Summer Courses 2025
Further information about the talks in our Summer Courses
Virginia Woolf: Writing Life, July 2025
Live online summer course 10-14 July 2025
Summer course in Cambridge 20-25 July 2025
Claire Davison on Leslie Stephen, Life-Writer, Life Force
According to Virginia Woolf, her father Leslie Stephen had a ‘strong’, ‘healthy out of door, moor striding mind’. She underlines his ‘simplicity’, ‘integrity’ and ‘eccentricity’, his intellectual generosity, and his harshly critical yet creative and even playful personality, and most memorably sums him up as ‘after all these years, unforgettable’. Whether we read Woolf’s accounts of Stephen, tributes from his contemporaries or in-depth biographical studies, it is hard not to be impressed and intrigued by this perplexing, intense and influential man who was both a free-thinking, pioneering spirit and a most eminent Victorian. A driving force at home and in the workplace, Stephen was also a prolific biographer and one of the founding editors of the Dictionary of National Biography – a monument of erudition which remains a vital source of knowledge today.
After a brief overview of Stephen’s life and career, this talk focuses on Stephen’s impressive expeditions as an Alpinist and the accounts he later made of them. It also looks at how these exploits were evoked by writers seeking to tell his life story.
Optional further reading
No prior reading is necessary, but you might wish to read some of these sources before or after the talk.
• Thomas Hardy, ‘The Schreckhorn, With Thoughts of Leslie Stephen’ (1897).
• Alex Siskin, ‘Leslie Stephen, Mountaineer’, Paris Review (26 Nov. 2012).
• Leslie Stephen, ‘Biography,’ The National Review (October 1893).
• Leslie Stephen, The Playground of Europe, London: Duckworth, 1871. Chapter on Mont Blanc as PDF.
• Victorian Web on Leslie Stephen.
• Virginia Woolf, ‘Impressions of Leslie Stephen’ (1906) in The Essays of Virginia Woolf, vol. 1, ed. Andrew McNeillie, vol. 1, pp. 127-30.
• Virginia Woolf, ‘Leslie Stephen, the Philosopher at Home: A Daughter’s Memories’ (1932), in The Essays of Virginia Woolf, vol. 5, ed. Stuart N. Clarke, pp. 585-93; also in Woolf, Selected Essays, ed. David Bradshaw, Oxford World’s Classics, 2008.
• Virginia Woolf, ‘A Sketch of the Past’ in Moments of Being, 2nd ed, ed. Jeanne Schulkind, New York: Harcourt, 1985.
Marielle O’Neill on Leonard Woolf: Reflections on a Political Life
Born in London in 1880, Leonard Woolf was a writer, editor and journalist, active in the Labour Party and Fabian Society, with a strong commitment to peace and social justice. In later life, he wrote a 5-volume Autobiography, published 1960-69. This work is a fascinating reflection upon political thinking and political activism in the early twentieth century.
Marielle will explore Leonard Woolf’s descriptions in the Autobiography of his political career and the influential people he met. She will discuss how he developed his anti-imperialist ideas in his life and writing. And she will consider how Leonard Woolf uses his life writings to weigh up his political ideals against the realities of political contingency and compromise.
No pre-reading is necessary for this talk, but you may want to read some of Leonard Woolf’s Autobiography, especially on the years 1919 to 1939. This is currently out of print, but it is available on Internet Archive (free, but login required).
Ann Kennedy Smith on Living Spaciously: Jane Ellen Harrison (1850–1928)
‘I like to live spaciously, but rather plainly, in large halls with great spaces and quiet libraries.’ (Jane Harrison, 1925)
So wrote the archaeologist and classical scholar Jane Ellen Harrison in her Cambridge memoir, Reminiscences of a Student’s Life, published by Virginia and Leonard Woolf’s Hogarth Press in 1925. Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, published three years later, acknowledges Harrison’s lifelong influence. Woolf describes how, on a visit to Newnham College, she glimpses a vision of a figure at twilight, ‘formidable yet humble, with her great forehead’ striding across the terrace. ‘Could it be the famous scholar,’ Woolf wonders in awe, ‘could it be J–– H–– herself?’
Once known as ‘the cleverest woman in England’, Jane Harrison began her studies in Classics at Newnham College in 1874, then studied Greek art and archaeology at the British Museum. She became a leading public intellectual, giving lectures in packed halls, and was awarded two honorary doctorates. In 1898 she returned to Newnham as its first Research Fellow and began publishing her books. This talk focuses on her time as a student, then a scholar at Newnham, and the freedom ‘to live spaciously’ that the college gave her throughout her life.
Optional further reading
No prior reading is necessary, but you might wish to read some of these sources before or after the talk.
• Jane Ellen Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (Cambridge University Press 1903; revised 1908 and 1922, available via Internet Archive.)
• Jane Ellen Harrison, Reminiscences of a Student’s Life (Hogarth Press, 1925; rpt McNally Editions, 2024)
• Mary Beard, The invention of Jane Harrison (Harvard UP, 2000)
• Annabel Robinson, The Life and Work of Jane Ellen Harrison (OUP, 2002; also available via Internet Archive)
• Francesca Wade, Square Haunting: Five Women, Freedom and London Between the Wars (Faber, 2021); includes a section on Jane Harrison’s life after leaving Newnham.
• Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own (1929)
