LOTRINGER, Sylvère; GRAFF, Jeanne (ed.)
On Virginia Woolf: Sylvère Lotringer’s Interviews with Members of the Bloomsbury Group, 1961

Vita Sackville-West: Would you prefer that I speak in French or in English?
Sylvère Lotringer: If French is easy for you, then go ahead, but if you are having a hard time finding the right words, you can use English.
Vita Sackville-West: It would be easier for me in English, but I’ll do my best.

In April 1961, while on a student-exchange year in Scotland, Sylvère Lotringer proposed to cover the 20th anniversary of Virginia Woolf’s death for the Parisian literary monthly Les lettres françaises. Riding by Vespa to London, Hilton Hall, and Sissinghurst Castle, Lotringer sought out a who’s who of Woolf’s living contemporaries from the Bloomsbury group—the early 20th-century modernist literary circle of which she was “essentially the essence,” as T. S. Eliot fondly reminisces here. In addition to Eliot, Lotringer interviewed Woolf’s husband Leonard Woolf, with whom he would become close, and the authors David Garnett and Vita Sackville-West.

For the first time ever, On Virginia Woolf publishes Lotringer’s interview transcripts (and documentary photographs) from 1961, all of which editor Jeanne Graff rediscovered among his papers at NYU’s Fales Library and devotedly transcribed in 2024. This book is a poetic tribute from Graff to her late friend and mentor; a portrait of Lotringer as a young intellectual, cultivating the art of the interview; and a unique addition to scholarship on Virginia Woolf.

[publishers’ note]

Published by Semiotext(e), 2025
Design by Hedi El-Kholti
Chapbooks / Conversations / Documents / Literature / Art History / Scenes