Virginia Woolf, the Intellectual, and the Public Sphere

Virginia Woolf, the Intellectual, and the Public Sphere relates Woolf's literary reviews and essays to early twentieth-century debates about the value of 'highbrow' culture, the methods of instruction in universities and adult education, and the importance of an educated public for the realization of democratic goals. By focusing on Woolf's theories and practice of reading, Melba Cuddy-Keane refutes assumptions about Woolf's modernist elitism, revealing instead a writer who was pedagogically oriented, publicly engaged and committed to the ideal of classless intellectuals working together in reciprocal exchange. Woolf emerges as a stimulating theorist of the unconscious, of dialogic reading, of historicist criticism and of value judgments, while her theoretically informed but accessible prose challenges us to reflect on academic writing today. Combining a wealth of historical detail with a penetrating analysis of Woolf's essays, this 2003 study will alter our views of Woolf, of modernism and of intellectual work.

'… the book is highly recommended as a welcome addition to Woolfian scholarship.' Cercles, 'Cuddy-Keane's book should be required reading for anyone interested in the intellectual and cultural history of modernism. … Cuddy-Keane is always stimulating and thoughtful …' Modernism/Modernity, 'Only rarely does a book appear which suddenly and single-handedly reworks the critical terrain. Melba Cuddy-Keane's Virginia Woolf, the Intellectual and the Public Sphere is such a book. … thoughtful, illuminating … This book is an outstanding piece of scholarship: original, provocative, historically and theoretically grounded. Cuddy-Keane moves seamlessly between abstract concepts and the specifics of individual texts; her argument never seems forced. … Virginia Woolf, the Intellectual and the Public Sphere will have wide and lasting currency in Woolf studies.' Yearbook of English Studies, 'This book takes us further as critics of Woolf in its injunction to read Woolf's criticism within the development of a modernist history of ideas. Cuddy-Keane's overarching insight that Woolf's essays teach us, not only through their content but through their rhetorical strategies, to read and to think outside authoritative parameters emphasizes once again the subtle complexity of this modernist writer.' Georgia Johnston, Saint Louis University, 'Melba Cuddy-Keane's outstanding Virginia Woolf, the Intellectual and the Public Sphere puts to rest any lingering doubts about the significance of Woolf's criticism by delineating a new context in which to read it … elegantly argued … This is an important book, a smart book, and a well-written book.' Woolf Studies Annual

Melba Cuddy-Keane is Associate Professor of English and a Northrop Frye Scholar at the University of Toronto. She has written widely on Virginia Woolf and literary criticism.