[Vwoolf] "The Pelican Guide to English Literature"

[Stuart N. Clarke]

This first appeared in 7 vols in 1961 and was frequently reprinted.  It was revised as "The New Pelican Guide to English Literature" in 1983.  My copy is the 1990 reprint.  In vol. 7 is the late (d. 1983) Frank W. Bradbrook’s "Virginia Woolf: The Theory and Practice of Fiction".  In “To the Lighthouse”:

The world of prose has been united with those of poetry and of art.  ‘Orlando’ (1928), though it has brilliant passages, has not the unity of ‘To the Lighthouse’ and the indulgence of fantasy is inclined to pall. ... There are beautiful passages [in ‘The Waves’], but there is not ‘an intimate autobiographical sense of life'. ‘The Years’ (1937) contains, near the beginning, a flash of the old satiri­cal wit in the description of the hypocrisy of Colonel Pargiter and the death, after a painful, protracted illness, of his wife. The novel, as a whole, shows signs of tiredness, and is dull and monotonous. ... [In] ‘Between the Acts’ (1941) [the] heart has gone out of Virginia Woolf's work.

    That her genius had burned itself out is confirmed by the six pre­viously unpublished short stories at the end of ‘A Haunted House’ (1944).  Her short stories, despite some brilliancies, tend to confirm the sense of a minor talent. 


“A Haunted House” (1944) Contents: 

6 from “Monday or Tuesday” (1921) :
A Haunted House 
Monday or Tuesday 
An Unwritten Novel 
The String Quartet 
Kew Gardens 
The Mark on the Wall 

6 published separately:
The New Dress - 1927
The Shooting Party - 1938
Lappin and Lapinova - 1939
Solid Objects - 1920
The Lady in the Looking-Glass: A Reflection - 1929
The Duchess and the Jeweller - 1938

6 unpublished (per Leonard Woolf, but he said “Moments of Being” may have been published; only that story and “The Searchlight” are finally revised):
Moments of Being: "Slater's Pins Have No Points" – published 1928
The Man Who Loved his Kind – [1925]
The Searchlight – [1939]
The Legacy – [1940]
Together and Apart – [1925]
A Summing Up – [1925]


Stuart
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