The Pargiters: The Novel-Essay Portion of the Years

by Virginia Woolf

The unfinished novel-essay portion of 'The Years'.

In late 1932 Woolf wrote six essays and their accompanying fictional "extracts" for 'The Pargiters', but ultimately abandoned the novel-essay concept. The fiction elements were incorporated into the "1880" section of 'The Years', and the essay elements were used for 'Three Guineas'.

Corrected entry for ISBN 0156713802.

Genres: Fiction

167 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1981

About the author

(Adeline) Virginia Woolf was an English novelist and essayist regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century.

During the interwar period, Woolf was a significant figure in London literary society and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Her most famous works include the novels Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), and Orlando (1928), and the book-length essay A Room of One's Own (1929) with its famous dictum, "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction."

Reviews

[Moira]

I just found this going through piles of books in my study! I didn't know I even had it! Everything in here is dusty! It's like my own personal ratty second-hand bookstore, except I already own everything in here!

//facepalm

[Emma Victoria · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting, but largely in relation to Woolf’s writing and editing process as opposed to piece on its own. The essay sections much being stronger and more interesting than the “novel” ones.

[Kristy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating archival reconstruction of Woolf's draft manuscript of a totally new book format, the Novel-Essay. In this experiment, inspired by a speech Woolf gave to a group of women professionals in 1931, essays discussing the impact of social norms on the lives of women in England are illustrated by fictional chapters about a middle-class London family in 1880. Abandoned after six chapters, Woolf eventually transformed the novel sections of this work into the 1880 chapter of The Years, and her ideas from the essays section were rolled into Three Guineas. The book also includes the 1931 speech that gave Woolf the idea for this work as well as extensive footnotes. The author uses a system of italics and brackets to show where Woolf inserted and deleted sections as she revised the text in her notebooks. This takes a little getting used to, but is quite interesting if you are a Virginia Woolf super-fan. I don't know know that this book would be that fun to read if you hadn't already read The Years, but if you have, it adds a valuable lens into Woolf's intentions.

[Todd Osborn · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Pargiters was a bit of a difficult read, first because it is a novel-essay, and second, because the editor, although a Woolf expert in his time, included many parenthetical notes throughout, as opposed to presenting a single selected “version” of the text. It was explained that this was an attempt to give the reader more of Woolf’s aims in writing what, at the time, she saw as a new kind of work, the afore-mentioned Novel-Essay. This made reading through a bit problematic, as I felt the flow was constantly being interrupted by what would have amounted to different edits, or versions, of the text.

All of that said, The Pargiters was a further exercise in the kind of Feminist literature that Woolf espoused so well in A Room Of One’s Own, itself based on a series of talks, just as was true of much of The Pargiters. If one is a serious fan of Woolf, I recommend this, whether or not one has read The Years, of which The Pargiters is a part.

[Elisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Leaska has done a great service to Woolf scholarship by editing the holograph draft of the six essay portions of Woolf's first gigantic chapter of The Years, allowing readers to re-construct her original plan of alternating fiction and non-fictional accounts and to more clearly see the polemical and political intentions she softened and made more subtle as the novel developed. Also included is the full transcript of the speech which inspired the novel, later published as "Professions for Women." I am especially grateful for the reproduction of Woolf's flower-shaped doodles which act as colophons between essays.

[Rhonda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Highly readable.