Virginia Woolf and the Literary Marketplace Also by Jeanne Dubino Virginia Woolf and the Essay (co-editor with Beth Carole Rosenberg) Virginia Woolf and the Literary Marketplace Edited by Jeanne Dubino Palgrave macmillan VIRGINIA WOOLF AND THE LITERARY MARKETPLACE Copyright © Jeanne Dubino, 2010. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2010 All rights reserved. First published in 2010 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-29055-0 ISBN 978-0-230-11479-1 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-0-230-11479-1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Virginia Woolf and the literary marketplace / edited by Jeanne Dubino. p. cm. ISBN 978–0–230–10706–9 (alk. paper) 1. Woolf, Virginia, 1882–1941—Knowledge—Literature publishing. 2. Woolf, Virginia, 1882–1941—Knowledge—Book industries and trade. 3. Publishers and publishing—England—History—20th century. 4. Authors and publishers—England—History—20th century. 5. Authorship— Marketing—History. I. Dubino, Jeanne, 1959– PR6045.O72Z89242 2010 823Ј.912—dc22 2010013775 A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: November 2010 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Transferred to Digital Printing in 2011 To Andrew, and the five of us CONTENTS Acknowledgments xi List of Contributors xiii List of Abbreviations xvii Introduction 1 Jeanne Dubino Part I Woolf’s Engagement with the Marketplace One Reading, Taking Notes, and Writing: Virginia Stephen’s Reviewing Practice 27 Beth Rigel Daugherty Two Circulating Ideas and Selling Periodicals: Leonard Woolf, the Nation and Athenaeum, and Topical Debate 43 Elizabeth Dickens Three Woolf’s Editorial Self-Censorship and Risk-Taking in Jacob’s Room 57 Vara Neverow Four Between Writing and Truth: Woolf’s Positive Nihilism 73 Jeanette McVicker Part II Woolf’s Relationship to the Marketplace Five How to Strike a Contemporary: Woolf, Mansfield, and Marketing Gossip 91 Katie Macnamara viii Contents Six Something of a Firebrand: Virginia Woolf and the Literary Reputation of Emily Brontë 107 Heather Bean Seven Virginia Woolf and Gertrude Stein: Commerce, Bestsellers, and the Jew 121 Karen Leick Part III Woolf’s Marketplaces Eight Virginia Woolf and the Middlebrow Market of the Familiar Essay 137 Caroline Pollentier Nine Woolf Studies and Periodical Studies 151 Patrick Collier Ten The “Keystone Public” and Virginia Woolf: A Room of One’s Own, Time and Tide, and Cultural Hierarchies 167 Melissa Sullivan Eleven “Murdering an Aunt or Two”: Textual Practice and Narrative Form in Virginia Woolf’s Metropolitan Market 181 John K. Young Part IV Marketing Woolf Twelve The “Grand Lady of Literature”: Virginia Woolf in Italy under Fascism 199 Elisa Bolchi Thirteen Translating Orlando in 1930s Fascist Italy: Virginia Woolf, Arnoldo Mondadori, and Alessandra Scalero 209 Sara Villa Fourteen Appropriating Virginia Woolf for the New Humanism: Seward Collins and The Bookman, 1927–1933 223 Yuzu Uchida Contents ix Fifteen Don’t Judge a Cover by Its Woolf: Book Cover Images and the Marketing of Virginia Woolf’s Work 237 Jennie-Rebecca Falcetta Index 253 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am grateful to the contributors—it has been a great pleasure to work with you all. I want to thank Madelyn Detloff and Diana Royer, coordi- nators of the 2007 Virginia Woolf conference where I conceived of this project, and where Beth Daugherty, Patrick Collier, Katie Macnamara, Karen Leick, Jennie-Rebecca Falcetta, and John K. Young presented the first versions of the essays that appear in this anthology. Elizabeth Dickens, Yuzu Uchida, and Elisa Bolchi delivered their papers first at the 2008 Woolf conference, organized by Eleanor McNees; and Jeanette McVicker at the 2009 conference, organized by Anne Fernald. Indeed, this collec- tion has benefited from all of the Woolf conferences—from the panels and plenaries, the proceedings, the dialogue, and the community and fellowship of friends and scholars. I also want to extend heartfelt thanks to my friends and colleagues Ziba Rashidian, Alexandra Hellenbrand, Lynne Jakubauskas, Merryl Reichbach, Jackie Oluoch Aridi, Emilia Ilieva, Gerald MacLean, Donna Landry, and to my families, for all their support and encouragement. I am grateful to the Provost of Appalachian State University, Stan Aeschleman, who granted me a sabbatical in 2009– 2010, and to Bob Lyman, who was ASU’s Dean of Arts and Sciences. I would like to thank the editor, Brigitte Shull, and the anonymous reader, whose comments were invaluable. My thanks to Lee Norton, Matt Robison, Joel Breuklander, and Rohini Krishnan for their assistance in preparing this manuscript for publication. I would like to express my gratitude for permission to publish the following: Extracts from the unpublished notebooks of Virginia Stephen © The Estate of Virginia Woolf, 2010. By permission of the Society of Authors, as the literary representative of the Estate of Virginia Woolf. Passages from the letters of Arnoldo Mondadori at the Historical Archive of Arnoldo Mondadori. By permission of the Arnoldo and Alberto Mondadori Foundation in Milan. CONTRIBUTORS HEATHER BEAN is a PhD candidate in English Literary Studies at York University, Toronto, Canada. ELISA BOLCHI teaches English and Comparative Literatures at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan. One of her most recent publications includes Il paese della bellezza (Milan: I.S.U. Università Cattolica, 2007). PATRICK COLLIER is Associate Professor and Assistant Chair of English at Ball State University, where he teaches nineteenth- and twentieth- century British literature. He is the author of Modernism on Fleet Street (London: Ashgate, 2006) and many articles on the relations between literature and journalism. BETH RIGEL DAUGHERTY is Professor of English at Otterbein College in Westerville, Ohio. She edited, with Mary Beth Pringle, Approaches to Teaching Woolf’s To the Lighthouse (New York: MLA, 2001), and has published many articles on Woolf, including one for Palgrave Advances in Virginia Woolf Studies (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007) and one in Approaches to Teaching Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway (New York: MLA, 2009). She is currently working on a book entitled The Education of a Woman Writer: Virginia Woolf’s Apprenticeship. ELIZABETH DICKENS is a lecturer in the Book and Media Studies Program at the University of Toronto, where she recently completed her PhD in English and Book History and Print Culture. Her research focuses on the relationship between the book trade and weekly review periodicals in early twentieth-century Britain. JEANNE DUBINO is Professor of English at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. With Beth Rosenberg she co-edited Virginia Woolf and the Essay (New York: St. Martin’s, 1997). She has published xiv Contributors articles on Woolf, travel literature, popular culture, and postcolonial writers. JENNIE-REBECCA FALCETTA is Assistant Professor of English at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut. Her publications include essays on Woolf, Seamus Heaney, Marianne Moore, and Thomas Malory. KAREN LEICK is the author of Gertrude Stein and the Making of an American Celebrity (New York: Routledge, 2009) and co-editor of Modernism on File: Modern Writers, Artists, and the FBI, 1920–1950 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008). She has published articles on Ezra Pound, H. L. Mencken, and Little Magazines. KATIE MACNAMARA is a PhD candidate in English at Indiana University. She has published papers on early modern and modernist approaches to the essay form, and enjoys writing creative nonfiction herself. JEANETTE MCVICKER is Professor of English at the State University of New York-Fredonia. She has published many articles and essays on Woolf, and has edited two volumes (with Laura Davis) of the Selected Papers from the Annual Conference on Virginia Woolf. VARA NEVEROW is Professor of English and Women’s Studies at Southern Connecticut State University. She has published extensively on Woolf. Her most recent publications include the introduction and annotations for the 2008 Harcourt edition of Jacob’s Room, and an essay on Woolf and city aesthetics for the forthcoming volume, The Edinburgh Companion to Virginia Woolf and the Arts. CAROLINE POLLENTIER is a doctoral student at the University of Paris 7, France. Her dissertation focuses on the aesthetics and politics of the ordinary in Woolf’s essays, and she has published several articles on the essays. MELISSA SULLIVAN is Assistant Professor of English at Rosemont College in Rosemont, Pennsylvania. She has published (and has forth- coming) articles on middlebrow writers and Time and Tide; and Woolf, Rose Macaulay, and cultural hierarchies. YUZU UCHIDA is a PhD student at Waseda University, Tokyo. Her thesis examines Woolf in American periodicals. SARA VILLA is a postdoctoral fellow in a joint program between the State University of Milan and Columbia University’s Center for Jazz Studies. She has published a monograph