Nuala Hancock - Charleston and Monks House: The Intimate House Museums of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell

CHARLESTON AND MONKS HOUSE

For Ethna,
who always encouraged

CHARLESTON AND
MONKS HOUSE

The Intimate House Museums of
Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell

Nuala Hancock

EDINBURGH
University Press

Nuala Hancock, 2012

Edinburgh University Press Ltd
22 George Square, Edinburgh EH8 9LF

www.euppublishing.com

Typeset in 11 on 13pt Times NR MT
by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire, and
printed and bound in Great Britain by
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A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 0 7486 4673 9 (hardback)
ISBN 978 0 7486 4674 6 (webready PDF)
ISBN 978 0 7486 6484 9 (epub)
ISBN 978 0 7486 6483 2 (Amazon ebook)

The right of Nuala Hancock
to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted in accordance with
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

CONTENTS

LIST OF FIGURES

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am immensely grateful to the Charleston Trust and to the English department at the University of Sussex for inviting me to take up a research residency at Charleston in 2005, and to the Arts and Humanities Research Council who funded my research for the first three years of its duration.

This book arises from that privileged opportunity.

I would like to thank, in particular, Wendy Hitchmough, curator at Charleston, for the warmth of her welcome, her facilitating access to and guidance through the collection, her Bloomsbury erudition, and her unfalteringly generous support of this study, from inception to publication.

My warmest thanks are also due to Elena Gualtieri at the University of Sussex, for our stimulating discussions, her meticulous reading of my work and her astute academic guidance.

I am immensely grateful to Anne Olivier Bell and Angelica Garnett, for the live testimony that they have added to my work.

Thank you to Colin McKenzie, and to everyone at Charleston, for accommodating and encouraging me so generously. Particular thanks to Mark Divall, Tony Tree, Maggy Tyhurst, and to all my guiding friends.

Warm thanks, also, to the staff at the Special Collections Department at the University of Sussex library, and the National Trust Archive at Scotney Castle. Research becomes a deep pleasure when supported by such accomplished facilitators.

I am indebted to Peter Miall for giving so generously of his time and his knowledge about the history of Charleston and Monks House as house museums, and to Bet Inglis for her invaluable guidance.

I am grateful to the following for permission to quote from unpublished copyright sources: Henrietta Garnett for Vanessa Bells letters; the University of Sussex Library Special Collections and the Society of Authors for the Leonard Woolf Papers; the Special Collections at Sussex and Curtis Brown for Nigel Nicolsons letters; the National Trust for the Monks House papers at their archive at Scotney Castle.

I would like to thank Gill Lowe and Vara Neverow for permission to include a revised version of an article for the