Rush, Urgency, Wound, and Rescue

Woolf’s 1925 diary repeats the alarming scenario of her 1921 diary. In January and February 1925, Woolf gives over her diary time to ready The Common Reader and Mrs. Dalloway for Hogarth Press. She substitutes work for diary refreshment, just as in 1921 she replaced her diary with Russian lessons before her summer collapse. Each time she does not fully reckon the physical toll and mental strain of her unrelieved work. In 1925, Woolf also underestimates the drain of her new London social life. Her diary, however, signals the danger. The projected glorious fall start of To the Lighthouse becomes collapse and months of headache, causing Woolf to call 1925 “this wounded and stricken year.” Yet as in 1921 and 1918, Woolf makes in her diary a remarkable rescuing move. In December, she seizes on Vita Sackville-West as rescue, just as she created “Elderly Virginia” at the end of 1918. In June, she finds that Jonathan Swift’s famed Journal to Stella addresses uncannily several of her own current trials. In Orlando, she will have Orlando meet the prickly Irishman of the Journal to Stella. Swift’s Journal offers fuel for A Room of One’s Own as well.