As war brewed in Europe, the British novelist responded to a letter urging “daughters of educated men” to join in opposition to the conflict. Her surprising retort called for fair wages for women—not just to advance equality, but to hasten the fighting’s end.
Virginia Woolf was forty years old when she addressed this letter to Gerald Brenan, who was twelve years her junior and was to write several books. She wrote it in the year of the appearance of Jacob’s Room, three years before Mrs. Dalloway. This is drawn from The Letters of Virginia Woolf, Volume II, edited by Nigel Nicolson and Joanne Trautmann, to appear in November.
A portrait of a Regency governess
“To read what one liked because one liked it, never to pretend to admire what one did not — that was his only lesson in the art of reading.”