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History Plays: Virginia Woolf’s Three Guineas and Leonard Woolf’s The Hotel
In 1938, Virginia Woolf published Three Guineas, a novel-length essay which poses as a response to three letters: one asks how to prevent war, one asks why the government does not support women’s education, and one asks why women continue to be denied access to the professions. Woolf’s answers amount to a powerful feminist, pacifist, and anti-fascist tract, carefully costumed in the guise of a private missive.
That same year, Leonard Woolf finished writing a play, The Hotel, for which he sought production with the Group Theatre. Like Three Guineas, the play has a three-act structure, and stages a deeply felt opposition to the capitalist world order, the global arms race, and the rise of fascism. It is an allegorical piece. It literalises revolution as a revolving door in the foyer of a hotel and depicts the comings and goings of various political actors as the world comes again to the brink of total war.
This lecture will read Three Guineas and The Hotel alongside one another to explore the complexities of the Woolfs’ political convictions in the late 1930s. We will examine the ways in which both of these works turn to history in an attempt to explain the crises of their present day. We will also consider why the Woolfs turned to the dramatic mode in these works, how they function as performances, and how they might speak to audiences today.
NB: Despite Leonard Woolf’s concerted efforts in both the 1930s and 1960s, The Hotel was never staged. It was however published by the Hogarth Press in 1939 and a copy is available online via Internet Archive: archive.org/details/hotel0000wool
Live online lecture and seminar with Dr Ellie Mitchell, University of St Andrews, Scotland.
Saturday 3 April 2027
18.00-20.00 British Summer Time
19.00-21.00 Central European Summer Time
Morning or lunchtime in the Americas
Prices
£33.00 full price
£28.00 CAMcard holders
£28.00 Members of the VWSGB
£28.00 Students on a low income
History Plays: Virginia Woolf’s Three Guineas and Leonard Woolf’s The Hotel
In 1938, Virginia Woolf published Three Guineas, a novel-length essay which poses as a response to three letters: one asks how to prevent war, one asks why the government does not support women’s education, and one asks why women continue to be denied access to the professions. Woolf’s answers amount to a powerful feminist, pacifist, and anti-fascist tract, carefully costumed in the guise of a private missive.
That same year, Leonard Woolf finished writing a play, The Hotel, for which he sought production with the Group Theatre. Like Three Guineas, the play has a three-act structure, and stages a deeply felt opposition to the capitalist world order, the global arms race, and the rise of fascism. It is an allegorical piece. It literalises revolution as a revolving door in the foyer of a hotel and depicts the comings and goings of various political actors as the world comes again to the brink of total war.
This lecture will read Three Guineas and The Hotel alongside one another to explore the complexities of the Woolfs’ political convictions in the late 1930s. We will examine the ways in which both of these works turn to history in an attempt to explain the crises of their present day. We will also consider why the Woolfs turned to the dramatic mode in these works, how they function as performances, and how they might speak to audiences today.
NB: Despite Leonard Woolf’s concerted efforts in both the 1930s and 1960s, The Hotel was never staged. It was however published by the Hogarth Press in 1939 and a copy is available online via Internet Archive: archive.org/details/hotel0000wool
Live online lecture and seminar with Dr Ellie Mitchell, University of St Andrews, Scotland.
Saturday 3 April 2027
18.00-20.00 British Summer Time
19.00-21.00 Central European Summer Time
Morning or lunchtime in the Americas
Prices
£33.00 full price
£28.00 CAMcard holders
£28.00 Members of the VWSGB
£28.00 Students on a low income