Travels With Virginia Woolf

Jan Morris is someone who I'd like to spend an afternoon with in her living room in North Wales, not only for the company but to see what's in her personal library. Being a long-time, respected travel writer she must lead an interesting life and have amassed a variety of friends, stories, and hopefully good books.

Course I know she's a Reader already - she is obviously a fan of the lady she refers to as 'Virginia' and wrote this book about her travels with great admiration. I first met Woolf in the form of 'Orlando' and it not only shifted several paradigms but opened my eyes to a new style of writing. Woolf's writing often reads like writing from her diary or journal - plenty of dashes, run-on sentences and incomplete sentences - all things I remember being berated for in Language Arts class. (No wonder they don't study Woolf before university.) She also is flippant about her use of 'and' and '&' and I could never figure out why she chose to use one and not the other and I still hope to learn this mysterious 'use of &' rule.

'Travels With Virginia Woolf' by Jan Morris (The Hogarth Press, London, 1993) is one of those books that you really ought not to skip the introduction. I always at least take a cursory glance at introductions but generally prefer not to be told how to think about the book. But this introduction is important b/c it sets you up for a refreshing reminder of Woolf's originality. B/c we live in an age where travel writing is just another genre of literature and can be bought readily, and if you travel you really ought to write about it or at least blog about it - here is a woman who, while traveling a fair bit, is principally against it. Why?

To quote Morris: "Even in her youth she was wary of what she called 'descriptive writing'. It was, she wrote from Florence in 1909, dangerous and tempting...What one records is really the state of one's own mind.'"

So, with that knowledge, I think Morris is a bit of a literary imp - determined to edit a book of Woolf's travels knowing that Woolf was against travel writing. Not to worry, she accomplishes this beautifully. Throughout this lovely book, she inserts snippets of biographical information which makes it more accessible to the modern reader who may not have majored in Victorian English Private Life & History. I think this is a book that Woolf would have approved of after all she was a bit of an imp herself- hopefully so as it is published by the publishing house that she and her husband founded.

Reading this book not only felt like I was living in Woolf's world, but I felt like I knew her better as a person after. Also I think it would be interesting to visit the places she writes about as Morris has done, and to compare Woolf's descriptions to the actualy modern day realities.

'Travels with Virginia Woolf' is soul food - a refreshing change for those a bit weary of the usual fare of travel writing - entertaining & delightfully educational.

Other reviews:
The International Herald Tribune
Ann Skea

Here's something interesting: The New York Society Library has a website that goes through much of what is covered in Morris' book and is supposedly copyrighted in 1999 which is of course after Morris' book was published, and yet she receives no credit in the bibliography. I suppose it is possible that someone else could glean the information about Woolf's travels from her novels too. It would be interesting to know how this site compares to Morris' book. Hm.