BOOK NEWS: Vital collection of newly discovered Woolf correspondence

 The Uncollected Letters of Virginia Woolf

Edited by Stephen Barkway and Stuart N. Clarke

Edinburgh UP, 2025

ISBN: 9781399507325

https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-the-uncollected-letters-of-virginia-woolf.html

Many previously undiscovered letters from Virginia Woolf have come to light since the original six-volume Collected Letters was published between 1975 and 1980. Over 1,400 are included in this vital new book, illuminating facets of Woolf’s life that have previously been hidden or only glimpsed. Important letters to contemporary writers, such as Stella Benson, Rebecca West, Lyn Lloyd Irvine and Berta Ruck, have been unearthed from archives, as well as fifty letters to T. S. Eliot. This book also features substantial collections of letters to Lady Colefax, Winifred Holtby, Mary Hutchinson, Christabel McLaren (Lady Aberconway) and Raymond Mortimer, as well as previously unrecorded correspondents. 

BOOK NEWS is an online-only feature announcing new publications in modernist and contemporary literary studies. These announcements do NOT constitute an endorsement by the Journal of Modern Literature.

Through these letters we see Woolf encouraging would-be authors and negotiating with editors, literary agents and foreign translators in her role as a professional writer. The Uncollected Letters of Virginia Woolf provides extraordinary insight into the variety of acquaintance of one of the most fascinating literary figures of the twentieth century.

"This beautifully designed, sturdy volume... is a colossal work of breathtaking dedication and remarkable scholarship. [...] In this meticulously curated volume, the letters, and our delight in them, will—with their laughter, intrigues and crackling fires—run on and on." – Matthew Macer-Wright, Virginia Woolf Bulletin

"...this late in the game – when [Woolf's] essays and letters have been collected, diaries published (then republished in spiffy new editions) and fiction prefaced, annotated and afterworded ad nauseam – it is rare to get a scholarship-altering book. Stephen Barkway and the late Stuart N Clarke have produced just such a volume. [...] This meticulously edited book, full of Woolf’s writing at its glistening best, will surely help critics in their attempts to grasp the author." – Zoe Guttenplan, Literary Review

"The Uncollected Letters of Virginia Woolf is the most significant contribution to Woolf Studies and the Humanities for decades. This is an immaculate critical work, which is also a major social history, edited by two pre-eminent, expert scholars. The Uncollected Letters sets a gold standard for all such editions in the future." – Maggie Humm, vice-chair of the Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain and author of The Bloomsbury Photographs

 

Stephen Barkway is a co-founder of the Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain and was its Chair from 1998 to 2018. He co-edits, and regularly contributes to, the Virginia Woolf Bulletin and in 2018 he gave the Annual Virginia Woolf Birthday Lecture "'This Sheet is a Glass': Virginia Woolf, Woman of Letters."

Stuart N. Clarke is a co-founder of the Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain and was editor of the Virginia Woolf Bulletin from 1999 to 2022. As well as contributing almost 300 items to the Bulletin, he edited volumes 5 and 6 of The Essays of Virginia Woolf (2009 and 2011) and transcribed Orlando: The Original Holograph Draft (1993).