Virginia WOOLF and the natural world

The Summer Course will run twice in 2026: first, live online, Thursday 9 July to Monday 13 July. Then in person in Cambridge, in August. This page is for the live online course.

Virginia Woolf and the Natural World

Live online Summer Course 2026

Join us for an intensive five-day course, live online. We study five of Woolf’s great novels, exploring her interest in the natural world: the sea, woods, clouds, trees, gardens, birds, and much else. All of Woolf’s books, even those set largely in cities, are deeply interested in the presence of nature and with human relations with the natural world.

Woolf herself had an extraordinary eye for detail, partly as a result of her close observation of nature in her childhood. She was always very interested in the natural world around her, from the sea and sky and flocks of birds to a tiny snail or flower..

There will be a rich programme of lectures, supervisions (tutorials), talks, and discussions. Our teachers include leading Woolf scholars and experienced Cambridge teachers. We will spend a week immersed in the great writings and ideas of Virginia Woolf.

Each day, there is a lecture, a supervision (tutorial), plus a further talk, reading and/or group discussion.

The supervisions are based loosely on the practice in Cambridge colleges, in which small groups of 3 or 4 people work with a skilled supervisor. This is a rare opportunity to look closely at Woolf’s writings, learn more about her historical and cultural context, and to improve your close reading skills.

We will explore how these novels engage, in their very different ways, with the natural world. We will also have several talks on other aspects of Woolf’s interest in nature.

Course dates: Thursday 9 July to Monday 13 July 2026.

Lecture list

Thursday 9 July 2026. Alison Hennegan, Women and Nature in Jacob’s Room (1922)
Friday 10 July 2026. Karina Jakubowicz, The Artist’s Garden in To the Lighthouse (1927)
Saturday 11 July 2026. Hollie Wells, Land and Sea in The Waves (1931)
Sunday 12 July 2026. Trudi Tate, The Weather in History: The Years (1937)
Monday 13 July 2026. Ellie Mitchell, Earth and Sky in Between the Acts (1941)

Talks

• Ann Kennedy Smith on Woolf, Rupert Brooke and the ‘Neo-Pagans’
• Harriet Baker on Nature writing in Virginia Woolf’s Asheham Diary
• Claudia Tobin on Monks House and Garden
• Birds in Woolf’s Writings (tbc)
Other talks and readings to be confirmed shortly

Provisional times

• Lectures - 10.00 to 11.00 am British Summer Time. We will make the lectures available to people in other time zones with pre-recorded lectures as needed.
• Supervisions (tutorials) - provisional times: 11.30 am–12.30 pm; 3.00-4.00 pm; 6.00–7.00 pm British Summer Time. Times will be finalised when we see how many people enrol and in which time zones. We aim to make it possible for people in all time zones to come to the supervisions at a reasonable time of day. The supervisions are at the heart of the course, allowing you to work in a very small group, guided by a supervisor.
• Talks and reading: approx. 2.00-2.45 British Summer time.
• Open group discussions (on 4 days), 5.00-6.00 British Summer Time

Lectures and talks will be recorded, so you can hear them again throughout the course. Lectures will also be pre-recorded, so that people in US time zones can hear them at a convenient time (probably the day before) ahead of the day’s supervisions. The supervisions are not recorded.

Time: Allow approximately 3.5 hours per day, plus some reading time. There will also be several sessions in which you can talk informally with other participants on Zoom.

Set Reading

Woolf, Jacob’s Room (1922)
Woolf, To the Lighthouse (1927)
Woolf, The Waves (1931)
Woolf, The Years (1937)
Woolf, Between the Acts (1941)

If possible, please buy the most recent Oxford World’s Classics editions of the novels, so we can all be on the same page in discussions. But if that’s difficult, don’t worry; any good edition will do.

Please support local and independent bookshops, or Bookshop.org or Hive.co.uk when buying books for our courses. Thank you.

Optional Further Reading

Woolf, ‘A Sketch of the Past’ in Moments of Being
Woolf, Diary. Read any sections which interest you, especially those from the times she is writing To the Lighthouse or The Waves.
Harriet Baker, Rural Hours: The Country Lives of Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Townsend Warner and Rosamond Lehmann (Allen Lane, 2024).
Hermione Lee, Virginia Woolf (biography)

Links

BBC Radio 3 Free Thinking discussion of ecocriticism: literature and nature (2021), with Lisa Mullen and others.
BBC Radio Radio 3 Free Thinking: recording of Hay Festival (2022) on Oceans and the Sea, with Nobel Prize winning writer Abdulrazak Gurnah and others.

Dates

Thursday 9 July to Monday 13 July 2026 (includes the weekend).

Course Fees (include VAT at 20%)

£590 - Full price
£550 - Members of the Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain
£550 - CAMcard holders
£540 - Students on a low income

This is the page for the live online summer course. The page for the summer course in Cambridge, 2-7 August 2026, is here.

Banner image: South Downs, Sussex by Zhi Xuan Hew, Unsplash
Cyanotype Jackdaw photos by Deborah Parkin.