Virginia Woolf’s Common Readers in Paris

Abstract

In this article, we analyze historical, biographical, geolocational, and book distribution data from the Shakespeare and Company Project to understand Virginia Woolf’s readership in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s. The lending library cards from Sylvia Beach’s archive reveal the names of Woolf’s readers, and include important information about their reading habits and professional lives. The article uses a mixed-methods approach, combining historical and archival research on individual readers with visualizations of demographic, literary, and geographical data. Datasets from the Shakespeare and Company Project provide unique access to the networks of distribution, circulation, and readership that defined Woolf’s literary presence in Paris. These networks, in turn, resonate with Woolf’s own deep interest in her various readerships and publics.