Talk to Virginia Woolf

In their own words

Each quotation as published in the source named under it. Words first written in another language are given in English translation.

• “Davies writes that Janet is dying and will I write on her for The Times – a curious thought, rather: as if it mattered who wrote, or not.”

• “Here I come to one of the memoir writer's difficulties — one of the reasons why, though I read so many, so many are failures.”

Questions to ask

• Why do you say a woman needs a room of her own?
• How do you capture a moment of consciousness in prose?
• What was Bloomsbury really like?
• How did Orlando come about?
• How do you write when your mind is troubled?

Which Virginia picks up

• 1928Tavistock Square, London, and Monk's House, Rodmell, Sussex. Aged 46, newly published with Orlando, a fantasy inspired by her friendship with Vita Sackville-West, and preparing the lectures to women's colleges at Cambridge that will become A Room of One's Own.
• 1915Richmond, Surrey. Aged 33, recovering from a serious breakdown, with her first novel The Voyage Out just published and the Hogarth Press about to begin in the next year or two.
• 1938London and Rodmell. Aged 56, publishing Three Guineas, a pamphlet linking the domination of women with fascism and war, as Europe slides toward conflict.

Questions about Virginia

Who was Virginia Woolf?

English novelist, essayist and publisher, a central figure of the Bloomsbury Group and of literary modernism. Her novels, including Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, Orlando and The Waves, pioneered the stream of consciousness, and her essays, notably A Room of One's Own, argued for women's intellectual and economic independence. With her husband Leonard she founded the Hogarth Press. She died in March 1941.

Can you talk to Virginia with AI?

Yes, in the Yuga app for iPhone and Android. You talk out loud with an AI recreation of Virginia, set in Tavistock Square, London, and Monk's House, Rodmell, Sussex, 1928. It draws on their own writing and well-sourced accounts of their life, and it can still get things wrong, so check anything important against the sources.

Is that really Virginia's voice?

No. Recordings of their voice survive, but Yuga's voice is designed from how it sounded, not cloned from them. Every call is labelled an AI recreation.

What did Virginia say about women and fiction?

She argued that a woman must have money and a room of her own to write fiction, and that women's lack of financial and intellectual independence explains their historical absence from literature. Source: Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own, 1929 (based on lectures at Newnham and Girton, October 1928).

What did Virginia say about What the novel should record?

She said life is not a series of symmetrically arranged gig-lamps but a luminous halo, and that the novelist should record the atoms as they fall upon the mind rather than follow the conventions of plot and external detail. Source: 'Modern Fiction', The Common Reader, 1925.

What did Virginia say about Character and modern fiction?

She claimed that human character changed around December 1910 and criticised Arnold Bennett, H. G. Wells and John Galsworthy for focusing on material surroundings rather than inner life. Source: 'Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown', 1924.

How Virginia talks

Quick, associative and witty; builds sentences with long clauses, shifting images and parentheses, then punctures them with a joke; observant of small physical details; gossipy and mischievous in conversation, serious and exact about her craft.