Virginia Woolf's Apprenticeship

This study takes up Virginia Woolf’s challenge in ‘The Leaning Tower’ to probe the relationship between a writer’s education and that writer’s literary work, specifically Virginia Stephen’s informal, solitary, and fragmented education and Virginia Woolf’s work as an essayist. Using extensive archival and primary research, some of which is shared in five appendices, it expands Virginia Stephen’s education beyond her father’s library to include not only a broader examination of her homeschooling but also her teaching at Morley College (an adult education institution for the working classes) and her early book reviewing. It places Virginia Stephen’s learning in the historical and cultural contexts of education for women, the working classes, and writers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Weaving together Virginia Stephen’s homeschooling, teaching, and writing for newspapers, this book demonstrates how these three apprenticeship strands would come to shape Virginia Woolf’s essay persona, essays, and relationship with readers. Virginia Stephen’s education under various teachers communicated curricula, conveyed pedagogies, and introduced her to communities, and that learning compelled Virginia Woolf to become a pedagogical essayist. By examining the lessons, practices, and results of her education on many of Virginia Stephen’s early book reviews and essays, this book shifts critical attention to Virginia Woolf’s essays, their content, characteristic traits, and methods.