Saturday, March 20, 2010

Archive Sheds a Light on Virginia Woolf's Death


The Guardian highlights a recently opened Bloomsbury archive that highlights Clive Bell coming to terms with his sister-in-law's suicide.

From the piece...

One of the documents in the archive, which has been acquired by King's College Cambridge, sees Clive Bell writing to Partridge on 3 April 1941, shortly after Woolf's final disappearance. "I'm not sure whether the Times will by now have announced that Virginia is missing. I'm afraid there is not the slightest doubt that she drowned herself about noon last Friday," writes Bell. "She had left letters for Leonard and Vanessa [Woolf and Bell]. Her stick and footprints were found by the edge of the river. For some days, of course, we hoped against hope that she had wandered crazily away and might be discovered in a barn or a village shop. But by now all hope is abandoned; only, as the body has not been found, she cannot be considered dead legally."

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