I’m still finding it hard to quite absorb how mentally sick Virginia was capable of becoming. But I’ve reached a point in the biography in which she is well again around 1916 to 18. The irony of this story is that her publisher was Gerald Duckworth, the half-brother who molested her when she was six. No wonder she hated him, and it was maybe because of him that the Woolfs bought their printing press and became …. self publishers. In James King’s biography he writes that ‘At the outset, Leonard hoped that typesetting would prove a pleasant diversion for his wife.’ [I should point out that they had servants to deal with cooking and cleaning, although not as many as her parents had]. ‘What he did not foresee was that their imprint would blossom into a major house. Eventually Virginia would become her own publisher and, in the process, liberate herself from the likes of Gerald Duckworth.’ Hurray!
Strong-hearted stories, dark & funny
