The Many Histories of Between the Acts
Virginia Woolf’s posthumously published novel Between the Acts is haunted by histories private and public. She did not wish it to be published in the form in which she left it, and it thus has a uniquely strange position in the history of her own writing. During the period of its composition, Woolf was drafting a history of English literature, tentatively titled ‘Reading at Random’ or ‘Turning the Page’; she was drafting a memoir, fragments of which were later published as ‘A Sketch of the Past’; she was experiencing a recurrence of the moods she had recorded when the First World War broke out; and her novel-in-progress encompassed a village pageant telling England’s ‘island history’.
This lecture will explore how these various histories were intertwined in Woolf’s final years, raise questions about the way in which Between the Acts was published by Leonard Woolf and John Lehmann, and consider how the novel might resonate with our own particular historical moment of violent global crisis.
Live online lecture and seminar with Professor Mark Hussey, retired Professor at Pace University, New York and editor of the Cambridge University Press scholarly edition of Between the Acts (2011).
Saturday 21 November 2026
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
The Many Histories of Between the Acts
Virginia Woolf’s posthumously published novel Between the Acts is haunted by histories private and public. She did not wish it to be published in the form in which she left it, and it thus has a uniquely strange position in the history of her own writing. During the period of its composition, Woolf was drafting a history of English literature, tentatively titled ‘Reading at Random’ or ‘Turning the Page’; she was drafting a memoir, fragments of which were later published as ‘A Sketch of the Past’; she was experiencing a recurrence of the moods she had recorded when the First World War broke out; and her novel-in-progress encompassed a village pageant telling England’s ‘island history’.
This lecture will explore how these various histories were intertwined in Woolf’s final years, raise questions about the way in which Between the Acts was published by Leonard Woolf and John Lehmann, and consider how the novel might resonate with our own particular historical moment of violent global crisis.
Live online lecture and seminar with Professor Mark Hussey, retired Professor at Pace University, New York and editor of the Cambridge University Press scholarly edition of Between the Acts (2011).
Saturday 21 November 2026
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
