Travels with Virginia Woolf

by Jan Morris (Editor)

Taking as her guide extracts from Virginia Woolf's diaries and journals, correspondence and rare travel essays, Jan Morris follows her footprints from Sussex and Cornwall to wartime London, Italy and the Riviera to Greek mountains and southern Spain. She intersperses Virginia's verbal sketches of a Greek peasant wedding, a fenland sky, an elderly spinster in a hotel lobby, or Bognor pier in the rain with her own comments on writer and subject. Sometimes Jan Morris enlarges the picture, or adds a "chance glimpse" of her own; or enlightens a householder who had no idea their roof had sheltered a famous guest. The two writers' counterpointed observations conjure the spirit of place, but above all, Jan Morris discovers and shares Virginia Woolf's pleasure and unexpected sense of fun.

Genres: Travel, Nonfiction, Biography, Memoir, History, Biography Memoir

256 pages, Hardcover

First published November 4, 1993

About the author

Jan Morris was a British historian, author and travel writer. Morris was educated at Lancing College, West Sussex, and Christ Church, Oxford, but is Welsh by heritage and adoption. Before 1970 Morris published under her assigned birth name, "James ", and is known particularly for the Pax Britannica trilogy, a history of the British Empire, and for portraits of cities, notably Oxford, Venice, Trieste, Hong Kong, and New York City, and also wrote about Wales, Spanish history, and culture.

In 1949 Jan Morris married Elizabeth Tuckniss, the daughter of a tea planter. Morris and Tuckniss had five children together, including the poet and musician Twm Morys. One of their children died in infancy. As Morris documented in her memoir Conundrum, she began taking oestrogens to feminise her body in 1964. In 1972, she had sex reassignment surgery in Morocco. Sex reassignment surgeon Georges Burou did the surgery, since doctors in Britain refused to allow the procedure unless Morris and Tuckniss divorced, something Morris was not prepared to do at the time. They divorced later, but remained together and later got a civil union. On May, 14th, 2008, Morris and Tuckniss remarried each other. Morris lived mostly in Wales, where her parents were from.

Reviews

[Paulo Santos · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting read, but a bit disappointing. But still it's always nice to read Virginia Woolf's prose, and there were several texts I didn't know. She was not a great traveller, so this book - a collection of texts mostly from diaries and letters - is mostly a curio, a small pleasure for her admirers - one of whom I am, of course.

I think what I liked less was the editing - I wouldn't have organised the texts by place, as Jan Morris did, I think the collection would be much more interesting and expressive of her mind and feelings about the places if they were organised chronologically. Jan Morris says in the introduction:

'"What one records is really the state of one's own mind." Precisely that is the fascination of these writings. They are seldom descriptions of place, they are records of the effect of place upon a particular sensibility, one of the most finely tuned imaginable. The earliest piece here was written in 1897, when the writer was fifteen, the latest in 1940, when she was fifty-eight, and there is inevitably a vast difference in the style and approach.'

And precisely because of that evolution in her style and approach, I believe the book would be more coherent and enjoyable if it followed her impressions along her life, which is also a kind of travel through time that inevitably influences what one gets from travels through space.

That said, I enjoyed it very much, especially the parts about Greece, her description of Epidaurus reminded me so much of my own visit there.

'...but if statues & marble are solid to the touch, so, simply, are words resonant to the ear.'

[Anne Fenn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a truly wonderful insight into Virginia Woolf and the places she visited. Jan Morris, the famous travel writer, follows the path of Virginia Woolf, based on her letters, essay and diaries, from early 1900-1940. The book consists of extracts by VW, with comments from Jan Morris in 1992. Locations include London and many parts of the U.K., France, Germany, Spain and Greece. Some of the British parts are a little too descriptive, as I enjoy her opinions and experiences more. Morris's comments become very poignant as she provides contexts, some from her early troubles with mental illness, some indicating how near she was to the ending of her life.

[Lisa Bristow · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really enjoyed these excerpts of Virginia Woolf's travels around England, Europe and Constantinople. They made me both yearn for a time when dress and customs were less homogenised, but also be grateful our attitudes towards people from other countries has improved. Jan Morris adds commentary about their own visit to the same places and people decades later.

[Subilia · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 étoiles car je ne prends pas beaucoup de plaisir à lire Virginia Woolf traduite en français. Ses récits de voyage ne sont pas les histoires qui me passionnent le plus également venant d’elle... :)

[Roos148 · Rating 2 out of 5]

Kind of sad to find out Virginia Woolf was so elitist

[Diego · Rating 3 out of 5]

Todo el rato la sensación de que Virginia no podía pertenecer a ningún lugar por mucho tiempo