Today’s contribution to the 1937 Club is something I used to often do with the club years, where relevant – find out what Virginia Woolf was writing in her diary that year. I flicked through the entries, and I loved this, from 14 March 1937, about The Years. Woolf’s penultimate novel was published in early 1937, and here she is reflecting on praise for it:
I am in such a twitter owing to two columns in the Observer praising The Years that I can’t, as I foretold, go on with Three Guineas. Why I even sat back just now and thought with pleasure of people reading that review. And when I think of the agony I went through in this room, just over a year ago … when it dawned on me that the whole of three years’ work was a complete failure: and then when I think of the mornings here when I used to stumble out and cut up those proofs and write three lines and then go back and lie on my bed—the worst summer in my life, but at the same time the most illuminating—it’s no wonder my hand trembles. What most pleases me though is the obvious chance now since de Selincourt sees it, that my intention in The Years may be not so entirely muted and obscured as I feared. The T.L.S. spoke as if it were merely the death song of the middle classes: a series of exquisite impressions: but he sees that it is a creative, a constructive book. Not that I’ve yet altogether read him: but he has pounced on some of the key sentences. And this means that it will be debated; and this means that Three Guineas will strike very sharp and clear on a hot iron: so that my immensely careful planning won’t be baulked by time of life etc. as I had made certain. Making certain however was an enormous discovery for me, though.
It’s such a human response, to be pleased with praise and understanding from someone whose opinion she respects! Her remarks make me feel happy for her – a big sigh of relief!
Writing is such a difficult occupation, when an enormous effort (3 years) is only as good as other people think it is.
Thanks for this; it was all the more interesting because I read The Years last month.
Loved the insight into her thinking. The Hours : out of her hands into the ears of 2024.
Coincidentally, except that it fits the brief for the 1937 Club, I read “The Years” and posted my review this afternoon. Your quote from her diary is exactly why I felt bad about not much liking the book. I suppose it’s an example of why a great deal of editing and re-writing can sort of blind one into not being able to see that things don’t *flow* as well as they should, that one’s intentions are now unclear, &c. &c. &c.
This is wonderful! Thanks for posting Simon.
That’s a lovely entry! Thanks, Simon!
I loved reading her diaries and novels in unison a few years ago, she’s much more vulnerable than her books (or reputation) seem to imply, I think.