10/30/2025
In 1907, several years before publishing her first novel, famed English writer Virginia Woolf penned three short stories telling a fictionalized version of the life of her closest friend, Violet Dickinson. She shared rough drafts only among friends before abandoning the venture altogether.
Or at least, that’s what many Woolf scholars assumed until Urmila Seshagiri, a professor of English at the University of Tennessee, discovered a revised manuscript hidden away in a private collection in southern England.
“When I reached the last page of the last story, then I knew, yes, I have found something whose existence is unknown to readers of Woolf to wolf scholars,” Seshagiri said. “And this matters, and I want people to read these stories.”
Together, these stories - Woolf’s earliest works of fiction - explore themes the novelist would explore in her later works. The narratives tell a story of friendship and freedom, capturing a young woman’s search for identity in Victorian England.
“I hope that readers enjoy them and take their own opinions away from them and decide what these small, well formed early stories teach us about what Woolf was doing in writing the life of violet,” Seshagiri said.
After spending several years editing the stories for print, Seshagiri has published them in a collection titled “The Life of Violet: Three Early Stories,” which is available now from Princeton University Press.
Learn more about Dr. Seshagiri's work at the link ->https://bit.ly/47DfQsj or on the WUOT mobile app.
✍️/📸: Pierce Gentry, WUOT News
