‘Betwixt and Between: Virginia Woolf and the Art of Craftsmanship’

Abstract

This paper will focus on Woolf as a literary practitioner and on two humble activities of hers, photo-cinematography and printing, which deeply influenced her approach to the ‘craft of words’ and helped her make of her humble publishing craft a hybrid revolutionary art. I will thus see in what ways Woolf was ceaselessly challenging the identity of literary creation as she exploited photography in Orlando, Flush and Three Guineas, mainly focusing on her use of amateur photography in Orlando and the home-made cover for Flush, as well as on the handmade scrapbooks that paved the way to the bold Three Guineas. Also analysing some of the stigmas in her texts (punctuation, typographical gaps, narratorial structure), I wish to underline that Woolf’s literary work can be considered as an elaborate montage reminiscent of both her practice of album composition and contemporary photo-cinematographic theories.

Keywords

• Virginia Woolf
• photography
• cinema
• photo-albums
• humility
• craftsmanship