A previously unknown work by Virginia Woolf is set to be released next month after a complete manuscript was uncovered in a historic country house. Titled The Life of Violet, the volume gathers three humorous tales centered on a towering giantess and offers readers an unexpected glimpse of Woolf’s early creativity. The book will be published on 7 October, shedding fresh light on one of the 20th century’s most important feminist voices.
Best known for her innovative novels and influential feminist essays, Woolf died in 1941. Her writing later inspired generations of feminist thinkers through its sharp critique of restrictive upper-class English society. The emergence of this lively and comic work is likely to intrigue scholars, particularly as it challenges the common image of Woolf as perpetually sombre and preoccupied with darkness.
Completed eight years before her first published novel, The Voyage Out, The Life of Violet portrays its heroine conquering sea monsters and rigid social conventions with powers “as marvellous as her height.” Professor Seshagiri of the University of Tennessee believes the character was inspired by Woolf’s close friend and mentor, Violet Mary Dickinson, famed for her imposing 6ft 2in stature.
The manuscript was discovered among the papers of Dickinson at Longleat, once home to the 7th Marquess of Bath, whose great-aunts were longtime friends of Woolf. Previously, only a draft housed at the New York Public Library was known, and it had been dismissed as an abandoned fragment. The newly found typescript confirms Woolf completed the work in 1907, though why she chose not to publish it remains a mystery.
