CFP: [20th] Virginia Woolf

full name / name of organization: 
Jeanne Dubino
contact email: 

Virginia Woolf and the Literary Marketplace

You are invited to contribute to an edited volume entitled “Virginia
Woolf in the Literary Marketplace.” For the first twenty years of her
career, Woolf was primarily a literary journalist who became very
familiar with the world of the literary marketplace. Even after she
became renowned for her fiction, she continued to engage with the
market in its manifold facets: marketing, production, pricing,
copyright issues, technology, readership, reviews, and so on. I am
looking for essays that deal with one or more of these subjects.

This collection will complement two categories of studies related to
this topic: those that survey modernism and the marketplace, and
include Woolf as part of that survey; and those that locate Woolf in a
specific historical context with some discussion of her relationship
to the marketplace. “Virginia Woolf in the Literary Marketplace” will
combine the second part of each of these studies and make this
combination the primary focus. That is, it will consider Woolf in the
context of the marketplace. It will thus offer new essays that deepen
our understanding of and highlight the multiple ways Woolf engaged
with the specific realities of the marketplace, and examine how the
marketplace influenced her. I envision a two-part volume, with the
first half focusing on Woolf’s career as a literary journalist, and
the second on her role as a novelist. The two do, of course,
overlap. Some of the possible topics could address that overlap;
others could include, but are not limited to, Woolf and:

--her editors (Bruce Richmond, Mrs. Arthur Lyttelton, Dorothy Todd,
and many more)
--the publications for which she wrote (“Guardian,” “Times Literary
Supplement,” “Guardian,” “Cornhill
Magazine,” “Athenaeum,” “Criterion,” “New Statesman,” “Vogue,” and
many more)
--the reading publics (“lowbrow” through “highbrow”)
--changes in the literary marketplace over the course of Woolf’s career
--editorial practices
--the Hogarth Press
--finance and marketing
--costs and formats
--manufacturing and selling
--the culture industry
--technological developments
--the law, especially censorship
--her relationship with other writers in the marketplace
--marketing Woolf after her death
--Leonard as Woolf’s “agent”: how he managed her career and reputation

You are welcome to call or email me with any questions, comments, or
suggestions (again, the above list is not exhaustive!). Please send
your completed essays--about 6000-8000 words (20-25 pages), MLA format-
-to me by March 31, 2008. My contact information is Jeanne Dubino,
English, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC 28608,
dubinoja_at_appstate.edu, 828-262-3098, fax: 828-262-2133.

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Received on Tue Aug 28 2007 - 08:23:16 EDT