‘The Life of Violet’: Three unearthed early stories where Virginia Woolf’s genius sparks to life

Few feelings are more thrilling for a literature scholar than unearthing an archival gem. Urmila Seshagiri, professor of English at the University of Tennessee, got to experience such a jolt when she was told about previously unseen typescripts of three short stories by Virginia Woolf.

These interconnected tales, written in 1907, comprise a mock biography of Woolf’s friend Mary Violet Dickinson, an independent woman who moved in aristocratic circles and who would be crucial to the development of Woolf’s early writing.

In 2022, Seshagiri was finally able to make the trip to Longleat House, a stately home in south-west England, and open up a cream-coloured case containing a polished version of the stories. Another set exists in the US at the New York Public Library, catalogued as Friendships Gallery (the title of the first story). However, to see these drafts reworked by Seshagiri gives them fresh editorial impetus.

It had previously been presumed these stories were a lighthearted footnote to Woolf’s canon in draft form, written as a joke for a friend rather than work to be taken seriously. But now they have been published, bound and critically contextualised for the first time as The Life of Violet: Three Early Stories.

A manifesto on female friendship

In contextualising these stories, Seshagiri introduces...

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