Previously unknown poems show Woolf as a fun aunt. She’s pictured above in 1902.
George C. Beresford/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
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George C. Beresford/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Some breaking news in the world of 20th century modernist literature: Virginia Woolf, the famed novelist and essayist, was also a poet. That’s according to new documents uncovered by Sophie Oliver, a lecturer of modernism at the University of Liverpool.
Oliver found them at the Harry Ransom Center, an archive library at the University of Texas at Austin. She was there doing research on Gertrude Stein, another literary figure. But she decided to beat the Texas heat by poking around the Woolf files. While she was looking through a folder of letters Woolf wrote to her niece, Angelica, she found two folded pieces of paper. The material looked different from the paper the letters were on. And they had pencil writing on them. “It’s obviously these two quickly drafted poems,” said Oliver. “And I immediately think ‘well, that’s odd.’ Because Virginia Woolf isn’t a poet.”
After finding them, Oliver scoured existing Woolf research, and asked Woolf experts, and couldn’t find any other mention of these poems. Oliver says she thinks they were missed by other researchers “because people are not necessarily looking in a folder of letters to her niece, all of which have been published — or the interesting ones, at least.”
Virginia Woolf Collection, Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin. By permission of the Society of Authors as literary representative of the Estate of Virginia Woolf.
Oliver estimates the date of the poems as sometime after March 1927. And they reveal a different shade of Woolf. One poem, titled “Hiccoughs” is dedicated to her nephew, Quentin Stephen Claudian. It’s a jokey, punny riff, playing with sounds and language. “Poor Quentin / went in / to a cough? Or should we call it a cup? / Hiccough? Hiccup?”
The other, titled “Angelica,” is a touch more substantive.
The name was lazy & lovely
But the name was not the whole of her,
There was the body & the soul of her.
Angelica Angelica.
The Angel name
But oh the shame
Drink she took to,
Dadie too,
Fellow Dadie,
Oh how shady
To sport with Dadie,
And the tangled yellow hair!
The Dadie referred to in the poem is a nickname for a friend of Woolf’s – the poet and Shakespeare scholar George Rylance. According to Oliver, Dadie was around often enough that Woolf could do that thing aunts often love to do — razz their niece for having a crush. “These are signs of Woolf’s ebullience,” said Oliver. “That she was kind of silly and liked to indulge in play and nonsense with these children as a way of connecting with them.”
Virginia Woolf Collection, Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin. By permission of the Society of Authors as literary representative of the Estate of Virginia Woolf.
Woolf didn’t have any children of her own. This was a “sore point” for her, said Oliver. But these poems reveal something poignant about the relationship she had with the family she did have.
As for Oliver, this detective work — finding the letters, deciphering Woolf’s handwriting, estimating their date, figuring out who Dadie was — was a detour from her original work. But she’s not mad about it. “This kind of research is very addictive and it’s one of the joys of archival research,” she said.