“You should approach Joyce’s Ulysses as the illiterate Baptist preacher approaches the Old Testament: with faith.”

William Faulkner

First published on 2 February 1922 – James Joyce’s 40th birthday – UIysses was immediately controversial, described by one Irish critic as “The most infamously obscene book in ancient or modern literature”.

The ‘Slow Read’ is an opportunity to read and relish of one of the greatest novels of all time in the company of others. The ‘Slow’ approach has proved popular within the Salon as our approach is not driven by completion of the text within a defined timescale, rather we focus on full enjoyment of the material.

In a typical session we might discuss – inter alia – the immaculate conception (who does or does not have a navel?), language as a tool of colonialism (and how to subvert it), space between thought and speech, amor matris, cubist paintings, Thoth (Egyptian bird-headed god), changing understandings of Hamlet, Shakespeare’s sex life, the occult, cypher jugglers, Norse mythology, the dialectic within Stephen’s head, the Daedalus-Icarus myth . . . We are all here for the tangents!

Every time I run a study of Ulysses, there is SO much we do not get to consider: I know we may still not get to everything, but this will be an opportunity to go deeper and wider in this amazing work than ever before in Salon studies. Our run rate is about 5-8 pages a week, with frequent check- ins to see if, as a group, we want to slow down, speed up or just wallow.

The ‘Slow Read’ is served in tranches of two-hour sessions – usually between six and ten in number. As long as there is continued interest, I will keep offering this study until we reach the final notes on the text.

If you are interested in this study but have not previously read Ulysses, please contact us to discuss using the enquiry form below.

“Joining the Ulysses salon was one of the best things I have ever done. This was a book I had wanted to read for years but never got past the first section. I had no idea what the salon would be like and was very apprehensive about joining up. But Toby so skilfully guided us through it, her knowledge of the text seemingly inexhaustible, that with her warmth and generosity and sensitivity she got everyone involved and the satisfaction of participating in the salon and in getting an understanding of this marvellous work was immense.”

Ulysses Salon participant

I offer many resources for reading around, but the richness of our work comes from the contributions and independent research from participants. This study is particularly opportune given the abundance of new resources available thanks to the 2022 Ulysses centenary, including the offerings of the recently published Cambridge Centenary Ulysses, the brainchild of Catherine Flynn. 

Toby Brothers, Director, London Literary Salon

JOINING DETAILS:

• This is the seventh section of the ‘Slow Read’ Ulysses study led by Toby Brothers and occasional guest facilitators from within the group, 14 two-hour sessions, Tuesdays from 2.30-4.30 pm (UK), starting on 23 April and ending on 10 September 2024 (see full dates below).
• If you are interested in joining this study but have not participated in the first six sections please email the facilitator toby@litsalon.co.uk.
• The total cost for this section with all notes and resources is £375.00, we expect to read an average of 8 pages per week.
• Please have available these editions in preparation for our study:

  • Ulysses, by James Joyce, Annotated Students’ Edition, Penguin Modern Classics 2011, ISBN: 9780141197418. There are many editions of Ulysses — I find this edition is most coherent and the notes and introduction by Declan Kieberd very helpful; as we will constantly be referencing particular passages, having the same edition will be extremely useful.
  • The New Bloomsday Book: A Guide Through Ulysses, by Harry Blamires, ISBN-10: 0415138582

Russian writers are renowned the world over for their mastery of the short story form. In his 2021 book A Swim in a Pond in the Rain (in which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading and Life) Man Booker Prize winner George Saunders offers his own masterclass in storytelling and life. In his wondrous investigation, he presents seven classic Russian short stories alongside close readings of his own.

In our focused study of the reading and writing of short stories we will read stories by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy and Gogol. Alongside our own reading and responses we will consider George Saunders’ reactions, technical explanations and questions, which will inform our detailed discussions of these exceptional works.

On the value of close reading together, Saunders writes:

‘To study the way we read is to study the way the mind works: the way it evaluates a statement for truth, the way it behaves in relation to another mind (i.e., the writer’s) across space and time… The part of the mind that reads a story is also the part that reads the world; it can deceive us, but it can also be trained to accuracy; it can fall into disuse and make us more susceptible to lazy, violent, materialistic forces, but it can also be urged back to life, transforming us into more active, curious, alert readers of reality.’

George Saunders

Join us as we dive into this unique blend of fiction and non-fiction. As we read we will consider what makes a good story as well as what makes a good life.

JOINING DETAILS:

• Six-week study on Zoom led by Alison Cable
• Tuesdays, 5.00-7.00 pm (UK)
• 9, 16, 23, 30 April & 7, 14 May 2024
• £150 to include introductory notes and resources
• In addition to reading individual stories, we will refer extensively to George Saunders’ analysis in A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, ISBN 978-1526624246, which is a required text for this study

“Do you remember your childhood? I am always coming across these marvellous accounts by writers who declare that they remember ‘everything’. I certainly don’t. The dark stretches, the blanks, are much bigger than the bright glimpses. I seem to have spent most of my time like a plant in a cupboard.”

Katherine Mansfield

This LitSalon Special, a lecture by Dr Gerri Kimber, acknowledged as the world expert on Katherine Mansfield, serves as an introduction to our six week reading of Mansfield’s work: The Child Who Was Tired & other stories led by Karina Jakubowicz but can also be booked as a standalone event. Gerri Kimber has contributed to over 40 books on Mansfield’s life and work, was President of the Katherine Mansfield Society for ten years (2010-2020) and is currently working on a new biography of Mansfield for Reaktion Books.

Katherine Mansfield was a master of the modern short story. She crafted precise pictures of individual moments and scenes, resulting in deft narratives that are as devastating as they are beautiful. While the early 20th century novel has received a significant amount of critical attention, the short story has been somewhat overlooked. Nonetheless, as Mansfield’s biographer states, the short story ‘was often the most aesthetically experimental, formally innovative, emotionally powerful prose form of the early twentieth century.’ One critic has gone so far as to call it ‘the chosen form of the exile’, due to its daring and artistically marginal status.

Our six-week study following the introductory lecture will consider themes including childhood, motherhood and female relationships. We will ask how Mansfield responds to the vulnerability of children while also addressing the difficulty of motherhood. We may also consider the fate of reluctant parents and the role of older carers.

JOINING DETAILS:

• A LitSalon Special from world expert on Katherine Mansfield, Dr Gerri Kimber.
• Monday 13 May 2024, 6.00-8.00 pm BST on Zoom
• £30 (or £20 if booked as part of The Child Who Was Tired)

“Do you remember your childhood? I am always coming across these marvellous accounts by writers who declare that they remember ‘everything’. I certainly don’t. The dark stretches, the blanks, are much bigger than the bright glimpses. I seem to have spent most of my time like a plant in a cupboard.”

Katherine Mansfield

We will open this study with a LitSalon Special lecture by Dr Gerri Kimber which can also be booked as a standalone event.

Katherine Mansfield was a master of the modern short story. She crafted precise pictures of individual moments and scenes, resulting in deft narratives that are as devastating as they are beautiful. While the early 20th century novel has received a significant amount of critical attention, the short story has been somewhat overlooked. Nonetheless, as Mansfield’s biographer states, the short story ‘was often the most aesthetically experimental, formally innovative, emotionally powerful prose form of the early twentieth century.’ One critic has gone so far as to call it ‘the chosen form of the exile’, due to its daring and artistically marginal status.

This six-week study will consider themes including childhood, motherhood and female relationships. We will ask how Mansfield responds to the vulnerability of children while also addressing the difficulty of motherhood. We may also consider the fate of reluctant parents and the role of older carers.

These stories cover a broad geographical landscape, including Germany, Paris, London and New Zealand, and represent different stages in Mansfield’s career. This study is perfect for those who are new to Mansfield’s work as well as those who have already participated in our reading and discussion of her wonderful writing.

JOINING DETAILS:

• Seven meetings on Zoom facilitated by Karina Jakubowicz, including single introductory LitSalon Special lecture on Monday 13 May, 6.00-8.00 pm BST from the world expert on Katherine Mansfield, Dr Gerri Kimber.
• Mondays, 6.00-8.00 pm (UK), 13 May-24 June 2024, stories to be studied (in order, weeks 2-7):
  Week 2. Something Childish But Very Natural
  Week 3. The Child Who Was Tired
  Week 4. At Lehmanns
  Week 5. How Pearl Button Was Kidnapped
  Week 6. Je ne Parle Pas Francais
  Week 7. Life of Ma Parker
  Most are available free of charge from the Katherine Mansfield Society
• £200 for seven meetings and introductory notes (including LitSalon Special Lecture at discounted rate of £20)

“You should approach Joyce’s Ulysses as the illiterate Baptist preacher approaches the Old Testament:
with faith.”

—William Faulkner

First published on 2 February 1922 – James Joyce’s 40th birthday – UIysses was immediately controversial, described by one Irish critic as “The most infamously obscene book in ancient or modern literature”.

We offer an opportunity to read one of the greatest novels of all time in the company of others. Our work with this book will widen your perspective and deepen your experience of the power of language.

There is a strong argument for studying this huge and intimidating text – book list chart-topper of 100 greatest books of all time, critics’ darling, most lauded/least read, the book that many literary academics dedicate their lives to studying – but you will only know for yourself by diving in. I believe the best way to study it is with a group of hungry, curious readers who all contribute to evoking meaning, through their questions as well as their insights.

The good news: reading Ulysses is fun. And I don’t mean in a frustrating, overly-analytical see-how-much-you-know-way. The language is amazing – even when I don’t understand it. Perhaps, especially when I don’t understand it, because meaning sneaks in through more than my critical faculty. Meaning slides in through sound, through the lushness of the language, through the filmy and substantial images, and suddenly I find myself transported from a walk on a beach to a contemplation of the origins of man – thanks, James Joyce.

Any time spent studying Joyce leaves one a better reader – a broader thinker – even if all the references, repetitions, epiphanies and allusions are not immediately understood.

“Joining the Ulysses salon was one of the best things I have ever done. This was a book I had wanted to read for years but never got past the first section. I had no idea what the salon would be like and was very apprehensive about joining up. But Toby so skilfully guided us through it, her knowledge of the text seemingly inexhaustible, that with her warmth and generosity and sensitivity she got everyone involved and the satisfaction of participating in the salon and in getting an understanding of this marvellous work was immense.”

Ulysses Salon participant

SALON DETAILS

• We are offering this morning study from 11.00 am-1.00 pm (UK time), comprising 20 meetings starting on Tuesday 16 January and finishing on Tuesday 25 June 2024, with three Sunday meetings (dates and times to be confirmed) and NO meetings on 13 February, 2 April, 7 May and 4 June.
• The total cost for the 20 meeting study, with all notes and resources materials, is £500
• Please purchase these editions in preparation for our study:

  • Ulysses, by James Joyce, Annotated Students’ Edition, Penguin Modern Classics 2011, ISBN: 9780141197418. There are many editions of Ulysses — I find this edition is most coherent and the notes and introduction by Declan Kieberd very helpful; as we will constantly be referencing particular passages, having the same edition will be extremely useful.
  • The New Bloomsday Book: A Guide Through Ulysses, by Harry Blamires, ISBN-10: 0415138582

“You should approach Joyce’s Ulysses as the illiterate Baptist preacher approaches the Old Testament:
with faith.”

—William Faulkner

First published on 2 February 1922 – James Joyce’s 40th birthday – UIysses was immediately controversial, described by one Irish critic as “The most infamously obscene book in ancient or modern literature”.

We offer an opportunity to read one of the greatest novels of all time in the company of others. Our work with this book will widen your perspective and deepen your experience of the power of language.

There is a strong argument for studying this huge and intimidating text – book list chart-topper of 100 greatest books of all time, critics’ darling, most lauded/least read, the book that many literary academics dedicate their lives to studying – but you will only know for yourself by diving in. I believe the best way to study it is with a group of hungry, curious readers who all contribute to evoking meaning, through their questions as well as their insights.

The good news: reading Ulysses is fun. And I don’t mean in a frustrating, overly-analytical see-how-much-you-know-way. The language is amazing – even when I don’t understand it. Perhaps, especially when I don’t understand it, because meaning sneaks in through more than my critical faculty. Meaning slides in through sound, through the lushness of the language, through the filmy and substantial images, and suddenly I find myself transported from a walk on a beach to a contemplation of the origins of man – thanks, James Joyce.

Any time spent studying Joyce leaves one a better reader – a broader thinker – even if all the references, repetitions, epiphanies and allusions are not immediately understood.

“Joining the Ulysses salon was one of the best things I have ever done. This was a book I had wanted to read for years but never got past the first section. I had no idea what the salon would be like and was very apprehensive about joining up. But Toby so skilfully guided us through it, her knowledge of the text seemingly inexhaustible, that with her warmth and generosity and sensitivity she got everyone involved and the satisfaction of participating in the salon and in getting an understanding of this marvellous work was immense.”

Ulysses Salon participant

SALON DETAILS:

• We are offering this evening study from 5.45-7.45pm (UK time), comprising 20 meetings starting on Tuesday 16 January and finishing on Tuesday 25 June 2024, with three Sunday meetings (dates and times to be confirmed) and NO meetings on 13 February, 2 April, 7 May and 4 June.
• The total cost for the 20 meeting study, with all notes and resources materials, is £500
• Please purchase these editions in preparation for our study:

  • Ulysses, by James Joyce, Annotated Students’ Edition, Penguin Modern Classics 2011, ISBN: 9780141197418. There are many editions of Ulysses — I find this edition is most coherent and the notes and introduction by Declan Kieberd very helpful; as we will constantly be referencing particular passages, having the same edition will be extremely useful.
  • The New Bloomsday Book: A Guide Through Ulysses, by Harry Blamires, ISBN-10: 0415138582

“Every reader finds himself. The writer’s work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself.”

Marcel Proust

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.”

While another observes: “I feel really privileged to be gaining a better understanding of Proust’s amazing work and be able to enjoy the intricacies of his language and thoughts . . . the meetings allow plenty of time and space for exploration and our study is reinforced by emails and relevant essays in between meetings. I am very grateful to have this opportunity to join the study.”

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, idealised experience (dreams) and relationships with what our senses perceive that moulds our consciousness.

JOINING DETAILS:

• It may be possible for new members to join this group of readers. If you are interested please email litsalon@gmail.com using the subject heading: ‘Joining Proust Group’.
• Facilitated by Toby Brothers
• Mondays, 1.00-3.00 pm (UK time)
• Thirteen meeting study: 5 weeks from 3 June – 1 July 2024, resuming for 8 weeks from 9 September (beginning with a free ‘regathering’ session for all three Proust groups together from 6.00-8.00 pm) and then 16 September – 18 November 2024 at the normal times (N.B. no meetings on 30 September and 7 October)
• Recommended edition: Vintage Classics (Moncrieff/Kilmartin/Enright)  ISBN-13: 978-0099362418
• £390 for thirteen meetings, includes background materials, literary criticism, opening notes and discussion notes

“Every reader finds himself. The writer’s work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself.”

Marcel Proust

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.”

While another observes: “I feel really privileged to be gaining a better understanding of Proust’s amazing work and be able to enjoy the intricacies of his language and thoughts . . . the meetings allow plenty of time and space for exploration and our study is reinforced by emails and relevant essays in between meetings. I am very grateful to have this opportunity to join the study.”

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, idealised experience (dreams) and relationships with what our senses perceive that moulds our consciousness.

JOINING DETAILS:

• It may be possible for new members to join this group of readers. If you are interested please email litsalon@gmail.com using the subject heading: ‘Joining Proust Group’.
• Facilitated by Toby Brothers
• Mondays, 3.30-5.30 pm (UK time) 
• Thirteen meeting study: 5 weeks from 3 June – 1 July 2024, resuming for 8 weeks from 9 September (beginning with a free ‘regathering’ session for all three Proust groups together from 6.00-8.00 pm) and then 16 September – 18 November 2024 at the normal times (N.B. no meetings on 30 September and 7 October)
• Recommended edition: Vintage Classics (Moncrieff/Kilmartin/Enright)  ISBN-13: 978-0099362418
• £390 for thirteen meetings, includes background materials, literary criticism, opening notes and discussion notes

“Every reader finds himself. The writer’s work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself.”

Marcel Proust

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.”

While another observes: “I feel really privileged to be gaining a better understanding of Proust’s amazing work and be able to enjoy the intricacies of his language and thoughts . . . the meetings allow plenty of time and space for exploration and our study is reinforced by emails and relevant essays in between meetings. I am very grateful to have this opportunity to join the study.”

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, idealised experience (dreams) and relationships with what our senses perceive that moulds our consciousness.

JOINING DETAILS:

• It may be possible for new members to join this group of readers. If you are interested please email litsalon@gmail.com using the subject heading: ‘Joining Proust Group’.
• Facilitated by Toby Brothers and Ralph Kleinman
• Mondays, 6.00-8.00 pm (UK time) 
• Thirteen meeting study: 5 weeks from 3 June – 1 July 2024, resuming for 8 weeks from 9 September (beginning with a free ‘regathering’ session for all three Proust groups together from 6.00-8.00 pm) and then 16 September – 18 November 2024 at the normal times (N.B. no meetings on 30 September and 7 October)
• Recommended edition: Vintage Classics (Moncrieff/Kilmartin/Enright)  ISBN-13: 978-0099362418
• £390 for thirteen meetings, includes background materials, literary criticism, opening notes and discussion notes

As co-facilitators with different cultural backgrounds and experiences, we both consider this to be one of the greatest and most influential works of American literature. The unnamed protagonist’s search for identity in a world that will not see him gives us as readers an opportunity to try to understand the psychological devastation of racism in its subtle as well as its violent forms, and to consider how each of us participates in the fate of all humanity. Ellison weaves in themes and images from Virgil, Dante, Emerson, and TS Eliot while also using the structure and transcendence of jazz to create a work that haunts and stirs to the core of our experience.

Why read this book? Toby explains in more detail here:

Includes extracts from the recording of the spiritual ‘No More Auction Block‘ performed by Martha Redbone, accompanied by Aaron Whitby on piano, in the BAM Howard Gilman Opera House on 21 March 2017. Based on the work of Howard Zinn (1922–2010), directed by Anthony Arnove In association with Voices of a People’s History of the United States (peopleshistory.us), co-presented by Brooklyn Academy of Music and the Onassis Cultural Center New York Part of Onassis Programs at BAM. View the whole performance here.

An extract from “Man Underground”, Saul Bellow’s review of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, published in Commentary (June 1952):

“It is commonly felt that there is no strength to match the strength of those powers which attack and cripple modern mankind. And this feeling is, for the reader of modern fiction, all too often confirmed when he approaches a new book. He is prepared, skeptically, to find what he has found before, namely, that family and class, university, fashion, the giants of publicity and manufacture, have had a larger share in the creation of someone called a writer than truth or imagination that Bendix and Studebaker and the nylon division of Du Pont, and the University of Chicago, or Columbia or Harvard or Kenyon College, have once more proved mightier than the single soul of an individual; to find that one more lightly manned position has been taken. But what a great thing it is when a brilliant individual victory occurs, like Mr. Ellison’s, proving that a truly heroic quality can exist among our contemporaries. People too thoroughly determined and our institutions by their size and force too thoroughly determine can’t approach this quality. That can only be done by those who resist the heavy influences and make their own synthesis out of the vast mass of phenomena, the seething, swarming body of appearances, facts, and details. From this harassment and threatened dissolution by details, a writer tries to rescue what is important. Even when he is most bitter, he makes by his tone a declaration of values and he says, in effect: There is something nevertheless that a man may hope to be. This tone, in the best pages of Invisible Man, those pages, for instance, in which an incestuous Negro farmer tells his tale to a white New England philanthropist, comes through very powerfully; it is tragi-comic, poetic, the tone of the very strongest sort of creative intelligence. In a time of specialized intelligences, modern imaginative writers make the effort to maintain themselves as unspecialists, and their quest is for a true middle-of-consciousness for everyone. What language is it that we can all speak, and what is it that we can all recognize, burn at, weep over, what is the stature we can without exaggeration claim for ourselves; what is the main address of consciousness?

“I was keenly aware, as I read this book, of a very significant kind of independence in the writing. For there is a way for Negro novelists to go at their problems, just as there are Jewish or Italian ways. Mr. Ellison has not adopted a minority tone. If he had done so, he would have failed to establish a true middle-of-consciousness for everyone.”

Saul Bellow

JOINING DETAILS:

• Virtual study (via Zoom) facilitated by Toby Brothers and Deborah Lawunmi
• Thursdays, 5.00 – 7.00 pm (UK time)
• Seven meetings starting 19 September (N.B. no meeting on 3 October)
• Recommended edition: Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, Penguin Modern Classics (August 2001) ISBN-13: 978-0141184425
• £245 for seven-meeting study with two facilitators

It is now a Salon tradition to spend some time each year in St Ives reading Virginia Woolf’s work and enjoying a place she loved and in which she spent significant parts of her childhood. In 2024 we will again offer two Woolf studies in St Ives: To the Lighthouse (29 September to 2 October) and Jacob’s Room (4 to 7 October).

The Cornish coastal town of St Ives serves as a prism through which we will explore Woolf’s perspectives on landscape, domesticity and identity in To the Lighthouse. We have already completed five magical journeys through this book in the environment that inspired it – this is an incredible experience!

During our visit 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. If weather allows, there will be an optional boat trip to Godrevy Lighthouse and we also hope to look at Talland House, Woolf’s childhood summer home (now privately owned). 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 travelled back in 1905 following the death of their father in 1904.

“What is the meaning of life? That was all – a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years, the great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead, there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark; here was one.”

Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

“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, half 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 surface 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.”

Virginia Woolf, “Sketch of the Past”, begun in June 1939

Feedback from participants in previous St Ives studies:

“The studio where the discussion took place is a beautiful, extraordinary place, the participants were imbued with the light and landscape, creating a friendly and committed atmosphere. The two facilitators were wonderful . . .”

“The collaboration between participants and facilitators was rich indeed, and I wonder how it was accomplished that everyone in the group was so insightful and intelligent and I might even say soul-searching . . . I also think it was just a superb group of people.”

Read Salonista Leah Jewett’s account of a Salon Study in St Ives here.

SALON DETAILS:

• Please use the form below to secure your place with an initial registration deposit of £20.00. Once you have registered we will then send you details for payment of the balance owing (£500) to complete your booking (N.B. bank details may be different from those you have used on previous occasions).
• Facilitated by Toby Brothers
• Our meetings will take place in the fabulous Porthmeor Studios
• 29 September to 2 October 2024
• Recommended edition: To the Lighthouse, by Virginia Woolf, with introduction by Hermione Lee, Penguin Classics, ISBN: 9780241371954
• Cost £520, includes notes and critical resources (N.B. travel, food and accommodation are NOT included and participants are responsible for arranging their own travel, accommodation and insurance).
• Recommended places to stay include No 4 St Ives, 3 Porthminster Terrace, Blue Sky, The Olive Branch, Rivendell and the Harbour View Hotel, but PLEASE check web details and review sites before booking to make sure they meet your needs.

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More on the study:   

As one of the primary modernist works, To the Lighthouse demonstrates Woolf at play with language; testing the ability of language to truly reflect human experience by recording the life of the mind not just action. One of the characteristics of modernist writing is a shifting centre of narrative perspective, reflecting a questioning of ultimate and moral authority at a time experiencing the dissolution of Imperialism and absolute values.

Writing from the edge of the violent shift from the Victorian to the Modernist era, Woolf’s ambivalence is demonstrated in her work. She struggles against the boundaries and structures of the Victorian age while holding a great longing and nostalgia for the noble traditions of the time. Her model, Mrs. Ramsey, (queen-like) holds her daughters to the awe of the noble men that surround her and allows them to “sport with infidel ideas…of a life different…in Paris perhaps; …for there was in all their minds a mute questioning of deference and chivalry…though to them all there was something in this of the essence of beauty, which called out the manliness in their girlish hearts…” (To the Lighthouse, pages 10-11).

This quote also demonstrates the Modernist reworking of absolute truth…it is not a question of either this (a male-dominated world) or that (a world of female emancipation): the apparently rigid gender roles borrow from each other — “manliness in their girlish hearts”, “Indeed, she had the whole of the other sex under her protection…” — there is another imperialism here, an intimate imperialism of female over male. The truth in this work is not rigid (although Mr. R would like it to be) but can be permeated, blended — seen from another view.

Re-reading Hermione Lee’s biography of Virginia Woolf (a review of which is quoted below) has me turning over the search one makes for lost childhood, often for a place that might hold a time but, of course, never does. For Woolf, that search included a grappling with the impact and idealisation of the parent figures — especially the lost mother, whose influence and contradictions continue to wrap around the child inside. Virginia Woolf and a few of her siblings returned to the house in St Ives (that we are lucky enough to visit) years after her mother’s death and the sale of the house. They were like ghosts, sneaking around the gardens, peering in the windows: as though searching for their lost selves and a past that can never be recaptured. That visit — and the need to lay to rest her grief-enwrapped memories of her mother — was the catalyst for To the Lighthouse.

For those who want to go further, here is an excerpt from a review of Hermione Lee’s Virginia Woolf which is a great read:

“Ms. Lee documents the evolving perception of her subject from ”the delicate lady authoress of a few experimental novels and sketches, some essays and a ‘writer’s’ diary, to one of the most professional, perfectionist, energetic, courageous and committed writers in the language.” She does this without recourse to the politicised agendas of the academy or special pleading (all of Woolf’s flaws are on display here); this account sets itself above the fray, the better to home in on the glittery and elusive creature at its centre — the prize catch in what one critic has described as the Bloomsbury pond. From its very first page, Ms. Lee’s book is informed by current thinking on how to approach the writing of someone’s life: “There is no such thing as an objective biography, particularly not in this case. Positions have been taken, myths have been made.” But it is also infused with a very personal passion for her subject, which enables the author to cut crisply through the labyrinth of theories that have sprung up…”

– Daphne Merkin, This Loose, Drifting Material of Life

Although To the Lighthouse is not autobiographical, many critics and readers have found close parallels between Woolf’s early life and the world presented in the book. As we go into the read, it may help you to have a sense of Virginia Woolf and her precarious position as a visionary on the edge of a violently changing world. I will have more biographical notes for you when we start.

It is now a Salon tradition to spend some time each year in St Ives reading Virginia Woolf’s work and enjoying a place she loved and in which she spent significant parts of her childhood. In 2024 we will again offer two Woolf studies in St Ives: To the Lighthouse (29 September to 2 October) and Jacob’s Room (4 to 7 October).

As one of the key members of the celebrated Bloomsbury Group, Woolf is often seen as a London writer, but the Cornish coastal town of St Ives – where she spent many childhood summers – serves as a prism through which we can explore her perspectives on landscape, domesticity and identity.

In 1922, Jacob’s Room, Virginia Woolf’s third novel, was the first book to be published by the Woolfs’ own imprint, the Hogarth Press. This book is the linchpin between the more traditional novel form and Woolf’s leap forward into the modernist mode. She lets go of event and character development to make room for the intensity of living — that incredible burning that may look from one angle like inconsequence, but from another angle the very heart of being. 

This was also the form she chose to address the unimaginable moment of war — ripping into the heat of life and leaving only gaping space where a beloved son had been. Her decision not to narrate the war and the resultant deaths directly, but to use her art to demonstrate the gashed web of connection that is left behind, was controversial for her contemporary audience. How do we narrate the unliveable events that circumscribe our identity in the historical moment? This is in part what Woolf responds to – not philosophically, but aesthetically. 

Woolf is also engaging the question she will pursue through all of her literature: how do we know each other? How do the various planes of personality, the glimpses of each other’s interior, add up to an authentic being?

“. . . having this afternoon arrived at some idea of a new form for a new novel. Suppose one thing should open out of another . . . only not for 10 pages but 200 or so–doesn’t that give the looseness and lightness I want; doesn’t that get closer and yet keep form and speed, and enclose everything, everything? My doubt is how far it will enclose the human heart–Am I sufficiently mistress of my dialogue to net it there? For I figure that the approach will be entirely different this time: no scaffolding; scarcely a brick to be seen; all crepuscular, but the heart, the passion, humour, everything as bright as fire in the mist. Then I’ll find room for so much—a gaiety–an inconsequence – a light spirited stepping at my sweet will. Whether I’m sufficiently mistress of things – that’s the doubt; but conceive ‘Mark on the Wall ‘, ‘Kew Gardens’ and Unwritten Novel taking hands and dancing in unity. What the unity shall be I have yet to discover; the theme is a blank to me . . .”

Virginia Woolf, A Writer’s Diary, 26 January 1920

During our visit 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. If weather allows, there will be an optional boat trip to Godrevy Lighthouse and we also hope to look at Talland House, Woolf’s childhood summer home (now privately owned). 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 travelled back in 1905 following the death of their father in 1904.

“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, half 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 surface 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.”

Virginia Woolf, “Sketch of the Past”, begun in June 1939

Feedback from participants in previous St Ives studies:

“The studio where the discussion took place is a beautiful, extraordinary place, the participants were imbued with the light and landscape, creating a friendly and committed atmosphere. The two facilitators were wonderful . . .”

“The collaboration between participants and facilitators was rich indeed, and I wonder how it was accomplished that everyone in the group was so insightful and intelligent and I might even say soul-searching . . . I also think it was just a superb group of people.”

Read Salonista Leah Jewett’s account of a Salon Study in St Ives here.

SALON DETAILS:

• Please use the form below to secure your place with an initial registration deposit of £20.00. Once you have registered we will then send you details for payment of the balance owing (£540.00) to complete your booking by bank transfer.
• Facilitated by Toby Brothers and Sarah Snoxall
• Our meetings will take place in the fabulous Porthmeor Studios
• 4 to 7 October 2024
• Recommended edition: Jacob’s Room by Virginia Woolf, Vintage Classics, ISBN-13: ‎ 978-1784877958
• Cost £560, includes notes and critical resources (N.B. travel, food and accommodation are NOT included and participants are responsible for arranging their own travel, accommodation and insurance).
• Recommended places to stay include No 4 St Ives, 3 Porthminster Terrace, Blue Sky, The Olive Branch, Rivendell and the Harbour View Hotel, but PLEASE check web details and review sites before booking to make sure they meet your needs.