Virginia Woolf: Public and Private Negotiations

Ideas of public and private are central in Virginia Woolf's writing. She used the terms constantly, re-negotiating their meanings and significance for her, as a woman writer and public figure. This book relates them to key aspects of her feminism and writing practice, exploring their influence on her ideas about women and publishing, her conception of the reading public, her spatial politics, her distinction between public and private genres, and her narrative strategies. In the first full-length study of this aspect of Woolf's work, Anna Snaith provides an illuminating discussion of the significance of the public and private for Woolf, arguing that Woolf approached and employed the terms in complex, contingent ways. A new approach to Woolf's writing is offered, together with discussion of unpublished material: manuscript material from The Pargiters, and previously unexplored letters to Woolf, providing a fascinating insight into the socio-cultural milieu of her readership.