Leonard Woolf

Fonds number:
66
Title: Leonard Woolf
Dates of Material:
1935
1958
19641968
Extent:
3 cm of textual records
Biographical sketch

Leonard Woolf was a writer, editor and book publisher who was also active politically. He was born in London in 1880, the third of ten children of Solomon Rees Sydney and Marie Woolf. After earning a Cambridge B.A. (1902) he served in the civil service in Ceylon, before returning to England and marrying Virginia Stephen in 1912. From that point on the Bloomsbury Group, which traced its roots to Woolf’s days at Cambridge, and included Clive Bell, John Maynard Keynes and Lytton Strachey, began to emerge as an artistic and intellectual force. In 1913 Woolf published his first novel, The Village and the Jungle.

During World War I Woolf was a pacifist who became heavily involved in political and social issues; an activity that would carry on after the War. To provide a hobby for Virginia—who was suffering from manic depression—Woolf launched the Hogarth Press in 1917. After initially publishing small books by friends such as T.S. Eliot, E.M. Forster and Katherine Mansfield, it evolved into a prestigious publishing house; its titles included Virginia Woolf’s Jacob’s Room and Eliot’s The Waste Land. Woolf continued to work as the Hogarth director after Virginia’s suicide in 1941, until his death in 1969.

Scope and content

Fonds consists of correspondence from Woolf to Ellen Alderm, 1935, and Mrs. Easdale, 1935, 1964–1968, primarily regarding submissions to Hogarth Press; and a letter from Woolf to Miss Kirkpatrick.

NOTE(S)
Source of supplied title

Title based on contents of the fonds.

Immediate source of acquisition

Purchased from Howard Woolmer in 1990.

Access restrictions

No restrictions on access.

Finding aids

Box/file list available

Access points

Provenance access points: Woolf, Leonard, 1880–1969

Related exhibitions at Victoria University Library

In 1997 the library mounted “Bloomsbury: Books, art and design,” an exhibition based on its Virginia Woolf collection.

In 2007 the exhibition Virginia & Co. was mounted to celebrate the 125th birthday of Virginia Woolf