“the Author disdained poetry”

Abstract

As a young woman, Virginia Stephen associated poetry with a patriarchal imagination, due to the overbearing declamations of her father, Leslie Stephen, the Cambridge education in poetry of her older brother, Thoby Stephen, and the misogynistic verse of her cousin J. K. Stephen. These family members’ love of poetry seemed of a piece with their participation in the world of educated, admired men, while their mental instability shaded poetry as perilous as well as patriarchal. This chapter examines the poetry in Virginia Stephen’s world, and ends by studying her early book reviews of poetry.