Abstract
In the final months of her life, Virginia Woolf worked on two projects. One was the posthumously published novel Between the Acts (1941). The other was a literary-historical project, which she provisionally titled “Turning the Page” or “Reading at Random”, but which is now known by the dual titles “Anon” and “The Reader”. Although published in a 1979 eclectic edition, these documents have received little critical attention. This article proposes three novel approaches to this archive of documents. The first takes up the methodology proposed by Woolf’s original titles and reads a single folio of this project at random, paying close material attention to what is on both sides of Woolf’s typescript page. The second approach expands on the materialist slant of the first approach and offers an anatomy of this archive, while the third approach expands on my previous discussion of cataloging and classification, in order to sketch out a historiography of Woolf’s late archive.
Highlights
In the final months of her life, Virginia Woolf worked on two projects
While it is customary in Textual Cultures to cite editions by editor rather than author; here the many editions of Virginia Woolf’s work are distinguished by dates
References to Woolf are to Virginia Woolf unless otherwise noted
Summary
How should one read “The Reader”? Reading in Woolf’s late archive is a tall order. I discussed in the first part of this article bears a vision of flux and fluidity that is apposite to the form of the “Anon” and “The Reader” fragments more broadly, and which teaches us to read in this archive, which teaches us how one should read “The Reader” This archive is a constellation of documents which should not be read in isolation but rather viewed as “one common attempt” and perhaps even “sketches for one masterpiece” that remains stubbornly unrealized and unrealizable. This is buttressed by Woolf’s chosen substrate — a page from the typescript of Between the Acts that gestures outwards to the world. There is much left to discover in Woolf’s late archive, and such an edition would make this work a “common attempt”
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