Nearly a century ago, Virginia Woolf began pushing the boundaries of literature and gutting patriarchy. Her words still resonate with me.
The New York Public Library’s groundbreaking new exhibit, Virginia Woolf: The Modern Mind, explores the life and creative process of the famous author. You can read it for free until March 5, 2023 at the Stephen A. Schwartzman Building (Main Library near Bryant Park).
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About the exhibition
The New York Public Library holds one of the most important collections of Woolf’s writings in the world and has made use of them for exhibition. The show features personal notes, diaries, family photos, and unpublished letters that provide an insight into one of the 20th century’s most important writers. The diary entries prompted Woolf to reject the conventional forms of her Victorian predecessors, experimenting with shifting perspectives, employing stream-of-consciousness narration, and exploring her characters’ innermost thoughts. I have recorded the method.
“Virginia Woolf: A Modern Mind” is the first major exhibition of Woolf’s writings in the library in 30 years.
“Through her own writings, we can trace Woolf’s creative development, along with her personal struggles and achievements.” Along with the entry and how she looks back on a life marked by her illness, she speaks to something very relatable: a desire to be the best she can be, despite her inner turmoil,” said the exhibit’s director. Carolyn Vega, curator and director of the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of British and American Literature, said in a statement. “And her writings on gender fluidity are of increasing importance today. We chose the New York Public Library to be the custodians of her archive because of its importance to us, and we look forward to sharing her insightful, sensitive, and private writings with our visitors.”
… Her writings on gender fluidity are of increasing importance today.
Memorabilia includes early drafts Mrs. Dalloway (1925) final draft to the lighthouse (1927). Those drafts were written in large notebooks that Wolfe bound or recovered himself.
You’ll also find intimate letters and diaries documenting her relationship with Vita Sackville-West, who inspired the film. Orlando (1928). Also featured are Woolf’s hand-printed books for Hogarth Press and the original dust jacket design for the author’s book by her sister Vanessa Bell, whose diary records her 1897 , dating back to 1941, which she posted in her last diary.
If you’re a big Wolf fan, check out the library’s gift shop for beautiful Wolf books, as well as themed totes, necklaces, and journals.
About Virginia Woolf
The author lived from 1882 to 1941 and became one of the most important figures of English literary modernism, the library explained. Her early years were marked by turmoil as she lost her mother and two brothers and was the victim of sexual abuse by her half-brother.
As she got older and established a writing career, she eventually set up her own printing press with her husband Leonard. Hogarth Her Press published modernist literature, radical political pamphlets, and psychoanalysis after its founding in 1917.
Wolf is best known for his novels Mrs. Dalloway When to the lighthouse,and your own room (1929) and other works critical of patriarchy. While herself a member of the cultural elite, she addressed issues of gender, class, consciousness and privilege.
Over the decades, she has become known as a proto-feminist and LGBTQ+ icon.
I thought it appropriate to leave a word from the author himself. Here, in 1920, she describes her vision for a new literary form:
“Virginia Woolf: A Modern Mind” opens March 5, 2023 at the Stephen A. Schwartzman Building. Click here to reserve a free commuter pass.
