Mrs Dalloway (6 page)

Read Mrs Dalloway Online

Authors: Virginia Woolf

BOOK: Mrs Dalloway
12.15Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

20.
Noreen Bronson,
Britain in the Nineteen-Twenties
(Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1975, pp. 97–8).

21.
Maureen Howard, introduction to
Mrs. Dalloway
(Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981, p. viii).

22.
Virginia Woolf, introduction to Modern Library edition of
Mrs. Dalloway
(Random House, 1928).

23.
Ibid.

24.
Woolf's working notes quoted here are taken from two notebooks in the Berg Collection: the earlier is the third notebook used for her previous novel,
Jacob's Room
, the entries for which begin on 12 March 1922. This is followed by a notebook whose entries run from 9 November 1922 to 2 August 1923 (the entries cited occur within the first 9 pages). The holograph manuscript for most of the novel is contained in three notebooks in the British Library, Add. MSS 51044, 51045 and 51046.

25.
The typescript of ‘The Prime Minister' is in the Berg Collection, and a manuscript version occurs in
Jacob's Room
notebook 3. For the short stories, see
Mrs. Dalloway's Party
, ed. Stella McNichol (Hogarth Press, 1973). For the best account of the revisions of the novel, see Charles G. Hoffmann, ‘From Short Story to Novel: The Manuscript Revisions of Virginia Woolf's
Mrs. Dalloway
.'
Modern Fiction Studies
14 (Summer 1968), pp. 171–86.

26.
The Voyage Out
, (1915, Penguin Books, 1992) p. 32.

27.
Diary
, II, 28 August 1922, p. 196.

28.
Letter to Ottoline Morrell, 10? August 1922,
Letters
, II, p. 543.

29.
Berg Collection,
Jacob's Room
notebook 3, 6 October 1922, p. 131.

30.
Ibid.

31.
Ibid.

32.
Letter to T. S. Eliot, 5 May 1924,
Letters
, III, p. 106.

33.
Diary
, II, 14 October 1922, p. 207.

34.
Berg Collection,
Jacob's Room
, notebook 3, p. 153.

35.
Diary
, II, 7 November 1922, p. 211.

36.
Berg Collection, holograph notebook, 9 November 1922–2 August, 1923.

37.
Letter to Gerald Brenan, 14 June 1925,
Letters
, III, p. 189.

38.
Berg Collection, holograph notebook, 9 November 1922–2 August 1923.

39.
7 May 1923, in Berg Collection, holograph notebook, 9 November 1922–2 August 1923.

40.
18 June 1923, in Berg Collection, holograph notebook, 9 November 1922–2 August 1923.

41.
Diary
, II, 30 August 1923, p. 263.

42.
Diary
, II, 15 October 1923, p. 272.

43.
26 February 1923, Berg Collection, holograph notebook, 9 November 1922–2 August 1923.

44.
Diary
, II, 7 September 1924, p. 312.

45.
Diary
, V, pp. 35, 63, 64.

46.
Helene Deutsch,
The Psychology of Women
(1924).

47.
Susan Kingsley Kent, ‘Gender Reconstruction After the First World War,' in
British Feminism in the Twentieth Century
, ed. Harold L. Smith (Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd., 1990, p. 71).

48.
Ibid., pp. 72–3.

49.
Virginia Woolf's introduction to Modern Library edition of
Mrs. Dalloway
.

50.
Berg Collection, holograph notebook, 12 March 1922, p. 139.

51.
Eric Leed,
No Man's Land
(Cambridge University Press, 1979, p. 171).

52.
Ibid., p. 164.

53.
Martin Stone, ‘Shell-shock and the Psychologists,' in
The Anatomy of Madness
, vol. 2, ed. W. F. Bynum, R. Porter, and M. Shepherd (Tavistock, 1985, p. 263).

54.
Leed,
op. cit
. p. 187.

55.
Stone,
op. cit
. p. 246.

56.
Ted Bogacz, ‘War Neurosis and Cultural Change',
Journal of Contemporary History
24 (1989), p. 227.

57.
Diary
, II, 19 June 1923, p. 249. In
A Writer's Diary
, Leonard Woolf misread ‘squint' as ‘squirt,' a particularly vivid physical image which makes readers wince.

58.
Zwerdling,
op. cit
. p. 124.

59.
Ibid., pp. 121–2.

Further Reading
WOOLF'S WRITINGS

The Letters of Virginia Woolf
, ed. Nigel Nicolson and Joanne Trautmann, (6 vols., Hogarth Press, 1975–80), particularly vol. III.

The Diary of Virginia Woolf
, ed. Anne Olivier Bell (5 vols., Hogarth Press, 1977–84), particularly vols. II, III.

A Passionate Apprentice: The Early Journals 1897–1909
, ed. Mitchell A. Leaska (Hogarth Press, 1990).

Moments of Being: Unpublished Autobiographical Writings
, ed. Jeanne Schulkind (1976, rev. Hogarth Press, 1985).

The Essays of Virginia Woolf
, ed. Andrew McNeillie (6 vols., Hogarth Press, 1986–), esp. ‘Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown', retitled ‘Character in Fiction', III, pp. 420–36.

Collected Essays
, ed. Leonard Woolf (4 vols., Hogarth Press, 1966–7), esp. ‘The Cinema', II, pp. 268–72.

The Complete Shorter Fiction
, ed. Susan Dick (Hogarth Press, 1985), esp. ‘Mrs. Dalloway in Bond Street' and the eight stories set at Mrs. Dalloway's party: ‘The New Dress', ‘Happiness', ‘Ancestors', ‘The Introduction', ‘Together and Apart', ‘The Man who Loved his Kind', ‘A Simple Melody' and ‘A Summing Up'.

Quentin Bell,
Virginia Woolf
,
a Biography
(2 vols., Hogarth Press, 1972).

Phyllis Rose,
Woman of Letters: A Life of Virginia Woolf
(Oxford University Press, 1978).

CRITICAL DISCUSSIONS

Beer, Gillian, ‘The island and the aeroplane: the case of Virginia Woolf' in
Nation and Narration
, ed. Homi K. Bhabha (Routledge, 1990) pp. 265–90.

Bloom, Harold, ed.,
Virginia Woolf's ‘Mrs. Dalloway'
(Chelsea House, 1988).

Bowlby, Rachel,
Virginia Woolf: Feminist Destinations
(Basil Blackwell, 1988).

Clements, Patricia and Isobel Grundy, eds.
Virginia Woolf: New Critical Essays
(Barnes and Noble, 1983).

DiBattista, Maria,
Virginia Woolf's Major Novels: The Fables of Anon
(Yale University Press, 1980).

Dowling, David,
Mrs. Dalloway: Mapping Streams of Consciousness
(Twayne, 1991).

Hawthorn, Jeremy,
Virginia Woolf's ‘Mrs. Dalloway': A Study in Alienation
(Sussex University Press, 1975).

Henke, Suzette A., ‘Virginia Woolf's Septimus Smith: An Analysis of “Paraphernalia” and the Schizophrenic Use of Language',
Literature and Psychology
31 (1981), pp. 13–23.

Hoffman, Charles G., ‘From Short Story to Novel: The Manuscript Revisions of Virginia Woolf's
Mrs. Dalloway
',
Modern Fiction Studies
14 (Summer 1968), pp. 171–86.

Holtby, Winifred,
Virginia Woolf
(Wishart, 1932).

Leaska, Mitchell,
The Novels of Virginia Woolf: From Beginning to End
(John Jay, 1977).

Lee, Hermione,
The Novels of Virginia Woolf
(Methuen, 1977).

Marcus, Jane, ed.
New Feminist Essays on Virginia Woolf
(University of Nebraska Press, 1981).

Marcus, Jane, ed.
Virginia Woolf: A Feminist Slant
(University of Nebraska Press, 1983).

Marder, Herbert, ‘Split Perspectives: Types of Incongruity in
Mrs. Dalloway'
,
Papers in Language and Literature
22 (Winter 1986), pp. 51–69.

Miller, J. Hillis,
Fiction and Repetition: Seven English Novels
(Basil Blackwells, 1982).

Minow-Pinkney, Makiko,
Virginia Woolf and the Problem of the Subject: Feminine Writings in the Major Novels
(Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1987).

Richter, Harvena, ‘The
Ulysses
Connection: Clarissa Dalloway's Bloomsday',
Studies in the Novel
21 (Fall 1989), pp. 305–19.

Squier, Susan,
Virginia Woolf and London
(University of North Carolina Press, 1985).

Tambling, Jeremy, ‘Repression in Mrs. Dalloway's London',
Essays in Criticism
39 (April 1989), pp. 137–55.

Wyatt, Jean, ‘Avoiding Self-definition: In defense of women's right to merge',
Women's Studies
, 13 (1986), pp. 115–26.

Zwerdling, Alex,
Virginia Woolf and the Real World
(University of California Press, 1986).

A Note on the Text

The text of this edition of
Mrs. Dalloway
is based on the original British edition published by Leonard and Virginia Woolf at The Hogarth Press, London, on 14 May 1925; the novel was reissued in September 1925 with a few textual changes. The first American edition was published by Harcourt, Brace & Company, New York, on 14 May 1925.

The typescript which Virginia Woolf sent to her printers, R. & R. Clark, Edinburgh, is not extant. Using it as copy, they sent her at least three sets of proofs. The set which she returned to them, and from which the first British edition was printed, is not extant. A second set, which she sent to her American publishers for the first American edition is extant, and so is a third, which she sent to her friend Jacques Raverat, who was fatally ill (he died on 7 March 1925), so that he could see her novel before its publication. These two sets of proofs both contain corrections made by Virginia Woolf, corrections which do not always correspond with each other nor with the text of the first British edition. They have been fully collated by G. Patton Wright, along with the eight British editions and the three American ones, for his edition (
Mrs. Dalloway
. The Definitive Collected Edition of the Novels of Virginia Woolf. The Hogarth Press, London, 1990); the present editor is deeply indebted to his valuable labours, the results of which can be seen in the three appendices to his book.

Virginia Woolf's method of work was to write her
novels by hand in notebooks, typing up each day's composition more or less without revision on the same day or the following one. If she then felt that further revision than could be made on the typescript was necessary she returned to the notebook and composed the passage afresh. The holograph drafts of
Mrs. Dalloway
show much revision of this kind. They are mostly continuously written, but short passages of revision also crop up in a notebook devoted mainly to book reviews. Some of this holograph material is in the New York Public Library (Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection), the other and larger part of it in the British Library, London. It remains unpublished, but was transcribed in full, from photocopies kindly supplied by the libraries in question, by the present editor some years ago. Though it belongs to an earlier stage in composition than the lost typescript and the revised proofs, its readings can throw light on some passages in
Mrs. Dalloway
where the author's intentions are in doubt.

The Appendix to the present edition lists all the substantive emendations to the text of the first British edition which have been adopted in this edition. It also records such conjectural substantive emendations as the present editor thinks worthy of consideration. Very few emendations of a non-substantive kind have been made, Virginia Woolf's characteristically light punctuation being usually retained; it has not been thought necessary to offer the reader a list of these minor emendations.

The question of substantive emendation is bound up with that of inaccuracy and discrepancy. From the first item in the Appendix it will be seen that Virginia Woolf promptly changed ‘Brooks's' to ‘White's' when she recognized
that she had given the bow window to the wrong building in St. James's Street. Yet a reference to Elizabeth, at the party, ‘in red', when it is more than once stated that her dress is pink, remained unchanged till the edition of 1947 (published six years after her death), an edition which also for the first time corrected the one misspelling of Mr. Wilkins's name as Wilkin. The fact that his name once appears as Wilkin in the author's holograph (not in the same place as in the novel) shows how easily such a mistake could arise, and the editions printed before 1947 show how easily it could be overlooked or tolerated. Clearly it should be emended. But is the reference to Elizabeth ‘in red' a mistake of the same order? Or the two earlier references to Rezia's ‘sisters', when later references make it clear that she is the younger of two sisters? Or the discrepancies between the ages of Peter and Hugh, and of Peter and Clarissa? How far should an editor go in rectifying the inconsistencies of an author who revised her work heavily and saw it through the press herself? Rather than adopt an inflexible rule, the present editor has tried to determine each particular case on its merits, discussing the details in the textual notes of the Appendix.

Stella McNichol 1991

MRS. DALLOWAY

Other books

The Wizard of London by Mercedes Lackey
The Bite Before Christmas by Jeaniene Frost, Lynsay Sands
Mr. Fox by Helen Oyeyemi
Abiogenesis by Kaitlyn O'Connor
Joan Wolf by The Guardian
Endless Things by John Crowley