Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- Formatting Note
- General Preface: Common Reader Learning, Common Reader Teaching
- Preface: Common Reader Learning
- Introduction: Contexts
- Part I Student, 1882–1904: Learning at Home
- Part II Teacher, 1905–1907: Teaching at Morley College
- Part III Apprentice, 1904–1912: Writing for Newspapers
- Conclusion: Implications
- Appendices
- Sources
- Index
Preface: Common Reader Learning
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 October 2023
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- Formatting Note
- General Preface: Common Reader Learning, Common Reader Teaching
- Preface: Common Reader Learning
- Introduction: Contexts
- Part I Student, 1882–1904: Learning at Home
- Part II Teacher, 1905–1907: Teaching at Morley College
- Part III Apprentice, 1904–1912: Writing for Newspapers
- Conclusion: Implications
- Appendices
- Sources
- Index
Summary
Now I am going to get out all my books again, after I have written to the Quaker, and I am going to write in my head, where I always write immortal works, an article upon Lady Fanshawe, and I am going to walk round my desk and then take out certain manuscripts which lie there like wine, sweetening as they grow old. I shall be miserable, or happy; a wordy sentimental creature, or a writer of such English as shall one day burn the pages.
– Virginia Stephen to Violet Dickinson [7 July 1907] (L1 299)
I am a hillbilly, a hick, a ridge runner, a yokel. I don't think I’m a redneck, though people in my part of the country get called that, too. I’m from Appalachia, the hills of southeast Ohio, a village of 583 people. If I had ended my school days in the Quaker City school I started in, my graduating class would have numbered eighteen. But two schools consolidated and I graduated with forty-six other students. I remember hearing Julius Caesar read aloud in the halting voices of my classmates in English class, and we must have read a smattering of short stories and poetry in my writing class, but I don't remember reading any other literature in school. We were, however, repeatedly taught grammar, which seemed to work only for those who already knew grammar.
In graduate school seminars at Rice University, I sat at a table with students from Yale, Princeton and Johns Hopkins, wondering what the hell I was doing there. In fact, I learned much later that the department took a chance on me and my small Ohio college degree. What right did I have to discuss literature with such educated people? What right did I, a hillbilly, have to attempt a dissertation on Virginia Woolf's fiction? I am a professor emerita now. I continue to do research on Virginia Woolf, and my research focus is Woolf's essays instead of her novels because, at that low time, I happened upon Woolf's Collected Essays in the Brazos Bookstore: hardback, a different colour for each volume, $7.50 apiece for Volumes 1 and 2, $6.95 apiece for Volumes 3 and 4. I couldn't resist. I started with the first essay in the first volume, ‘On Not Knowing Greek’, and didn't stop until I finished the last essay in the fourth volume, ‘The New Biography’.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Virginia Woolf's ApprenticeshipBecoming an Essayist, pp. xxi - xxivPublisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2022