SUSSEX, England — Ouch!
Virginia Woolf’s remarks could be sharp, even when aimed at people she clearly admired. “I’ve got a confession to make,” she once wrote. “I’m going to marry Leonard Wolf [correct spelling: Woolf]. He’s a penniless Jew. I’m more happy than anyone ever said was possible.” Was that said from a lofty perch or not? After all, she was the daughter of the distinguished author Sir Leslie Stephen, hem hem.
“Wolf” and she did marry. Both were writers, and among the notable results of their partnership was the decision to start a small press that would eventually become something much larger than its modest beginnings suggested.
That press was the Hogarth Press, and its story is now being explored in an exhibition housed in a farmhouse firmly rooted in Woolf territory, at the Firle Estate in Sussex. In 1916, Virginia was walking on the Downs, the smooth ridge of hills along that stretch of the English coast, when she spotted from above a house that later came to be known as “Charleston.”
It was once a farmhouse, accompanied by a sheep barn and a threshing barn. Virginia suggested it to her sister, the painter Vanessa Bell, who was searching for a place to live. Vanessa, a conscientious objector, had left London to do manual labor on a farm as penance for defying a country at war. She and Duncan Grant purchased the property, which became their off-and-on home for more than 50 years. Over time, they filled it with many intriguing visitors, mostly artists and writers, some of whom stayed there for periods. They became known as the Bloomsbury Group.
Now, in a building that seems almost to lean against Charleston, the exhibition presents about 200 books published by the Hogarth Press, tracing the press’s history from its beginnings in 1917.
