Bibliofemme News
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09/05/2005
Virginia Woolf tributes for publication
Today sees the publication of the letters of condolence sent to Virginia Woolf's family after her death.
After Woolf committed suicide in 1941 many of her friends, relatives, students and readers wrote to express their loss and sympathies.
Writers such as EM Forster, HG Wells and TS Eliot sent letters to her husband Leonard and sister Vanessa.
These have been stored in the University of Sussex library for 30 years until Sybil Oldfield, a research reader in English, decided to trace the authors of the letters and their surviving relatives in order to obtain permission to publish them.
Oldfield, who spent the last five years working on the book, believes that the collection will reveal one of the 20th century's pre-eminent intellectuals in a new light.
"The letters give us a fresh perspective on what was thought about Woolf by her contemporaries," she says.
"During her life she was accused of being aloof and sarcastic, but it is obvious from many of these letters that people felt supported by her and sensitively understood."
Afterwords, Letters on the Death of Virginia Woolf will be published by Edinburgh University Press.
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