What Virginia Woolf’s Lost Essay Can Teach Us About City Life / Kayla Dean

When the padded envelope showed up in my mailbox in September, I tore it open immediately. At the time I’d just started research on my master’s thesis about Virginia Woolf and walking. Mrs. Dalloway intrigued me, as did To the Lighthouse and A Room of One’s Own. But Woolf’s short essays aren’t read as frequently, which is why The London Scene caught my attention while I paged through Goodreads for works by Virginia Woolf.

This collection wasn’t available at any of the bookstores in my area. The only way I could get a copy was a third-party seller who only sold used editions. The jacket copy informed me that I was holding the book’s only U.S. edition printed within the last three decades.

The London Scene, by Virginia Woolf

That night, I tore through those 77 pages. Woolf writes about everything from expectations when visiting the homes of famous authors to the distinct sensation of standing in Westminster Abbey. The map inside the front cover includes landmarks for armchair travelers: Hyde Park, St. Paul’s Cathedral, and Tower Bridge. A collection of six essays commissioned by Good Housekeeping in 1931, the series is more conversational than Woolf’s other work. Woolf invites us to walk London with her, moving us from the flânerie of wandering a street to the interiority of a drawing room. ... [mehr] https://electricliterature.com/what-virginia-woolfs-lost-essay-can-teach-us-about-city-life-46f34d3ab07a