Showing results for "Virginia Woolf" in Contemporary Fiction

"Kew Gardens" is a short story by the English author Virginia Woolf. It was first published privately in 1919, then more widely in 1921 in the collection Monday or Tuesday, and subsequently in the posthumous collection A Haunted House (1944). Originally accompanying illustrations by Vanessa Bell, its visual organisation has been described as analogous to a post-impressionist painting.

Monday or Tuesday is a 1921 short story collection by Virginia Woolf published by The Hogarth Press. 1000 copies were printed with four full-page woodcuts by Vanessa Bell. Leonard Woolf called it one of the worst printed books ever published because of the typographical mistakes in it. Most mistakes were corrected for the US edition published by Harcourt Brace. It contained eight stories: A Haunted House / A Society / Monday or Tuesday / An Unwritten Novel / The String Quartet / Blue and Green / Kew Gardens / The Mark on the Wall.

The Mark on the Wall is the first published story by Virginia Woolf. It was published in 1917 as part of the first collection of short stories written by Virginia Woolf and her husband, Leonard Woolf, called Two Stories. It was later published in New York in 1921 as part of another collection entitled Monday or Tuesday. The Mark on the Wall is written in the first person, as a "tream of consciousness" monologue. The narrator notices a mark on the wall, and muses on the workings of the mind.

THIS IS HOW it all came about. Six or seven of us were sitting one day after tea. Some were gazing across the street into the windows of a milliner's shop where the light still shone brightly upon scarlet feathers and golden slippers. Others were idly occupied in building little towers of sugar upon the edge of the tea tray.

The narrator, apparently a woman, begins: "Whatever hour you woke there was a door shutting." Along with her husband, the narrator experiences the sensations of a home literally alive with memories. She does not, however, try to keep the reader in suspense regarding the mysterious openings and closings of doors and windows that she and her husband witness. Despite the fact that she knows two ghosts wander through her home, she is not afraid. The ghosts, after all, mean the narrator and her husband no harm...

Lazy and indifferent, shaking space easily from his wings, knowing his way, the heron passes over the church beneath the sky. White and distant, absorbed in itself, endlessly the sky covers and uncovers, moves and remains...

The Ported fingers of glass hang downwards. The light slides down the glass, and drops a pool of green. All day long the ten fingers of the lustre drop green upon the marble.

The Ported fingers of glass hang downwards. The light slides down the glass, and drops a pool of green. All day long the ten fingers of the lustre drop green upon the marble. The feathers of parakeets their harsh cries sharp blades of palm trees green, too.