Literature Studies

Newes From Scotland

This supernatural soliciting
Cannot be ill, cannot be good: if ill,
Why hath it given me earnest of success,
Commencing in a truth? I am thane of Cawdor:
If good, why do I yield to that suggestion
Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair
And make my seated heart knock at my ribs,
Against the use of nature? Present fears
Are less than horrible imaginings:
My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical,
Shakes so my single state of man that function
Is smother’d in surmise, and nothing is
But what is not.

Macbeth is believed to have been written in 1605, two years after King James VI of Scotland – the son of Mary Queen of Scots –  became James 1 of England, succeeding the childless Elizabeth I and creating a personal union of the two kingdoms.

The presence of the saintly King Duncan and the character of Banquo – thought to have been a forebear of James – all indicate that this was a play designed to impress the new monarch, and it launched Shakespeare’s newly-renamed company of players, The King’s Men.

James himself was an author: amongst his published works, Daemonologie (1597) examined contemporary necromancy and the historical relationships between the various methods of divination used from ancient black magic. It also touched on the methods demons used to bother troubled men. James’s purpose was to educate a misinformed populace on the history, practices and implications of sorcery and the reasons for persecuting a witch in a Christian society. Daemonologie is believed to be one of the main sources used by Shakespeare, who attributed many quotes and rituals found within the book directly to the Wyrd* Sisters. For the play’s Scottish themes and settings, he also drew heavily on descriptions in the book of the North Berwick Witch Trials in 1590, which James had attended.

And so, as the Shakespearean scholar Emma Smith puts it, “Our first introduction to the imaginative world of the play is one in which supernatural agents hold some kind of sway.”

SALON DETAILS

• Facilitated by Jane Wymark, co-facilitated by Julie Sutherland (see below)
• Wednesdays,18:00 – 20:00 BST
• Cost for this study is £175– this includes notes and resources
• Eight meetings over eight weeks from 10 March to 28 April
• Meetings conducted virtually via ZOOM
• There are many editions; to simplify for this study please use the Arden Shakespeare, 3rd edition (ed Clarke & Mason), ISBN 978-1-9042-7141–3, which has detailed commentary notes and sets the play in its historical, theatrical and critical context.

THIS STUDY IS NOW FULL please contact us to register your interest for a future similar study

To register,  please use the Paypal button below (one for previous Salon participants, one for first timers)          Upon receipt of payment, I will send you the opening notes, resources and preparation suggestions.

Julie Sutherland is co-facilitating with Jane for this study. She is deeply interested in the capacity of literature—both read and in performance—to effect change in the human spirit. She has taught Shakespeare to university students in Canada and the UK and regularly facilitates ‘reading for well-being’ workshops in Shakespeare and other literature for the ReLit Foundation. She also works in-community with others who share her desire to bring the Bard to life.

Like Hamlet (“Who’s there?”) Macbeth begins with a question:

“When shall we three meet again?”

These are the Wyrd Sisters on the blasted heath. When that meeting happens – “In thunder, lightning or in rain?” –  they will meet with Macbeth. How do they know he will be there? Is he their puppet – or have they been summoned by Macbeth’s unacknowledged desires?

Again, as in Hamlet, the murder of a king is key. But in this case the killer has moved centre stage and we meet him before the dreadful deed is done. But having first seen the Wyrd Sisters we must decide whether Macbeth, like Claudius, commits the crime because of his own ambition or whether he is being directed by supernatural forces. Let us note here another comment by Emma Smith, who tells us that Macbeth shares with its contemporary work, Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) an aim to “investigate the human mind, and a curiosity about the causes and explanations for feelings and behaviours.”

This question of who holds agency in Macbeth is one we will explore in our 8-session reading and discussion of the play, as well as its themes of loyalty, guilt, innocence and fate – and, of course, ambition and its consequences.

*Modern English spelling was only starting to become fixed by Shakespeare’s time and the word ‘weird’ (from Old English wyrd, fate) had connotations beyond the common modern meaning. The Wiktionary etymology for “weird” includes this observation: ‘[The word] was extinct by the 16th century in English. It survived in Scots, whence Shakespeare borrowed it in naming the Weird Sisters, reintroducing it to English. The senses “abnormal”, “strange” etc. arose via reinterpretation of “Weird Sisters” and date from after this reintroduction.’

Within a Budding Grove – Vol. II Proust’s A la recherche du Temps Perdu

“When we are in love, our love is too big a thing for us to be able altogether to contain it within ourselves. It radiates towards the loved one, finds there a surface which arrests it, forcing it to return to its starting-point, and it is this repercussion of our own feeling which we call the other’s feelings and which charms us more then than on its outward journey because we do not recognise it as having originated in ourselves.”
― Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove

After completing incredibly satisfying studies of Ulysses and Magic Mountain, we have turned to the next big mountain of Modernism, Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time. We  spent eight weeks reading the first volume of the work– now we turn to Vol. II: Within a Budding Grove (recommended edition: Vintage Classics, trans. C. K. Scott Moncrieff).  Even if you have not read the first volume, it is possible to pick up from Vol. II and move forward–you can always go back into the first book.  Here is how one Salonista describes the pleasure and work of reading Proust: ” This is a velvet jewel of a book that demands the attention of a lover full of enchantment  and obsession ,we need not get impatient as all good lovers perfect their art in taking their time.”

Reading Proust teaches the reader to observe how the world is experienced, to be aware that although humans are tempted to give greater weight to the perceptual universe, it is the entwining of memory, idealized experience (dreams) and relationships with what our senses perceive that molds our consciousness.

Proust also uses his curious and attentive narrator to uncover the ombre—the part of the self that hides in the shade or shadow. As we come to know the characters in the narrator’s world, each turns out to have aspects that reveal a savagery or laziness or discrepancy that was not what appeared on the surface. Of course, as soon as Proust reflects this to the reader, we recognize this truth of human nature: all carry a shadow, an untoward or simply unmanageable part of the self that we struggle to contain. In Proust’s world, these aspects are equally a part of the coherent self…this has me thinking a great deal about how carefully we construct the social self—and how we temper what simmers beneath the surface.

In Volume II, Proust will continue to explore class structures and awakening sexuality. As we considered in V1, the form of love as Proust conceives it is an entity not necessarily shared between the lovers—but may often be a projection from one onto the love object—and therefore limited in how much that love depends on the actuality of the other in its conception.

Salon Details

• Facilitated by Toby Brothers, Salon Director
• Monday afternoons   12:30-2:30 PM (FINAL 3 sessions are at the same time on Tuesdays)
• Eleven Meeting study from March 29th- June29th (No meetings April 12th, May 17th, May 31st)
• Recommended edition: Vintage Classics Moncrief/Kilmartin/Enright  ISBN-13: 978-0099362319
• £250 for eleven meetings includes background materials, literary criticism, opening notes & discussion notes

 Use the Paypal button below to register (or contact us to pay by direct bank transfer). The cost is £250 for the eleven-week study–this will cover the entire volume. I will send along opening notes and critical resources once I have received your registration. Studies start March 29th.  If you were not in the study of Vol I, please contact us to discuss your registration first. 

Dubliners: Between Paralysis and Epiphany 

“My intention was to write a chapter of the moral history of my country and I chose Dublin for the scene because that city seemed to me the centre of paralysis. I have tried to present it to the indifferent public under four of its aspects: childhood, adolescence, maturity and public life. The stories are arranged in this order.”—James Joyce as quoted in Herbert Gorman’s James Joyce (NY, 1939)

Dubliners is characterised by a sense of paralysis. The moral centre of these stories is not paralysis alone but a recognition of that static state. Joyce loved Ireland but could not remain there—part of his critique of his culture and its people is imaged in these stories—in people caught in patterns and prejudices that they cannot escape. In many of the stories collected in this early publication, a clang of awareness or self-realization marks the climax. Often these moments reveal Joyce’s fascination with epiphanies- that moment of sudden and intense illumination when a profound truth is/may be revealed.  In Stephen Hero, a character suggests the recording of epiphanies is one of the most important functions of writing: ‘they are the most delicate and evanescent of moments’ and offer ‘a sudden spiritual manifestation, whether in the vulgarity of speech or of gesture or in memorable phase of the mind itself’.  For Joyce, these moments did not occur at the height of the heroic or dramatic gesture, but in the ordinary acts of life.  Are there moments in the readings that fit this description? More importantly, what is revealed?

“I did not know whether I would ever speak to her or not or, if I spoke to her, how I could tell her of my confused adoration. But my body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires.”
― James Joyce, Dubliners

SALON DETAILS

• Co-facilitated by Toby Brothers  and Paul Caviston 
• Tuesdays 2-4 PM starting April 6th 
• Eight-week study: Two stories a week (except for The Dead) 
• Meetings on line
• Recommended edition:  Penguin Classics (Feb. 2000) ISBN-10: 0141182458
• £215 for the eight-week course
  

TO REGISTER for the study, please use the secure Paypal payment button below to pay £215. Contact us if you prefer to pay by direct bank transfer. Opening notes will be sent shortly after registration. The study is limited to 10 participants. Please contact us if you have any questions.

We will discuss all the stories of Dubliners in order– taking into account the progression and interconnectedness with the structural and thematic resonances. This comparison will also allow us to consider the development of Joyce’s craft as he prepares the ground for his later experimentation. 

In all the stories, Joyce is driven to find that moment of illumination, the epiphany, when clarity is suddenly attained. He was convinced this was not a moment of great victory or apparent importance, but often a mundane moment when pieces fell into place.

The style of this study will reflect the traditional Salon format: we will offer a structure for our discussion and particular passages and ideas for us to grapple with, but I encourage and support your contributions to the discussion.  We have no expectations in terms of preparation nor previous Joyce study:The Salons typically have a broad spectrum of participants from the simply curious to literature teachers or lecturers—and some who have spent years reading Joyce. Each person brings their lived experience to the study whether it is a knowledge of the Catholic tradition. Irish history, love of music or intrigue with language: all contribute to our understanding as a group.

Joyce can be…intimidating. Please approach the reading with a sense of play. Much may remain unclear on your first reading; after our work together and if you are able to complete a second reading, you may find the pattern and weave of Joyce’s art singing for you. In his writing, he experiments with language and relies less on narrative logic than on the connections and synchronicity of words and events.

Faulkner’s Sanctuary has attracted wide controversy from the moment of its publication. The novel has contributed significantly to the author’s reputation as a writer of Gothic, melodramatic tales of violence and sexual misconduct. This new study will look at the extent to which that view is justified by this work, and will give participants the opportunity to discuss the novel in the wider context of Faulkner’s other writing. Earlier Faulkner studies have included: The Sound and the Fury; Absalom, Absalom; Light in August; As I Lay Dying; ‘The Bear’; and ‘A Rose for Emily.’ This salon will build on that earlier work, as well as giving space for reconsideration of a novel whose reputation has dominated attempts at objective criticism.

SALON DETAILS

• Co-facilitated by Salon Director Toby Brothers and Geoff Brown

• Five meetings: Thursday afternoons starting April 15th   1-3 PM

• Virtual Meeting on Zoom

• Cost £135.00 includes opening notes and resources

• Recommended editions: Vintage International (1993) ISBN 0679748148  or Penguin Classics(1975) ISBN 13: 9780140008999

To register, please use the Paypal button below to pay £135 for this five- meeting study. Upon receipt of payment, I will send you the opening notes, resources and preparation suggestions.

“But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”
― George Eliot, Middlemarch

In Middlemarch, Eliot probes the complexity of human nature and studies the idea of vocation: the call to find meaning through work in a provincial world.

I love the dilemma–how is an intelligent woman going to be intellectually stimulated in a time when there are so few options for women? This reflects Eliot’s own story: why does she write under a male pseudonym? Dorothea settles on marriage to an older man, a scholar and (she hopes) a mentor–ironically making an intellectual choice about the desire of the heart. What ensues is her struggle to be the person she aspires to being a world which values none of the ideals that interest her.

I love how psychological Eliot is, how interested she is in the inner workings of people’s minds. Why do Dorothea and Lydgate make the choices they do? Why do they choose people so unsuited to them? As in Daniel Deronda, Eliot is very interested in intellectual/spiritual passion–how religious scholarship can inform or transform a life–but while she is attracted to the dispassionate discipline of religious wisdom, she also knows that earthly love is what sustains us. This tension, between moral ideal and human behaviour, is the drive of the novel and probably makes the most sense in its historical context: a time of great intellectual inquiry, the Victorian obsession with self-improvement. Yet it isn’t that different from the self-improvement obsessions of our own time…

This study was added in response to the interest in the previous study of Middlemarch – as well as the requests for something to focus the mind during lockdown and its aftermath.

SALON DETAILS

• Facilitated by Sarah Snoxall
• Tuesday early evening  5:00 pm – 7:00 pm   
• Seven-meeting study, 20 April 2021 through 7 May 2021 
• Online discussions using Zoom meeting interface. Zoom is free for participants, instructions will be sent upon registration.
• Recommended edition: Middlemarch by George Eliot (Norton Critical Editions) Paperback – 26 Jan. 2000 ISBN-10 : 9780393974522
• £170 for seven-week study, includes notes and questions for preparation.
  

TO REGISTER for the study, please use the secure Paypal payment button below to pay £170 (Please contact us if you prefer to pay by direct bank transfer).

“Millions of things came back to her. Atoms danced apart and massed themselves. But how did they compose what people called a life? She clenched her hands and felt the hard little coins she was holding. Perhaps there’s ‘I’ at the middle of it, she thought; a knot; a centre; and again she saw herself sitting at her table drawing on the blotting paper, digging little holes from which spokes radiated. Out and out they went; thing followed thing, scene obliterated scene.”

–Virginia Woolf, The Years

Each study in St Ives is magical. The light, the smell and sound of the sea gilds the intensive study with a unique sense of stepping into another world. This study of The Years, the last novel published by Virginia Woolf while she was still alive, expands our time in Cornwall to five days as requested by past participants. We will meet Wednesday evening for our first exploration with six more meetings spread over the coming days to allow time for enjoyment of the natural and cultural gems offered in this beautiful place. This will be the Salon’s first study of The Years; this study will have the exploratory energy that a first Salon study offers.

IN LIGHT OF THE CURRENT PANDEMIC, the dates for this study are shifted: Sept.29 toOctober 3rd 2021 …there are three spaces available.

The Years is described as a family saga–and is often considered more accessible than other works by Woolf. With the experience of many studies of To The Lighthouse, Between the Acts, The Waves and Mrs Dalloway, I have come to relish the subtle profundity beneath the language experimentation and interior explorations that Woolf offers. The Years engages history– the personal history of a family, the mantel of history of a people, the sense of a denigrated future in the shadow of historical myths and mistakes–and considers how various characters negotiate this troubled inheritance. Woolf moves deftly between the individual and the larger cultural landscapes–illuminating how one person can exist in their vulnerable selfhood amidst the waves of the world around them.

To understand this book, you will want to read with a wide awake mind and then re-read once you have played on the surface of plot and character. Notice how the descriptions along the edges—the fragments, the other stories invoked, the changing weather passages—all comment on and expand the central narrative. We will also consider essays from her work, The Pargiters — the theoretical framework that Woolf wrote alongside The Years but then excluded from the text. This has become available in Mitchell Leaska’s edition: “The Pargiters is interesting in its own right for the insight it offers into Woolf’s politics, which she expresses more bluntly in the novel-essay than she ever had before.” (R. Higney, Modernism Lab)

SALON DETAILS: 

• Five-day Meeting in St Ives — approximately 14 hours of study
• Meeting St Ives Cornwall; facilitated by Salon Director Toby Brothers
• Cost £325 includes notes and critical resources (transport and housing not included)
• RECOMMENDED EDITION: The Years by Virginia Woolf (Vintage Classics Woolf Series) Paperback – 6 Oct 2016 ISBN-10: 1784872237
• If possible, please also purchase The Pargiters–  this book is difficult to find and tends to be pricey– if you can not find an affordable edition, please contact us— I have a few editions for purchase or loan.

To register for the Salon study, please use the Paypal button below to pay £325: (Please pay for the  room directly to No4St Ives once your registration has been confirmed):

‘A brilliant fantasia of all Time’s problems, age and youth, change and permanence, truth and illusion’ The Times Literary Supplement

The Years is the story of the Pargiter family – their intimacies and estrangements, anxieties and triumphs – mapped out against the bustling rhythms of London’s streets during the first decades of the twentieth century, as their Victorian upbringing gives way to a new world, where the rules of etiquette have shifted from the drawing room to the air-raid shelter. Virginia Woolf’s penultimate novel is a celebration of the resilience of the individual amid time, change, life, death and renewal.

Virginia Woolf:  “If life has a base that it stands upon, if it is a bowl that one fills and fills and fills – then my bowl without doubt stands upon this memory.  It is of lying in bed, half-asleep, haf awake, in bed in the nursery at St Ives.  It is of hearing the waves breaking, one, two, one, two, and sending a splash of water over the beach; and then breaking, one, two, one two, behind a yellow blind […}.  If I were a painter I should paint these impressions in pale yellow, silver, and green.  There was the pale yellow blind; the green sea; and the silver of the passion flowers.”

“Here is the past and all its inhabitants miraculously sealed as in a magic tank.”

“The past only comes back when the present runs so smoothly that it is like the sliding surace of a deep river.  Then one sees through the surface to the depths.  The past sometimes presses so close that you can feel nothing else.”

—“Sketch of the Past,” begun in June 1939.

St IVES:  Virginia Woolf spent much of her childhood in St. Ives.  The London Literary Salon invites you to join us in St Ives to explore this lovely coastal town and have it serve as a prism through which we will explore Woolf’s perspectives on landscape, domesticity, historical inheritance and identity in her novel The Years. We have already completed four magical weekends with Woolf’s writings in the environment that inspired it– this is an incredible experience!

You will have the opportunity to  visit the iconic Tate St Ives gallery overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, built between 1988 and 1993 on the site of an old gasworks, and there will be an optional boat trip to Godrevy Lighthouse.

We may also look at Talland House, now privately owned, her childhood summer home.  For several months of the year the elegant house overlooking St Ives Bay would be the Stephens’ family home until 1895 when Virginia’s mother Julia Stephen died.  Although the complete family never returned to St Ives following their mother’s death, her children travellled back in 1905 following the death of their father in 1904.

Accommodation:  We are working with No4 St Ives which is just steps from Talland House and has an elevated position overloooking St Ives Bay.  It is a 5 minute walk from the beach and St Ives Town Centre.

Approximate cost: 

 Rooms at No4 St Ives range from £110-£140 per night– if the room is shared, the cost is halved; breakfast included. Some of us plan to stay Sunday night as well to be able to enjoy an extra day in this beautiful site. The entire cost is to be paid upfront. If for some reason you are unable to attend, we will work to find someone to replace you & reimburse you for the room but can not guarantee that is possible. The Salon cost may be applied to a later study. 

Train cost is approx.  £70  each way(cheaper if bought earlier) 

Salon cost is  £325: We will meet around 14 hours over the five days. The first meeting starts at 5:45 Wednesday evening; the last meeting is scheduled for 9:30-11:30 Sunday morning. On previous trips, many have stayed in St Ives through Sunday evening to have time for further exploration and reflection. Please discuss this option with Sue and Mike from No4 St Ives if you are interested. 

We will enjoy dinner out on Wednesday and Friday…other costs will include the optional boat trip & visit to the St Ives gallery. 

Getting there:  The train from London takes just over five hours, with one change at St Erth for the branch line to St Ives.

This event and other in-depth explorations of  Virginia Woolf and her works can be found on the website of the Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain

Part of the challenge when reading Woolf is to understand it is not the action that matters but the impression of thoughts; it is by attending to the pattern and signification of thoughts and impressions that we will uncover meaning, innovation. As one of the primary modernist writers, Woolf plays with language; testing its ability to truly reflect human experience by recording the life of the mind not just action. Her narrative form reflects one of the characteristics of Modernist writing in its shifting centre of narrative perspective reflecting a questioning of ultimate and moral authority that characterized the time with the dissolution of Imperialism and absolute values.

Writing from the edge of the violent shift from Victorian to Modernist era, the loss of an old world in the violent destruction of war and massive social change, Woolf’s ambivalence is demonstrated in her work. She struggles against the boundaries and structures of the Victorian era while holding a great longing and nostalgia for the noble traditions of the time.

If you have any questions about this study, please contact us.

“Millions of things came back to her. Atoms danced apart and massed themselves. But how did they compose what people called a life? She clenched her hands and felt the hard little coins she was holding. Perhaps there’s ‘I’ at the middle of it, she thought; a knot; a centre; and again she saw herself sitting at her table drawing on the blotting paper, digging little holes from which spokes radiated. Out and out they went; thing followed thing, scene obliterated scene.”

–Virginia Woolf, The Years

Each study in St Ives is magical. The light, the smell and sound of the sea gilds the intensive study with a unique sense of stepping into another world. This study of The Years, the last novel published by Virginia Woolf while she was still alive, expands our time in Cornwall to five days as requested by past participants. We will meet Wednesday evening for our first exploration with six more meetings spread over the coming days to allow time for enjoyment of the natural and cultural gems offered in this beautiful place. This will be the Salon’s first study of The Years; this study will have the exploratory energy that a first Salon study offers.

IN LIGHT OF THE CURRENT PANDEMIC, the dates for this study are shifted: Sept.29 toOctober 3rd 2021 …there are three spaces available.

The Years is described as a family saga–and is often considered more accessible than other works by Woolf. With the experience of many studies of To The Lighthouse, Between the Acts, The Waves and Mrs Dalloway, I have come to relish the subtle profundity beneath the language experimentation and interior explorations that Woolf offers. The Years engages history– the personal history of a family, the mantel of history of a people, the sense of a denigrated future in the shadow of historical myths and mistakes–and considers how various characters negotiate this troubled inheritance. Woolf moves deftly between the individual and the larger cultural landscapes–illuminating how one person can exist in their vulnerable selfhood amidst the waves of the world around them.

To understand this book, you will want to read with a wide awake mind and then re-read once you have played on the surface of plot and character. Notice how the descriptions along the edges—the fragments, the other stories invoked, the changing weather passages—all comment on and expand the central narrative. We will also consider essays from her work, The Pargiters — the theoretical framework that Woolf wrote alongside The Years but then excluded from the text. This has become available in Mitchell Leaska’s edition: “The Pargiters is interesting in its own right for the insight it offers into Woolf’s politics, which she expresses more bluntly in the novel-essay than she ever had before.” (R. Higney, Modernism Lab)

SALON DETAILS: 

• Five-day Meeting in St Ives — approximately 14 hours of study
• Meeting St Ives Cornwall; facilitated by Salon Director Toby Brothers
• Cost £325 includes notes and critical resources (transport and housing not included)
• RECOMMENDED EDITION: The Years by Virginia Woolf (Vintage Classics Woolf Series) Paperback – 6 Oct 2016 ISBN-10: 1784872237
• If possible, please also purchase The Pargiters–  this book is difficult to find and tends to be pricey– if you can not find an affordable edition, please contact us— I have a few editions for purchase or loan.

To register for the Salon study, please use the Paypal button below to pay £325: (Please pay for the  room directly to No4St Ives once your registration has been confirmed):

‘A brilliant fantasia of all Time’s problems, age and youth, change and permanence, truth and illusion’ The Times Literary Supplement

The Years is the story of the Pargiter family – their intimacies and estrangements, anxieties and triumphs – mapped out against the bustling rhythms of London’s streets during the first decades of the twentieth century, as their Victorian upbringing gives way to a new world, where the rules of etiquette have shifted from the drawing room to the air-raid shelter. Virginia Woolf’s penultimate novel is a celebration of the resilience of the individual amid time, change, life, death and renewal.

Virginia Woolf:  “If life has a base that it stands upon, if it is a bowl that one fills and fills and fills – then my bowl without doubt stands upon this memory.  It is of lying in bed, half-asleep, haf awake, in bed in the nursery at St Ives.  It is of hearing the waves breaking, one, two, one, two, and sending a splash of water over the beach; and then breaking, one, two, one two, behind a yellow blind […}.  If I were a painter I should paint these impressions in pale yellow, silver, and green.  There was the pale yellow blind; the green sea; and the silver of the passion flowers.”

“Here is the past and all its inhabitants miraculously sealed as in a magic tank.”

“The past only comes back when the present runs so smoothly that it is like the sliding surace of a deep river.  Then one sees through the surface to the depths.  The past sometimes presses so close that you can feel nothing else.”

—“Sketch of the Past,” begun in June 1939.

St IVES:  Virginia Woolf spent much of her childhood in St. Ives.  The London Literary Salon invites you to join us in St Ives to explore this lovely coastal town and have it serve as a prism through which we will explore Woolf’s perspectives on landscape, domesticity, historical inheritance and identity in her novel The Years. We have already completed four magical weekends with Woolf’s writings in the environment that inspired it– this is an incredible experience!

You will have the opportunity to  visit the iconic Tate St Ives gallery overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, built between 1988 and 1993 on the site of an old gasworks, and there will be an optional boat trip to Godrevy Lighthouse.

We may also look at Talland House, now privately owned, her childhood summer home.  For several months of the year the elegant house overlooking St Ives Bay would be the Stephens’ family home until 1895 when Virginia’s mother Julia Stephen died.  Although the complete family never returned to St Ives following their mother’s death, her children travellled back in 1905 following the death of their father in 1904.

Accommodation:  We are working with No4 St Ives which is just steps from Talland House and has an elevated position overloooking St Ives Bay.  It is a 5 minute walk from the beach and St Ives Town Centre.

Approximate cost: 

 Rooms at No4 St Ives range from £110-£140 per night– if the room is shared, the cost is halved; breakfast included. Some of us plan to stay Sunday night as well to be able to enjoy an extra day in this beautiful site. The entire cost is to be paid upfront. If for some reason you are unable to attend, we will work to find someone to replace you & reimburse you for the room but can not guarantee that is possible. The Salon cost may be applied to a later study. 

Train cost is approx.  £70  each way(cheaper if bought earlier) 

Salon cost is  £325: We will meet around 14 hours over the five days. The first meeting starts at 5:45 Wednesday evening; the last meeting is scheduled for 9:30-11:30 Sunday morning. On previous trips, many have stayed in St Ives through Sunday evening to have time for further exploration and reflection. Please discuss this option with Sue and Mike from No4 St Ives if you are interested. 

We will enjoy dinner out on Wednesday and Friday…other costs will include the optional boat trip & visit to the St Ives gallery. 

Getting there:  The train from London takes just over five hours, with one change at St Erth for the branch line to St Ives.

This event and other in-depth explorations of  Virginia Woolf and her works can be found on the website of the Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain

Part of the challenge when reading Woolf is to understand it is not the action that matters but the impression of thoughts; it is by attending to the pattern and signification of thoughts and impressions that we will uncover meaning, innovation. As one of the primary modernist writers, Woolf plays with language; testing its ability to truly reflect human experience by recording the life of the mind not just action. Her narrative form reflects one of the characteristics of Modernist writing in its shifting centre of narrative perspective reflecting a questioning of ultimate and moral authority that characterized the time with the dissolution of Imperialism and absolute values.

Writing from the edge of the violent shift from Victorian to Modernist era, the loss of an old world in the violent destruction of war and massive social change, Woolf’s ambivalence is demonstrated in her work. She struggles against the boundaries and structures of the Victorian era while holding a great longing and nostalgia for the noble traditions of the time.

If you have any questions about this study, please contact us.