Reading the 20th Century discussion

According to the Oxford English Dictionary "middlebrow", both n. and a. is colloq. Freq. derogatory.


adj. Of a person: only moderately intellectual; of average or limited cultural interests (sometimes with the implication of pretensions to more than this). Of an artistic work, etc.: of limited intellectual or cultural value; demanding or involving only a moderate degree of intellectual application, typically as a result of not deviating from convention.

The first documented usage of the term is in the Irish Freeman's Journal, 3 May 1924:

"Ireland's musical destiny, in spite of what the highbrows or the middlebrows may say, is intimately bound up with the festivals."

A rather more revealing instance is in Punch, 23 December 1925:

"The BBC claim to have discovered a new type, the 'middlebrow'. It consists of people who are hoping that some day they will get used to the stuff they ought to like."

The middlebrow network aims to rehabilitate the term...

"Middlebrow" is a culturally loaded and disreputable term. These quotations give a starting point to understanding what middlebrow might have meant in the first half of the twentieth century, and how academic critics are attempting to address it today.

https://www.middlebrow-network.com/Ho...

I know Judy enjoys books published by the wonderfully named Furrowed Middlebrow books (published by Dean Street Press). I am sure other here do too.

http://www.deanstreetpress.co.uk/main...

http://furrowedmiddlebrow.blogspot.co.uk

How do you feel about the term middlebrow?

What does the term mean to you?

What are your favourite middlebrow books?

Virginia Woolf in an unsent letter to the New Statesman

https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/w/wool...

She was not alone in her view....

The term middlebrow became a pejorative usage in the modernist cultural criticism, by Dwight Macdonald, Virginia Woolf, and Russell Lynes, which served the cause of the marginalization of the popular culture in favour of high culture.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middlebrow

Perhaps not surprisingly....


J.B. Priestley sought to create a positive cultural space around the concept of middlebrow – one characterised by earnestness, friendliness and ethical concerns. He couched his defense of the middlebrow in terms of radio stations, praising the BBC Home Service for its cosiness and plainness, midway between the Light Programme and the Third Programme: "Between the raucous lowbrows and the lisping highbrows is a fine gap, meant for the middle or broadbrows...our homely fashion".

In a struggle that involved competition for readers as well as for cultural capital, Virginia Woolf responded by renaming the BBC the "Betwixt and Between Company"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middleb...

This is brilliant and show how emotions ran high on the topic and refers to Virginia Woolf's letter that she decided to work up into an essay...


The Malady of Middlebrow: Virginia Woolf’s Brilliantly Blistering Response to a Patronising Reviewer

https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/11...

A right old ding dong between JB Priestley and VW.

Whose views are you more sympathetic too?

Do the arguments continue to have merit all these years later?

Woolf seems to be incredibly divisive (and hardly surprisingly classist). Her claiming of all popular writers (Shakespeare, Dickens, Scott) as highbrow implies that she is their equal. In fact, they all appealed to the common man - their contemporary equivalents of miners, prostitutes, dressmakers and bus conductors, who she happily lumps together as 'lowbrow', without any appreciation that they too may read Flaubert in their time off, or have all Beethoven's oeuvre on gramophone records at home.

For me, brow height is to do with taste in art, literature, music, and although books and music etc could be classified as 'highbrow' (some of the more modern experimental music, or stilted essays on inner feelings) or 'lowbrow' (pop music and some national newspapers ...), most people are as Priestly describes 'broadbrow'. They like some highbrow stuff even if they don't fully appreciate every nuance, enjoy some lowbrow entertainments, and get pleasure from both, and from all points between.

I am a product of middlebrow aspiration and upward striving. My maternal grandfather was an advertising salesman and sometime bar owner. He and my grandmother assembled a large collection of good books (sets of classics, Dickens, a complete Shakespeare, etc.) which were passed down to my mother and which I grew up with. We subscribed to National Geographic. We watched public television. We visited museums and zoos and historic houses on the weekends. I listened to classical music on the radio and read my way through the public library.

If my grandparents and mother hadn't been middlebrow, I would never have learned to appreciate the highbrow, and would never have attended Yale University.

Middlebrow writers are under-appreciated. As time passes, the popular fiction of yesteryear looks increasingly literary. Right now I am reading John P. Marquand's Point of No Return. It is a brilliant and deeply felt novel, and as much a cry of despair as anything in Kafka. It is not innovative in technique, but Marquand's command of traditional techniques is incredibly solid.

I think that 20th Century literature benefited greatly from having excellent writers at all points along the spectrum from innovative to traditional.

Patrick wrote: "I am a product of middlebrow aspiration and upward striving. My maternal grandfather was an advertising salesman and sometime bar owner. He and my grandmother assembled a large collection of good b..."

Would you say you 'aspire' to be high brow, or are just glad that your upbringing introduced you to literature etc, and that you are now glad to be able to appreciate highbrow stuff? For me 'highbrow' suggests a contempt for all brows lower, and it doesn't sound as if you have jettisoned the middle ground.

But it is true that our parents/grandparents (those born in the Victorian and early 20th century) did aspire to educate themselves, having often been denied a full education as children, and passed that interest on. I read because my parents read, and regularly borrowed books. I still own children's history books bought for me when I was 6 or 7, with stories about Alexander and Bucephalus, and Alfred and the cakes.

I think I'm broadbrow, as described in an earlier post. But I'll cop to being a bit of an elitist as well. I think the contempt problem is far more likely these days to work in the opposite direction; pop culture has achieved such juggernaut hegemony that classical music, jazz, theater, painting, and many other traditional "highbrow" forms are losing a lot of their currency. I regret that. When art museums are highlighting motorcycle design instead of Expressionist painters, something is amiss. (Nothing against good motorcycles, mind.)

I do insist that expressive power can be found at all levels, including outsider art which exists outside the usual hierarchies.

John Waters is very illuminating on the relation between art and exploitation, highbrow and lowbrow. My appreciation of "lowbrow" has grown. It took me a long time to understand the brilliance of the Three Stooges, for example. 🙂

As for "aspiration": my relatives' and my aspirations were and are for self-betterment and expansion of our horizons.

I think Patrick makes an important point - what seemed middlebrow a few years ago, is often considered more highbrow, or, at least, literary, now.

I will admit, though, to often instinctively being wary of books which are very popular...

A few more points.

Middlebrow works can and do serve as a "gateway drug" for highbrow culture. Certainly that was true in my case, although I never lost my taste for the middlebrow.

The rot that has set into American culture maps onto the loss of middlebrow aspiration. There is no sense that we should do anything with our free time but "entertain ourselves to death", in Neil Postman's phrase. This is a serious and debilitating matter. For one thing, it delivers Donald Trump.

One of the best books on the history of self-improvement is Jonathan Rose's The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes. Can a scholarly work be deeply moving? Well, this one is.

“Read the great stuff, but read the stuff that isn't so great, too. Great stuff is very discouraging. If you read only Beckett and Chekhov, you'll go away and only deliver telegrams for Western Union.” ― Edward Albee

Patrick wrote: "A few more points.

"The rot that has set into American culture maps onto the loss of middlebrow aspiration. There is no sense that we should do anything with our free time but "entertain ourselves to death", in Neil Postman's phrase. This is a serious and debilitating matter. For one thing, it delivers Donald Trump."

Incredibly well stated.

Yes, the standard for "highbrow" has fallen from Mrs. Woolf's day. To certain Neanderthal's in the USA watching PBS is highbrow as is visiting a museum or gallery or attending the symphony, opera or theatre. President Obama was labeled an elitist because he liked Arugula in his salad. Katie Couric was vilified for asking Sarah Palin what newspapers she read.

Call me a middlebrow, but I consider myself fortunate that I have eclectic tastes in food, music, art, theatre and literature. I don't want a steady diet of anything. I can't imagine how bored I'd be reading only Virginia Woolf books. I'm perfectly happy drifting from Woolf to Agatha Christie to H. G. Wells to W. B. Yeats. It frustrates me when people try to pigeonhole me - "the finest people only read this or listen to that." Let me tell you - I'll have lunch with Ma and Pa Kettle and dinner with the Queen, I'll serve Rice-a-Roni with filet mignon, listen to Johnny Cash one minute and Bach the next, or hang a Norman Rockwell print next to priceless Chagall.

I have been accused of thinking I'm "better" or "smarter" because I read books, and watch art house movies and occasionally attend the symphony.

I aspire to middlebrowdom.

Ivan wrote: "“Read the great stuff, but read the stuff that isn't so great, too. Great stuff is very discouraging. If you read only Beckett and Chekhov, you'll go away and only deliver telegrams for Western Uni..."

That's a great quote, Ivan. Yes, I agree with the idea of reading a mixture, and I also think the perception of what is highbrow or middlebrow is constantly shifting.

Nigeyb wrote: "I know Judy enjoys books published by the wonderfully named Furrowed Middlebrow books (published by Dean Street Press). I am sure other here do too...."

I do indeed, Nigeyb, and was pleased to see today that they have a special offer on The Lark, a novel for adults by the classic children's writer E. Nesbit.

The term middlebrow sounds dated and I think it certainly does have pejorative connotations, as you mention, but when used by publishers like Furrowed Middlebrow and Persephone it's also become a useful way to describe books which are slightly lighter reads, often by authors who were popular at one time but have undeservedly been forgotten.

It seems like an old-fashioned term and concept to me, and not one that is terribly helpful or meaningful - academic research has been incorporating popular culture and giving it the same attention as so-called elite culture for some time now, breaking down the barriers between these categories. As Judy says, these are shifting and contingent judgements.

Thanks everyone for some stimulating and insightful responses


Roman Clodia wrote: "It seems like an old-fashioned term and concept to me, and not one that is terribly helpful or meaningful - academic research has been incorporating popular culture and giving it the same attention..."

I am tempted to agree however there is the middlebrow network, a bunch of transatlantic academics, who were funded for their project (2008-2010) to discuss and rehabilitate the term...

"Middlebrow" is a culturally loaded and disreputable term. These quotations give a starting point to understanding what middlebrow might have meant in the first half of the twentieth century, and how academic critics are attempting to address it today.

https://www.middlebrow-network.com/Ho...

I have not read the website in any detail but I find it interesting that, for these people at least, it still has resonance and meaning.

I'm also interested in exploring why, for Virginia Woolf and others, it was such a big deal at the time they were getting vexed about it. Was it just snobbery? To what extent did they want every reader to be highbrow? Was it just a way of dismissing authors who they didn't like, or were feuding with?

I love this definition from Nicola Humble in The Feminine Middlebrow Novel, 1920s to 1950s: Class, Domesticity, and Bohemianism and as quoted on the middlebrow network


"The broad working definition I employ throughout this book is that the middlebrow novel is one that straddles the divide between the trashy romance or thriller on the one hand, and the philosophically or formally challenging novel on the other: offering narrative excitement without guilt, and intellectual stimulation without undue effort. It is an essentially parasitical form, dependent on the existence of both a high and a low brow for its identity, reworking their structures and aping their insights, while at the same time fastidiously holding its skirts away from lowbrow contamination, and gleefully mocking highbrow intellectual pretensions."

Nicola Humble, The Feminine Middlebrow Novel, 1920s to 1950s: Class, Domesticity, and Bohemianism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001) p. 11-12.

https://www.middlebrow-network.com/De...



As I do, the introduction on the Furrowed Middlebrow website...

Furrowed Middlebrow is an exciting new development for Dean Street Press. Following the Furrowed Middlebrow blog, this imprint will rediscover and reissue entertaining and important works by lesser-known British women novelists and memoirists.

The years 1910-1960 were an unprecedented and prolific era for female authors, documenting – eloquently, humorously, poignantly (or frequently all of the above) – the social change, upheaval, and evolving gender roles of a volatile era. These years bookended two world wars, a global depression, the women's suffrage movement, seismic economic and class shifts, the beginning of the Cold War, and dramatic changes in ordinary day-to-day life. Women writers created some of the most insightful and compelling literature of the period. The great majority of their works, however, were neglected in later years, when publishers and critics grew to value other kinds of literature over what became known as the ‘middlebrow’.

In recent years, scholars and readers alike have begun to rediscover the middlebrow and recognize it for the vital cultural form it is. Furrowed Middlebrow aims to support this with the republication of some of the finest of the genre.

http://www.deanstreetpress.co.uk/main...

That sounds like an interesting book, Nigeyb. I’m also reminded of another good book with similar subject matter, A Very Great Profession by Nicola Beauman (reprinted by Persephone) which looks at the lives of women between the wars and how they are reflected in novels from that era. On phone app so can’t post a link.

Judy wrote: "another good book with similar subject matter, A Very Great Professionby Nicola Beauman (reprinted by Persephone) which looks at the lives of women between the wars and how they are reflected in novels from that era. "

Thanks Judy, A Very Great Profession by Nicola Beauman came up on Amazon as an associated recommendation when I looked at the Nicola Humble book. The Humble book is out of print and v expensive to buy used, the Nicola Beauman is much more affordable.

Nicola Beauman is the founder of Persephone Books

*

A Very Great Profession, first published in 1983, looks at women like Katharine in Virginia Woolf’s Night and Day ("Katharine, thus, was a member of a very great profession which has, as yet, no title and very little recognition… She lived at home") and Laura, the heroine of Brief Encounter, women whose lives and habits were wonderfully recorded in the fiction of the time. Drawing on the novels to illuminate themes such as domestic life, romantic love, sex, psychoanalysis, the Great War and ‘surplus’ women, A Very Great Profession uses the work of numerous women writers to present a portrait, though their fiction, of middle-class Englishwomen in the period between the wars.

Nigeyb wrote: "I have not read the website in any detail but I find it interesting that, for these people at least, it still has resonance and meaning."

Yes, interesting project though it is one which investigates the 'middlebrow' as a historicised phenomenon that emerges alongside modernism i.e. they're exploring culture roughly between 1890-1945.

One of the positions that postmodernism takes is to break down, mock and hybridise these kind of hierarchical categories - so we could say the middlebrow network uses a postmodern lens to analyse pre-postmodern (I made that up!) culture - I don't think they're reactivating the term for contemporary usage.

Ah, just read Woolf's letter (link in #3) - she seems to be using the term middlebrow as a stand-in for bourgeois or middle-class - not an aspirational working-class (let's not forget that she herself taught in a working man's institute).

She seems to be railing against moral complacency and an acquisitive capitalism as much as the cultural products, here books, which promote and authorise those values.

Woolf's middle-brow/middle-class just made me think of the Dursleys in Harry Potter who want everything to be 'nice' and 'proper'! 😉

Some of the authors she dismisses as middlebrow were certainly not morally complacent nor did they support acquisitive capitalism. Bennett and Priestley might not be intellectually challenging, but they were both in possession of a social conscience and attempting to awaken one in their middle-class readership.

I'm sure you're right, Val - which speaks to how slippery, vague and unhelpful 'middlebrow' is as a term and category.

The application of 'middlebrow' to many women writers, too, as indicated above, obscures their agency in choosing to write at all.

I don't think the term is that slippery. Virginia Woolf (amongst others) is using it as a pejorative term to marginalise popular culture in favour of high culture. Middlebrow literature emphasises emotional and sentimental connections, rather than intellectual quality and literary innovation.

On one level I think that is fair enough. We are all discerning in what we choose to read, and make choices based on our own preferences and experiences.

I suspect Virginia Woolf didn't really believe what she said though, and just used the term as a way of responding to negative comments about her own work by authors she didn't like, and/or who didn't like her.

Could anyone really care that much about what people chose to read? Or genuinely deride them for their perceived culturally inferiority? I doubt it.

I think the term is useful, although of course it gets more slippery when you consider fringe cases.

Nigeyb wrote: "I don't think the term is that slippery. Virginia Woolf (amongst others) is using it as a pejorative term to marginalise popular culture in favour of high culture. Middlebrow literature emphasises ..."

But Woolf quite explicitly isn't talking about popular culture such as music halls, I would guess, or street ballads, she's talking about something in between high and low.

Arguably, her own novels emphasise 'emotional and sentimental connections' (even if they do innovate in terms of form), so that doesn't seem to be the key differentiator.

And she herself always struggled with a sense of cultural inferiority stemming from her exclusion from any formal education, being a girl.

I'm not defending her, I'm just not sure I understand what fits into that middlebrow category hence my questioning of its usefulness as a term. Happy to be enlightened here!

Good points RC. I reckon VW would label music halls and street ballads as lowbrow. She makes a point about Lowbrows having the same cultural worth as Highbrows, it's those pesky "Betwixt and Between" Middlebrows that she perceives lack authenticity and are easily influenced and manipulated.

Perhaps that cultural inferiority, which I was not aware of, informed her analysis. Taken at face value it suggests a possible sense of insecurity that might make her keen to delineate?

I don't think anyone commenting here feels any great affinity with any of the labels and I suspect we all read what we fancy and hop between the categories.

As you say, in the modern context it's not really very helpful.

I still find it interesting to speculate on the motivations of those who were arguing about it in the first half of the twentieth century - and how sincerely they really held their views. As I say, I am not sure she really did believe what she said. But, if she did, perhaps it was borne out of insecurity.

I wonder what she'd make of Furrowed Middlebrow and Persephone, and the rediscovery and celebration of many of the books that fell into the Middlebrow category.

Only a minority of readers (a small minority) would even know what Persephone and Furrowed Middlebrow is. So, does that mean it is still Middlebrow? It is a difficult question, because things change. If you read books from the thirties, for example, there are lots of quotations, or French and Latin phrases, that readers would be expected to know. I am talking GA detective novels here, not anything highbrow. I suspect that, were VW around now, she would just be a passionate campaigner for readers and libraries.

Judy wrote: "That sounds like an interesting book, Nigeyb. I’m also reminded of another good book with similar subject matter, A Very Great Profession by Nicola Beauman (reprinted by Persephone) which looks at ..."

Thanks Judy - I hadn't come across that one but it's on my list now!

Patrick wrote: "One of the best books on the history of self-improvement is Jonathan Rose's The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes. Can a scholarly work be deeply moving? Well, this one is. "

It is a moving and wonderful book, Patrick. I was very inspired by it when I wrote my MA thesis about underclass autodidacts in Canada. Glad to come across another person who has read it.

Storyheart wrote: "Patrick wrote: "One of the best books on the history of self-improvement is Jonathan Rose's The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes. Can a scholarly work be deeply moving? Well, this o..."

That sounds like a wonderful topic for a thesis!

Not only is auto-didacticism on the wane in the United States, I think that it is actively discouraged in many ways. This wasn't always the case. The Chautauqua movement promoted self-education for many decades. Book salesmen peddled encyclopedias, the Great Books series from Encyclopedia Brittanica, the Harvard Classics, and a lot of similar material. Did much of it get purchased only to languish unread in middle class homes? Of course. But did much of it also inspire individuals and families on missions of discovery? Yes! Jack London's great novel Martin Eden describes one such journey in detail.

Not much such material is on active offer nowadays; you really have to dig for it (the Internet can facilitate this, but only if you know how to use it). Even such institutions as science museums have become very entertainment-oriented. The idea of earnestly applying youraelf to a body of material in order to master it, not to further your career but simply BECAUSE, does not have many contemporary promoters, and does have many detractors (such as Internet guru Clay Shirky, who famously said that War and Peace was too long and boring).

I get discouraged sometimes.

Nigeyb wrote: "Judy wrote: "another good book with similar subject matter, A Very Great Professionby Nicola Beauman (reprinted by Persephone) which looks at the lives of women between..."

The Humble book has been on my wish list for a long time now. It is very expensive in the secondary market. I finally decided to check out the Michigan interlibrary system for it and Yea! it's available. It hasn't come in yet but should within the next couple of weeks. The Nicola Beauman book looks interesting as well. Of course, I expect my TBR list to grow after reading this. : )

The Furrowed Middlebrow imprint was a spin-off from a blog, http://furrowedmiddlebrow.blogspot.co..., which covers "lesser-known British, Irish, & American women writers 1910-1960". This blog is full of fascinating discoveries and guaranteed to add to my TBR list when I visit.

I've just looked at the about page and see that the blogger, Scott, is aware of the problems with the term middlebrow - he really wanted to call the blog "Off the Beaten Page" but the name was taken! I'm not sure that would be such a good name for a publishing imprint, though.

Nigeyb wrote: "Judy wrote: "another good book with similar subject matter, A Very Great Professionby Nicola Beauman (reprinted by Persephone) which looks at the lives of women between..."

Many thanks for posting the link to the book, Nigeyb. I used to have it in an older Virago edition - not sure if I still have it somewhere. I must delve into my disorganised shelves.

I was very interested in the adult novel of E Nesbit you mentioned, Judy, as I loved her books as a child. I couldn't find a full bibliography of her works and The Lark (which you mentioned), while on Amazon, was not mentioned on any of the book lists I could find! It reminded me that I have some RIchmal Crompton adult novels that I downloaded some time ago and are still yet to read.

Going back to Middlebrow, I think that all new generation authors (as Virginia Woolf was at the time) instinctively react against whoever came before them. I noticed in the Colin Wilson books I read, that he mentions not being overly impressed by some authors after WWI, such as - shock horror - Evelyn Waugh! I forgive him, but only just...

Susan, Edith Nesbit's Wikipedia page has what looks like a pretty comprehensive bibliography under the heading 'Works', though I don't know if it is complete.

There is a whole section listing her adult novels, though disappointingly it looks as if a mystery has not survived. Also many short stories for adults.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._Nesb...

I was also surprised to see from this that it looks as if she published a lot of poetry.

I think I went there first and couldn't see The Lark. Shame she doesn't have her own website - perhaps there is nobody curating and caring for her work now, which is sad.

There is an Edith Nesbit Society website but it doesn’t seem to have a bibliography. On my phone so can’t give a link.

The Lark is listed - under Novels for adults - published 1922


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._Nesb...

Beautiful cover on Furrowed Middlebrow edition...



http://www.deanstreetpress.co.uk/book...

Good to hear there is an E Nesbit society. Have found the link now -
http://www.edithnesbit.co.uk/

Woolf's list of highbrows is Shakespeare, Dickens, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Charlotte Bronte, Scott, Jane Austen, Flaubert, Hardy and Henry James. Middlebrows singled out for castigation were Bennett, Priestley, Galsworthy, Wells and the BBC, but not Walpole. Lowbrow pursuits do not seem to include reading novels.
It is difficult to see what her highbrows have in common, but comparing the lists suggests that realism is highbrow if the author is one of the first to use it and middlebrow if authors are still using it forty or fifty years later.

I am pleased to see, in her biography, that Woolf was a voracious reader, as well as a writer. She obviously did take her reading seriously and bemoaned the fact that her brother, Thoby, was away at University, when she wanted to discuss Greek literature with him. She also had tutors to guide her efforts in Greek and so had that Victorian ethic of bettering herself, perhaps, which stuck with her?

Val wrote: "It is difficult to see what her highbrows have in common, but comparing the lists suggests that realism is highbrow if the author is one of the first to use it and middlebrow if authors are still using it forty or fifty years later."

I think you've nailed it Val.

Middlebrow literature emphasises emotional and sentimental connections, rather than intellectual quality and literary innovation.

The innovation part is clearly important and significant to VW. More generally it's simply a way for her (and others) to marginalise "popular culture" in favour of "high culture".

The argument didn't hold much water then and, 90 years on, appears absurd.

Still, as I've speculated earlier in the discussion, I don't think she really believed it herself and was just caught up in feuds with writers who she didn't like and who didn't like her, or her set.

This is a reminder, Nigeyb, that we look back on authors as being some impressive, historical figure, but they were real people with the same emotions as everyone else - they indulged in feuds, had unreasonable dislikes and generally behaved the same as everyone throughout history...

Would you not see emotional and sentimental connections as part of an 'inner life' then? (One of her complaints was that middlebrow novels were about what characters did and not what they thought, that those characters had no inner life.)
It is more difficult to find any contemporary author of hers whose work she did like, apart from Henry James, as she cast her net of disapproval wide. She was quite rude about James Joyce in her diaries (and not many people would describe him as middlebrow), complained that Hemingway was not innovative enough, wasn't keen on D. H. Lawrence or Edith Wharton, ... the list goes on.

She was quite rude, generally, I think, Val. She wrote letters to Ottoline Morrell where she gushed over her and then, on the same day, wrote to someone else criticising her. I suppose we would say 'two faced' now.

I don't agree with what she said, but, as I am reading about her, am less surprised that she said it.

Interesting - thanks Susan, thanks Val


To what extent do you think her rudeness came from her sense of cultural inferiority (which Roman Clodia highlights above, and which I was previously unaware of)? Or was it just how she was brought up? Or just her personality, maybe a consequence of her depression?

I have gained the impression she was quite snobbish - but I may have got that wrong. I'm following the Hermione Lee buddy read thread with interest, as I don't want to read the book however am curious about VW, and what she was like, what motivated her etc.

I do think her lack of formal education made her feel - if not inferior - then somehow distressed. She certainly felt it.

Although she derided other groups, she was also quite protective of her own clique - although aware of its faults. I am not that far into the biography yet, but I am getting a sense of her and her feelings of wanting to rebel and fight against her family and the restrictions put upon her.

Thanks Susan - I look forward to more updates as you work through the biography.


It's easy to forget just how much people, and especially women, had to contend with in her time

I think it was just so repressive for her - living, working, being educated within the family home. She resented the formal afternoons of visiting as a waste of time (I would agree) and I think she would have benefited from having friends and interests outside the home.