Merve Emre, an acclaimed writer and expert on Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group, dives deep into the fascinating lives of sisters Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf. They discuss how family tragedies, like the death of their brother Toby, propelled their artistic paths and shaped the Bloomsbury Group. Emre illuminates their collaborative spirits, contrasting their artistic styles and influences. The conversation also touches on the sisters' break from Victorian norms, their shared struggles, and their lasting impact on the modernist movement and women's representation in art.
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Gordon Square: A Laboratory For Life
After their father's death the Stephen siblings moved to Gordon Square and declared experiments: distemper walls, coffee after dinner, and a life of artistic trial.
That newly found independence felt like a liberation and birthed Bloomsbury's communal life.
insights INSIGHT
Vanessa Led Modernism At Home
Vanessa moved earlier into modernism through painting and domestic experimentation, while Virginia followed later into literary modernism.
Vanessa's artistic and domestic radicalism often looked more avant-garde than Virginia's initially conventional novels.
insights INSIGHT
Flattened Space, Solid Objects
Vanessa's Studland Beach flattens perspective and emphasizes solidity over illusion, echoing problems Lily Briscoe faces in To the Lighthouse.
Her work resists classical perspective to question how representation captures experience of nature.
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I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast is the writer, critic, and author, Merve Emre.
Currently the Shapiro-Silverberg Professor of Creative Writing and Criticism at Wesleyan University – and the Director of the Shapiro Center for Creative Writing and Criticism – Emre is also the acclaimed and award-winning author of numerous books. These include Paraliterary: The Making of Bad Readers in Postwar America; The Personality Brokers (selected as one of the best books of 2018 by the New York Times, and others); The Ferrante Letters (winner of the 2021 PROSE award for literature). A holder of prizes in Literary Criticism, Emre is also a contributing writer to The New Yorker, where she has written extensively on art and literature, from Leonora Carrington to Susan Sontag.
But! The reason why we are speaking to Emre today is because she is also an ardent expert on Virginia Woolf and the wider Bloomsbury Group, having authored the stunningly beautiful – and informative – The Annotated Mrs. Dalloway, a book that brings alive Woolf’s life and words, and contextualises the radical and pioneering lives of those in the Bloomsbury Group in the most effervescent ways.
So today on the podcast, we are going to be discussing the sisters at the centre of this movement: Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf, women who were born into a Victorian society in London but who broke free of all traditions, who formed languages, both artistic and literary, that paved the way of modernism and modernist thinking in the UK and beyond. We are going to be delving into their life and work: looking at how they informed each other and visualised or put into words the world from their distinct and radical perspectives.
Merve's book: https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-annotated-mrs-dalloway/merve-emre/virginia-woolf/9781631496769
Charleston Trust: https://www.charleston.org.uk/?gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjw99e4BhDiARIsAISE7P857bJ_t36EZCN2JGBsJDUlVSxga42Bmq66SzIuCslkje6DXQsi94AaAmYZEALw_wcB
Mrs Dalloway's Party: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/oct/05/discovered-a-lost-possible-inspiration-for-virginia-woolfs-mrs-dalloway
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