The making of A Writer's Diary: Being Extracts from the Diary of Virginia Woolf

• Published in: Textual practice 2011-12, Vol.25 (6), p.1033-1050
• Main Author: Briggs, Kate
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: genetic criticism; Literary creation; the history of the book; the modern writer
• ISSN: 0950-236X; 1470-1308
• DOI: 10.1080/0950236X.2011.618459

A Writer's Diary (1953) is now generally considered an unfortunate and ill-conceived moment in the posthumous editing of the work of Virginia Woolf. Yet this article shows how early reviewers (among them Elizabeth Bowen and Maurice Blanchot) were uniquely alive to the specificity and the significance of Leonard Woolf's project. The book that Leonard Woolf literally cut out of his wife's diaries partakes of a special category of diary, one that announces its distinctiveness not only from the diaries of non-writers but also, as the subtitle suggests, from the diary of the writer: it purports to be a record of the 'life' of his wife's books. While the article questions the legitimacy of that category in the light of current interest in the processes of literary creation, as typified by genetic criticism, it also draws on the insights of Bowen, Blanchot, and others to make a case for the conceptual value of Leonard Woolf's made-up book.