Street Haunting: A London Adventure;Including the Essay 'Evening Over Sussex: Reflections in a Motor Car'

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Woolf delights in the Fantasy of imagining her life as other people. She dives so deeply into the imagined minds of others that it’s not clear to the reader which is fiction and which is reality. When she steps inside the shop for a pencil, she notes that the atmosphere of the room feels like the “distilled” essence of the people who own it. She believes that the two owners have been arguing, but it is at once resolved as she buys a pencil. The story ends and begins with the pencil, with a brief mention in the middle. However, the pencil serves as an excuse for Woolf to escape the confines of her domestic life and go on an adventure in the city streets. Individuality and Urban Anonymity Circumstances compel unity; for convenience’ sake a man must be a whole. The good citizen when he opens his door in the evening must be banker, golfer, husband, father; not a nomad wandering the desert, a mystic staring at the sky, a debauchee in the slums of San Francisco, a soldier heading a revolution, a pariah howling with scepticism and solitude. When he opens his door, he must run his fingers through his hair and put his umbrella in the stand like the rest" It is not surprising then, that throughout the intervening century and a half, numerous modern and contemporary writers have explored the iconic image of the flaneur, from Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway to Teju Cole’s Open City. In these works, the act of wandering a city often becomes a journey of self-discovery and inward reflection. All upcoming public events are going ahead as planned and you can find more information on our events blog

This book is a collection of ten essays, separated in three parts: the first part is about the art of writing, the second part is more lyrical and abstract, and the third part focuses on the city of London. I enjoyed some essays more than others, so instead of reviewing the collection as a whole, I’ll say a few words about each text. Reading as a diary entry, Street Haunting: A London Adventure includes imaginative observations and vivid reflections on city life. Woolf is widely known as one of the most influential modernist writers of the 20th century, and this classic essay offers a glimpse into the innerworkings of her brilliant mind.

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Of course, any attempt to sum up a writer will be partial. But to read Virginia's letters and diaries, to walk the same London streets, and to speak to those that knew her is the most rewarding way to approach her life and work. Her final letter to Leonard renders meaningless all the speculation and rumours which have surrounded Virginia since her death: suspicions of childhood abuse, sexual frigidity and lesbian tendencies, her childlessness and mental illness, the failure of her marriage. To me, Virginia's final words read more like a love letter than a suicide note: Her first novel, The Voyage Out, appeared in 1915, and she then worked through the transitional Night and Day (1919) to the highly experimental and impressionistic Jacob's Room (1922). From then on her fiction became a series of brilliant and extraordinarily varied experiments, each one searching for a fresh way of presenting the relationship between individual lives and the forces of society and history. She was particularly concerned with women's experience, not only in her novels but also in her essays and her two books of feminist polemic, A Room of One's Own (1929) and Three Guineas (1938). is reviewed between 08.30 to 16.30 Monday to Friday. We're experiencing a high volume of enquiries so it may take us Or is the end something rather different? The flâneur – a position in literary history hitherto reserved for men – describes a city-wanderer taken to the streets in search of inspiration. Encountering the shadow of a person who, it transpires, “is ourselves,” and asking the unanswered question “am I here, or am I there?” Woolf constructs an incorporeal, extra-temporal flâneuse who makes not merely a double-journey, but a triple: through space, time and the self. The Library's buildings remain fully open but some services are limited, including access to collection items. We're

Woolf also speaks of a juxtaposition with the inhabitants of the city and its appearance. Speaking of an experience in Mantua, Italy, Woolf refers to the ‘violent’ arguments she witnessed and being ‘fleeced’ when purchasing a china bowl, which is constantly balanced against the calm and serenity of the setting. The china bowl acts in the same way as the pencil for Woolf, being symbolic of one’s experience and invoking memory. There is a consistent sensory element to these objects that Woolf introduces to us, as though these objects are alive themselves.

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If, then, this is true - that books are of very different types, and that to read them rightly we have to bend our imaginations powerfully, first one way, then another - it is clear that reading is one of the most Tracy Seeley, Virginia Woolf’s “Street Haunting” and the Art of the Digressive Passage, Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction, Vol. 15, No. 1 (Spring 2013), pp. 149-160 A collection of short stories and essays; one of which was the best I HAVE EVER READ : Street haunting. Absolutely stunning. Throughout my reading I didn't stop wondering how someone can reach such literary perfection. I feel like I am slowly immersing myself into Woolf's world and her stream of consciousness style. I also read some scraps of the French translated version that I had within reach -available under the title " Au hasard des rues - Une aventure londonienne "- and I loved the translation.