Virginia Woolf’s Good Housekeeping Essays

Christine Reynier is Professor of English Literature at the University Paul-Valéry Montpellier3, France. She is the author of Virginia Woolf's Ethics of the Short Story (Palgrave 2009) and a number of articles on modernist writers (Ford Madox Ford, Rebecca West, Virginia Woolf, etc.). She is co-editor (with M. Duyck and M. Basseler) of Reframing the Modernist Short Story (Journal of the Short Story in English, 2015) and (with B. Coste and C. Delyfer) of Reconnecting Aestheticism and Modernism (Routledge, 2017).

• ContentsIntroductionWoolf’s essays and their critical appraisal. Woolf’s essays in Good Housekeeping magazine. Composition, publication, reception The purpose of the bookPart I: The Good Housekeeping Essays as Intermedial essaysChapter One The humble art of description in the ‘Six Articles on London life’IntroductionThe documentary impulse Practicing the art of description in ‘The Docks of London’ and ‘Oxford Street Tide’Renewing the art of description in Good Housekeeping magazineDeveloping the ‘critical attitude’ConclusionChapter TwoThe Art of photography in the Good Housekeeping essays‘The Docks of London’ as an apparatus for the other essaysThe photographic method in ‘Great Men’s Houses’ The photographic method in ‘Abbeys and Cathedrals’Chapter Three The art of architecture in the Good Housekeeping essaysRedefining architecture as democracy in ‘This is the House of Commons’ and ‘Portrait of a Londoner’Intermediality and Woolf’s ethics of doubtConstructing the essay as an intermedial formPart II: ‘The Common Pool’Chapter Four Woolf’s ghosts in the Good Housekeeping essaysWoolf’s plea for democracy: a dialogue with her forebearsThe intermedial dialogue with John Ruskin‘Adaptive reuse’ and the political debates of the 1930s Chapter FiveVirginia Woolf and HeritageWoolf’s survival theoryPoverty as usus: the ‘common pool’An ethical posture?Poverty as an economic and aesthetic conceptWoolf and BenjaminPart III Reassessing the Good Housekeeping essaysChapter 6The Good Housekeeping essays as cultural and creative essaysThe Good Housekeeping essays as part and parcel of Woolf’s essaysThe theoretical thrust of Woolf’s essays Woolf’s ‘humble’ theory Chapter SevenThe Good Housekeeping essays at the crossroadsThe photographic turnImplementing the theory of ususConstructing history as trace The political turnConclusionThe Good Housekeeping essays and The Arcades ProjectStraddling the divide between high and low culture