A number of manuscripts have been discovered that were never published but reveal the witty side of Author Virginia Woolf
Author Virginia Woolf's nephews Quentin and Julian Bell came up with a family newspaper during their 1923 summer break and titled it as "The Charleston Bulletin." They thought it would be appropriate to have their "writer" aunt contribute to the paper and Woolf was more than happy to do so.
Thus, between 1923 and 1927, she contributed a series of witty and entertaining supplements to the newspapers, which were never included in her list of works. These supplements took a humorous dig at all the family members as well as the servants and members of the Bloomsbury Group.
The British Library has announced that it will be publishing these new found manuscripts for the first time in June, 2013. The work has been titled "The Charleston Bulletin Supplements."
"It's picking up on family jokes, and on what was obviously an interesting literary circle around them, taking on members of the Bloomsbury Set," said Helen Melody, curator of modern literary manuscripts at the British Library. "No one is really left out of being made fun of. It's not malicious though ... She enjoyed doing it and spending time with her nephews."
According to Melody, these supplements draw a parallel to another family newspaper that Woolf wrote with her sister Vanessa - "Hyde Park Gate News." "The Charleston Bulletin" can be seen as a sequel to the former family newspaper.
"What a different side to her it shows - how light-hearted she is here, compared to in some of her better known works," she said. "It is just so different from everything else we have from her. It was just for the family, but it's very well done, not just done off the hoof - she's obviously put time and effort into it."
© 2023 Books & Review All rights reserved.
© Copyright 2024 Books & Review. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.