Number 86 Fall 2014/Winter 2015
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NUMBER 86 FALL 2014/WINTER 2015 To the Readers: argued, which provides the most startling sense of Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield – TABLE of CONTENTS – connection between them: the two writers “mirror See page 8 each other constantly, in spite of their evident In July 1916, still several months before their first International Virginia Woolf differences” (Smith 1). meeting, Virginia Woolf wrote to Lytton Strachey Society Column in mocking complaint that “Katherine Mansfield Officers and Members-at-Large Both women understood fairly quickly that has dogged my steps for three years” (The Letters See page 51 they shared the same literary intent—that, of Virginia Woolf [L] 2 107). It was a feeling in Mansfield’s words, they took “the writing –EVENTS, INFO and CFPs– engendered, no doubt, by what Kathleen Jones business seriously” and were “honest about it and MLA 2015 in Vancouver describes as “[a] period of courtship” whereby thrilled by it” (The Collected Letters of Katherine See page 3 “[m]utual friends” conveyed “encouraging Mansfield [CLKM] 2 169). But this shared intent 25th Annual Conference on messages” of one to the other (Jones 288). went further as they strove to revitalize the literary Virginia Woolf: Looking ahead to her holiday in Cornwall, Woolf conventions they had inherited and to develop new Virginia Woolf and jokes about a chance meeting with Mansfield Her Female Contemporaries techniques and forms of fiction. These goals seem there: “We go to Cornwall in September, and to have been catalyzed into effect by their meeting Louisville Conference if I see anyone answering to your account [of at such a pivotal time in their careers. By the 2015 Panel and 2016 CFP Mansfield] on a rock or in the sea I shall accost See page 4 time they met, Mansfield had already published her” (L2 107). Perhaps inspired by the Cornish her fiction inThe Blue Review, Rhythm, and About the Leonard Woolf Society folk tale of the “Mermaid of Zennor” and the See page 7 Signature and brought out her first collection,In knowledge that Mansfield and John Middleton a German Pension, in 1911; Woolf had published Murry were living largely in Mylor, not far About the Virginia Woolf Miscellany The Voyage Out, had a substantial draft of Night from Zennor, the image conjures the siren-like Editorial note: and Day and published her first experimental While previously published work may be submitted for allure of Mansfield herself. Indeed, although consideration, both the original publication and any story, “The Mark on the Wall” in 1917 with her Woolf describes their first meeting as a “slight other versions of it must be acknowledged and cited in own Hogarth Press. But critics agree that it was rapprochement” (L2 144), their early relationship the text at the time of submission. the two publications that they produced during soon developed a significant intensity, shaped as it Special Topics & CFPs this early part of their friendship—Mansfield’s was by mutual fascination and admiration, as well For more detailed versions of the CFPs Prelude and Woolf’s “Kew Gardens”—that see page 46 as by wariness, a sense of danger and jealousy. marked a significant turning point in accelerating Theirs was a fluctuating and volatile relationship, Virginia Woolf Miscellany their innovative methods and experimental complex and shifting, which Woolf described as Issue #87—Spring 2015 approaches. Mansfield’s description of the effect “almost entirelyVirginia founded on quicksands” (The Woolf“1930s Woolf” Miscellanycreated by Woolf’s “Kew Gardens” captures this Diary of Virginia Woolf [D] 1 243). Guest Editor: Erica Gene Delsandro sense of suspense and expectation: “Anything may <[email protected]> happen; her world is on tiptoe” (“A Short Story” At first glance, the two writers seem to occupy Issue #88--Fall 2015: 53). For Mansfield, this story evokes a sense of very different positions socially and culturally: Virginia Woolf in the Modern Machine Age anticipation of something new, of life, rich and Guest Editor: Ann Martin Mansfield was from a middle-class New Zealand expansive—“filling a whole world” (54)—a settler family headed by her businessman and What is the role of everyday machines in the life and/or works of Virginia Woolf? How do description equally applicable to her own literary banker father; Woolf was from the heart of the the commonplace technologies of the modern experiments. British intelligentsia with familial connections to machine age leave their trace on Bloomsbury? key literary, artistic and political figures. Woolf Please submit papers of no more than 2500 Throughout 1917 Woolf’s letters and diaries attest was a central figure in Bloomsbury and Mansfield, words to Ann Martin <[email protected]> to a growing sense of admiration for Mansfield, by 31 March 2015. by her own account of it, was the “little colonial as well as a sense of shock and curiosity at their walking in the London garden patch—allowed to Issue #89--Spring 2016: differences in experience. As Woolf wrote to A Truly Miscellaneous Issue look, perhaps, but not to linger […] a stranger—an Editor: Diana Swanson Vanessa Bell, she had had “an odd talk” with alien” (The Journal of Katherine Mansfield 106). <[email protected]> Mansfield in which Mansfield revealed the vast Their life experiences were also radically at odds: Deadline: 1 September 2015. extent of her sexual experience in “hav[ing] Mansfield was nomadic, driven by her ambitions, Issue #90—Fall 2016: gone every sort of hog since she was 17” which desires and finally by her illness to seek new Woolf and Illness Woolf found “interesting” (L2 159). Woolf may horizons; Woolf largely moved between London Guest Editor: Cheryl Hindrichs at times have vented her sense of difference from <[email protected]> and Sussex, relocations that were also dictated Deadline: 31 March 2016. Mansfield in derogatory terms which deliberately at times by her illness. This shared personal Issue #91—Spring 2017: put Mansfield at a distance—acerbically she experience of chronic illness and their awareness Virginia Woolf, Bloomsbury, and the notes in her diary that Mansfield “stinks like a of the emotional burden this placed on others War to End War […] civet cat that had taken to street walking” was just one of the unlikely points of similarity Guest Editor: Karen Levenback and disparaged what she saw as Mansfield’s between them, as were the long-lasting effects of <[email protected]> self-advertisement (D1 58; D2 78)—yet Woolf Deadline: 1 August 2016. the death of a much-loved brother and the sense recognized that Mansfield had “a much better Any queries regarding the Virginia Woolf of loss resulting from childlessness. However, Miscellany should be addressed to idea of writing than most” (L2 159). The sense it is that they shared a great “affinity” in their Vara Neverow of their shared passion for literary innovation and creative lives, as Angela Smith has so persuasively <[email protected]> their mutual support and admiration was at times 1 intoxicating, leading Woolf consider their “queer fate,” which set them attention to the consonances between their critical adjudications, finding apart from others and sealed their bond as “a public of two” (D1 222), a evidence in these writings for a common literary aesthetic and, indeed, phrase which encapsulates the powerfully felt sense of connection which a common critical language but also perceiving more fault-finding and lasted long after Mansfield’s death in 1923. As Smith and others have stridency in Mansfield’s reviews than Woolf’s. noted, the “affinity” between them continued to influence Woolf, and there are many Mansfieldian echoes (and indeed echoes of Mansfield Patricia Moran’s “‘the sudden ‘mushroom growth’ of cheap herself) detectable throughout Woolf’s writing. psychoanalysis’: Mansfield and Woolf Respond to Psychoanalysis” is also interested in gauging these two writers’ responses to their For Mansfield’s part, she also recognized the similarities between them, contemporary cultural milieu, tracing their respective familiarity writing to Woolf that they had “the same job” and goals so similar with and application of psychoanalytical ideas. Moran considers the that she found it “really very curious & thrilling” (CLKM1 327). Her extent of their knowledge of psychoanalysis through, among other praise for Woolf’s essay, “Modern Novels”1(TLS 10 April 1919), in things, their professional associations, personal encounters and use of which Woolf condemns contemporary realist fiction, notably that of Freudian jargon in their writings. She goes on to show that, despite Arnold Bennett, for its materialist approach to literary production, Woolf and Mansfield’s ambivalence towards the “case study” tendency marks a significant moment for Mansfield and she writes effusively in contemporary fiction, their conceptualizations of the workings of to Woolf, “To tell the truth—I am proud of your writing. I read it & consciousness, ascertained through both their fiction and nonfiction, were think ‘How she beats them’” (CLKM2 311). On other occasions she honed in relation—and sometimes in opposition—to psychoanalytic writes to Ottoline Morrell about her perception of Woolf as a “beautiful theories of the mind. brilliant creature” and about her “strange, trembling, glinting quality of […] mind” and unique artistic perspective (CLKM2 333, CLKM1 Sue Reid’s “On Form/s: Woolf, Mansfield and Plato,” like the Newman 315). Yet Mansfield also found herself resenting her friend for her and Moran essays, is concerned with the reading matter the two writers certain advantages; Mansfield, herself, felt “handicap[ped]” by illness, had in common, though of a more historical kind: Plato. Reid contends itinerancy and the long estrangements from Murry and was envious of that their mutual obsession with the idea of form can be traced back to the various material and emotional conditions she felt that Woolf enjoyed this Ancient Greek philosopher.