Goodbye Virginia

VWbyVB
Originally uploaded by sarah4855.

A new book has just been published entitled Afterwords:Letters on the Death of Virginia Woolf. It contains letters of condolence written to Leonard Woolf and Virgina's sister, Vanessa Bell, after Woolf's suicide in 1941. There are notes from people such as T.S. Eliot, E.M. Forster, and H.G. Wells, though I find the line written by her lover, Vita Sackville-West, to be the most touching: "a loss that can never diminish."

What I'm also pleased to post, is that this book is a project that originated at my university. It is edited by Sybil Oldfield, a Research Reader in English at the University of Sussex, where there is a large collection of Woolf's manuscripts and letters.

Here is the university's press release about the book - and the above portrait of Woolf is one of my favourites from the National Portrait Gallery, painted by her sister. A print of the portrait sits above my desk.