The March of Headlines

Virginia Woolf's “curious props”—including her diary and others’ diaries—ably support her across 1931. She shows, in fact, such sure life command that she mocks the outer political scene in September of 1931. Meanwhile, she continues to add newspaper headlines to her 1930–1931 diary, and her inner wars persist. This chapter shows how Woolf used her 1930–1931 diary as a practice field for The Waves. Other diaries also aid her. In December 1930, she makes double use of The Journal of a Somerset Rector, with its tale of a country suicide. First, she summarizes John Skinner's Journal in her diary to test her ability to write and then she revises the diary entry for her Second Common Reader essay “The Rev. John Skinner” (1932). She finds James Woodforde's Diary of a Country Parson further proof of life deathless in a diary and pairs him with John Skinner in the Second Common Reader. In May 1931, The Private Diaries of Princess Daisy of Pless—Vita Sackville-West's distant relative—offers Woolf rich matter for future works: for Flush, The Years, and Three Guineas.