Who’s Not Afraid of Virginia Woolf? A Talk on Early Scenes in Her Life and Writing

Tues,  Oct 21

2:45-4pm

with Patricia Lawrence

Virginia Woolf is highly visible in our popular culture: in the recent Bloomsbury fashion revival, as a commercial icon on a shopping bag or t-shirt, as the face that sells more postcards than any other in the National Portrait Gallery, in Edward Albee’s play, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? linked with fear, as a feminist guerilla fighter, as the invalid lady of Bloomsbury, as a snob in high intellectual circles, as the sometime lover of Vita Sackville West, and, recently, the suicidal character in The Hours. There are many Virginia Woolfs, but Pat will champion her as one of the most important writers of the twentieth century.  This talk will focus on scenes in her early life and writing that inspired her novel, To the Lighthouse. Patricia is a writer, critic, poet, and Professor Emerita, English, CUNY.  Publications include The Reading of Silence: Virginia Woolf in the English Tradition; Lily Biscoe’s Chinese Eyes: Bloomsbury Modernism and China; Virginia Woolf and the East.