width: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; text-transform: none; float: none; outline-width: 0px; padding: 0px; outline-style: none; margin: 0px; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; font-stretch: inherit;"><em style="border-color: currentcolor; border-style: none; border-width: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; float: none; outline-width: 0px; padding: 0px; outline-style: none; margin: 0px; font-stretch: inherit;">Cambridge 
History of English Literature</em></span><span style="WHITE-SPACE:normal;WORD-SPACING:0px;TEXT-TRANSFORM:none;FLOAT:none;ORPHANS:2;WIDOWS:2;DISPLAY:inline !important;LETTER-SPACING:normal;TEXT-INDENT:0px;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-color:initial;">. 
Its completion was delayed by ill health, but when it was published it was 
rightly hailed as a<span> </span></span><em style="border-color: currentcolor; border-style: none; border-width: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; text-transform: none; float: none; outline-width: 0px; padding: 0px; outline-style: none; margin: 0px; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; font-stretch: inherit;">tour 
de force</em>” (<em>ODNB</em>).</span></font></span></div>
<div><span><span style="WHITE-SPACE:normal;WORD-SPACING:0px;TEXT-TRANSFORM:none;FLOAT:none;ORPHANS:2;WIDOWS:2;DISPLAY:inline !important;LETTER-SPACING:normal;TEXT-INDENT:0px;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-color:initial;"><font style="background-color: inherit;" color="#000000"></font></span></span> </div>
<div><span><span style="WHITE-SPACE:normal;WORD-SPACING:0px;TEXT-TRANSFORM:none;FLOAT:none;ORPHANS:2;WIDOWS:2;DISPLAY:inline !important;LETTER-SPACING:normal;TEXT-INDENT:0px;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-color:initial;"><font style="background-color: inherit;" color="#2a2a2a">Stuart</font></span></span></div></div></div></div>
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