The Densely-Charged Fun of Virginia Woolf
Barbara Burns talks to Professor Bryony Randall (University of Glasgow), Co-Editor of the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Virginia Woolf, and Dr Annie Strausa, the project’s MHRA Research Fellow this year.
BB. Virginia Woolf was a leading figure in British modernism, best known for innovative novels including Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse. What do you think are the reasons for her enduring literary appeal, and what are the key challenges in making her legacy accessible to a global readership today?
BR. All Woolf lovers would answer this differently, but in my opinion, Woolf remains popular because of her combination of literary innovation, political vigour, and (perhaps this will surprise some people) her sense of fun. In the past she was often characterized as a solemn, bloodless writer – indeed, she’s sometimes still represented in that way today, and part of the challenge in making her legacy accessible is getting past that image. In fact, her work is characterized by both razor-sharp wit, and at times an absolute delight in material, sensory experiences.
BB. Woolf is regarded by many as a ‘difficult’ writer. Is that also a potential obstacle?
BR. Certainly, her work is experimental and can be highly abstract, but in its very experimentation, it invites the reader to come in and play! Woolf’s work invites the proliferation of meaning, so readers should feel liberated to enjoy her work on their own terms. Her work is also incredibly varied; while some central preoccupations, such as how to express individual psychology, or the ordinary aspects of life, remain consistent, all of her novels are stylistically and formally very different from each other.
BB. What can you tell us about her influence as a public intellectual and essayist?
BR. Woolf’s 1929 long essay A Room of One’s Own remains a foundational feminist text, expressing the misogyny which pervaded her own society with dazzling precision, and deploying humour to pierce the pomposity of the male establishment. Similarly, Three Guineas (1938) is a polemical work urgently expressing the interconnection of feminism with pacifism on the eve of the Second World War. Both texts are still immensely significant nearly 100 years on – indeed arguably their message needs to be heard even more loudly in the current climate.
BB. Why is the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Virginia Woolf needed?
BR. There have been several important editions of Woolf’s work published over the years. But by the start of the twenty-first century, the time had come for a fresh and full scholarly treatment of all her works, including the generally neglected short fiction. The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Virginia Woolf offers full annotation of the common cultural references that earlier generations of readers might readily have understood but which now need glossing for Woolf’s global, culturally diverse twenty-first-century readership. Nearly every sentence of Woolf’s work is densely charged with layers of cultural and literary allusion, yet to be thoroughly explicated. The expansive approach taken by this edition to annotation leaves plenty of room for following unexpected leads and making new discoveries, which is both challenging and exhilarating!
BB. Your own focus is on Woolf’s shorter fiction: what does that involve?
BR. The short fiction volume poses particular challenges, since most of the short fiction Woolf wrote was unpublished in her lifetime. This means that we are going back to manuscripts or typescripts as the starting point for our own versions of the texts. Each of the eighty-four pieces in the volume has its own individual history: for example, some were revised several times and published by Woolf; some she typed up and revised but never published; and there are some for which we only have partial handwritten manuscripts. So it’s crucial to pay close attention to the material qualities of the original texts, as well as draw widely on other sources (Woolf’s letters and diaries, for example) to build as full a picture as possible of their composition and context. Our focus is then on how best to present the texts to a reader in a way which is accessible, but also conveys something of the draft or unfinished qualities of many of these pieces.
BB. You are co-director of the Textual Editing Lab at the University of Glasgow. What is the rationale behind this group, and what kind of events do you organize?
BR. The Textual Editing Lab is an interdisciplinary network connecting researchers, archivists, digital developers, artists, professionals, and students engaged with textual editing challenges and opportunities, to share good scholarly practice and encourage innovation and collaboration. The Lab was set up to disseminate and develop existing expertise in textual editing across disciplines at the University. Our aim is to be flexible and organize events which best respond to the projects or topics that people would like to discuss. So as well as more traditional seminar-style events, we have also organized exhibitions, hands-on workshops, demonstrations of new technologies, and drop-in sessions. We are always keen to hear from people who want to connect with us and discuss issues in textual editing, wherever they are based!
BB. Annie, you began your work as an MHRA Research Fellow in October. Can you tell us a bit about your educational background and how that led you to this project?
AS. I developed a fascination with Virginia Woolf and her writing, particularly her significant contributions to feminist thought, during my undergraduate studies at the University of Bristol. That interest motivated both my MA at King’s College London, where I completed a dissertation on motherhood in Woolf’s novels, and my PhD at the University of Bristol, which explored sensory aesthetics in twentieth-century women’s writing, and focused on Woolf as one of three primary authors. After I finished my PhD in 2024, the project on Woolf’s short fiction at Glasgow offered an invaluable opportunity to work on an underexplored aspect of her oeuvre, uncovering new insights into her literary career and legacy. I was also drawn to the project for its collaborative nature, particularly the chance to work with Bryony and other leading scholars whose expertise I greatly admire, and to develop my skills in research and editing.
BB. What has been the main focus of your contribution to the project so far? Is there any archival work involved?
AS. To date, I’ve been working on the new CUP edition of Woolf’s short fiction, but I’m looking forward to contributing to other volumes, primarily The Voyage Out, in due course. I’m currently writing explanatory notes for many of the short fiction pieces, and compiling a chronology of their composition and publication. I’m also responsible for transcribing and editing some of the texts, ensuring they are accurate and consistent with Woolf’s original manuscripts. Since some of the manuscripts are held at the New York Public Library and The Morgan Library, this will involve a trip to New York in the summer, an exciting opportunity to engage directly with Woolf’s work in its original form and develop my archival skills.
BB. Have there been any steep learning curves with this project? In what ways are you enhancing your skills?
AS. The most demanding aspect is the level of precision required; transcribing and editing must be done meticulously. Additionally, Woolf’s handwriting can be difficult to decipher at times. That said, I’ve found the process of honing these skills incredibly fulfilling, and the challenges have deepened my understanding and appreciation of Woolf’s creative process.
I’ve really enjoyed the opportunity to explore Woolf’s writing and its textual history in such detail, through a variety of tasks. Writing the explanatory notes, for instance, allows me to situate her shorter fiction within its broader literary, cultural, and historical context, which I find especially rewarding. It has also been a pleasure to work closely with Bryony, from whom I’ve already learned so much, including technical skills such as using microfilm.
BB. Do you also have an opportunity to teach at the University of Glasgow, or to get involved in other initiatives?
AS. Being part of the academic community at Glasgow has provided significant opportunities for training and career development. I’m currently teaching an undergraduate course on critical skills in relation to studying the novel, which includes teaching weekly seminars and running a cohort-wide workshop on Woolf’s 1928 novel, Orlando. I have also enjoyed engaging with the TE Lab and hope to run an event with them later in the year, focusing on the challenges of textual editing, with my work on Woolf’s short fiction as a case study.
BB. Presumably you’re already thinking ahead to the next step in your early-career journey: what do you hope to move on to?
AS. Glasgow has been an ideal place for developing my academic plans, particularly in relation to my proposed postdoctoral project on speculative fiction in twentieth-century women’s writing, which will bring feminist and archival interventions to existing work on the intersection of speculative fiction and medical humanities. The University offers a rich intellectual environment and has enabled me to begin developing crucial research networks through the Medical Humanities Research Centre, the Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic, and the Centre for Gender History. Glasgow also provides excellent support for early-career researchers, including programmes such as the Ignite Fellowship Accelerator, which I will continue to explore as I prepare fellowship applications.
BB. How would each of you sum up the importance of this project, both to you personally and in terms of scholarly endeavour?
BR. I’ve worked on short fiction by various authors for many years, and I’m passionate about conveying the significance and value of what is still sometimes dismissed as a minor genre. In particular, many of Woolf’s shorter pieces have often been seen as experimental exercises towards the development of her novels, rather than important works in their own right. Giving Woolf's short fiction the full scholarly treatment it deserves will significantly raise the profile of this immensely diverse but still neglected body of work.
AS. My research is grounded in a commitment to recovering overlooked works of twentieth-century women writers, with the aim of challenging and expanding prevailing notions of literary value and the canon. Although Woolf is now established as a canonical figure, thanks largely to several decades of feminist recovery work, parts of her oeuvre, including her short fiction, remain underexplored. This project is especially meaningful to me because it highlights how Woolf’s short fiction challenges conventional narrative forms and enriches our understanding of her contributions to modernist literature, but it also underscores the importance of revisiting and re-evaluating marginalized works, even within the output of a canonical author.
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