Book contents
- Bloomsbury, Beasts and British Modernist Literature
- Frontispiece
- Bloomsbury, Beasts and British Modernist Literature
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Leonard Woolf in the Jungle
- Chapter 2 David Garnett and Zoo Fictions
- Chapter 3 Virginia Woolf and Animal Biography
- Chapter 4 E. M. Forster’s Nonhuman Bundle
- Chapter 5 David Garnett, Flight and Earthly Creatures
- Coda
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 3 - Virginia Woolf and Animal Biography
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 December 2022
- Bloomsbury, Beasts and British Modernist Literature
- Frontispiece
- Bloomsbury, Beasts and British Modernist Literature
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Leonard Woolf in the Jungle
- Chapter 2 David Garnett and Zoo Fictions
- Chapter 3 Virginia Woolf and Animal Biography
- Chapter 4 E. M. Forster’s Nonhuman Bundle
- Chapter 5 David Garnett, Flight and Earthly Creatures
- Coda
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
This chapter considers Virginia Woolf’s experiments in animal biography. It opens by presenting Woolf’s unpublished draft ‘Authorities’ note to Flush: A Biography (1933) as evidence of her knowing engagement with anthropomorphism and anthropocentrism, before going on to read that text alongside her first experiment in the genre, Orlando: A Biography (1928). In doing so, the chapter draws on correspondence between Woolf and Vita Sackville-West, as well as the latter’s rarely discussed book Faces: Profiles of Dogs (1961), to illustrate how canine companions take centre stage in their amorous discourse. It then turns to another overlooked intertext, Thomas Browne’s 1646 Pseudodoxia Epidemica, also known as Vulgar Errors, to show Woolf’s queering of his early modern belief that hares can change sex from female to male. Finally, the chapter places Flush in dialogue with a lesser-known dog biography the Woolfs considered for publication at the Hogarth Press (and which Woolf cleverly alludes to in her canine biography): Inordinate (?) Affection: A Story for Dog Lovers (1936) by composer, memoirist and suffragette Ethel Smyth.
Keywords
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Bloomsbury, Beasts and British Modernist Literature , pp. 79 - 112Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022