Finding Work

Virginia Stephen had the advantage, as Leila Brosnan points out, of having family and friends who could help her find work in her apprenticeship's early days (44). She did not, however, have the Cambridge associations with journals her male friends did (Brosnan 46; Rosenbaum 152; Mepham 17; Low 12–13) or access to male literary clubs and societies that had proliferated in London during the Victorian era, some created by and for literary men of the lower classes (Kent, Intro xviii; see also Mays 21). It would have been foolhardy not to use whatever advantage she had – certainly, her female predecessors had done so (Onslow 83–4) – and Jeanne Dubino notes ow hard she worked to prove herself and sustain journal connections once made (‘VW’ 28). As already mentioned, reviewers needed introductions (Onslow 81). Though her father's literary standing may have helped her, it did not make acceptance automatic, as Reginald Smith's rejection of her unsolicited Boswell piece for the Cornhill in 1905 makes clear. Indeed, later typecasting of her work at the Cornhill suggests her father's reputation may have hindered her. Fittingly, Stephen's first influential introduction came through friendship – her own with Violet Dickinson, and Violet Dickinson's with Mary Kathleen Lyttelton – not through the world of letters.

Although she knew to provide writing samples, Virginia Stephen had never sought work before, and she seemed unsure about how to proceed. In May 1904, when she and others were beginning to realise she was ill, she wrote to Violet Dickinson, almost pleading, ‘Oh my Violet if you could only find me a great solid bit of work to do when I get back that will make me forget my own stupidity I should be so grateful. I must work’ (L1 140, her emphasis). Between then and the end of October 1904, Violet most likely took her friend's desire for work seriously and approached Mrs Arthur Lyttelton, the Guardian's Women's Supplement Editor, about Stephen's possibly writing for the paper. In turn, Violet probably mentioned Mrs Arthur Lyttelton to Virginia and suggested she try writing for the editor as she recovered from the breakdown after her father's death, which explains why, when Stephen wrote to Violet from the Porch, her Quaker Aunt's home, she seemed to be following up on a suggestion: ‘Would Mrs Lyttelton like a description of a Q[uaker].