Frances Spalding, Canvas, (Issue 35):
‘ …the argument is seamed with brilliant insights, and, if you stay the course,your future visits to Charleston and Monk’s House will be immeasurably enriched and your experience of them profoundly altered.’
‘ … and the chapter on the gardens of both houses is sheer heaven’
Marion Dell, The Virginia Woolf Bulletin, (Issue No. 42):
‘Hancock’s deep affinity with both houses is evident in this compelling and very elegantly written book.
…(her) experience of these two museum houses, and her own skill as a writer, have resulted in a fascinating book that fuses a loving, lyrical, intimate and subjective response with rigorous, objective, academic analysis and theoretical research. It will appeal to the devotee of the biographies and works of Woolf and Vanessa Bell, the common reader or viewer, and to the scholar engaged in the burgeoning area of material and cultural Museum Studies.’
‘Readers of this book will never walk around Charleston or Monk’s House and their gardens in the same way again -or indeed, I suspect, around any museum house. I was left eagerly anticipating another reading of this thought-provoking, multi- layered book, and yet another visit to these endlessly fascinating houses’
Amber K. Regis, Times Literary Supplement, October 25 2013 ‘A fascinating account of Bloomsbury and domestic space, traced through Bell’s Art, Woolf’s prose and the tourist industry built on their lives.
‘……. A seductive, evocative account of the sisters, their entangled lives and their domestic, material legacies’
From the Back Cover
¬¬‘This extraordinarily evocative book not only draws us into the lives of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell with empathy and sensitivity, but also provides a richly textured new viewpoint on house museums. Anyone interested in spaces, objects and interpretation in the museum would find their perspective invigorated by reading it.’Sandra Dudley, School of Museum Studies, University of Leicester‘Hancock sensually evokes the materiality of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell’s lives and houses. Like a detective writer, she unveils the vivid histories of Charleston and Monk’s House in fascinating detail.’Maggie Humm, University of East London, Author of Modernist Women and Snapshots of Bloomsbury and Editor of The Edinburgh Companion to Virginia Woolf and the ArtsThe interwoven biographies of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell, narrated through the spaces of their ‘sister’ house museumsWhat can we learn from a commemorative house? What biographical narratives emerge as we travel through the spaces of another’s intimate inhabitation? This compelling new study unveils the revelatory potential of the house museum to inform and enrich our understanding of the lived past of its former inhabitants. It focuses on the redolent, the emotionally textured interiors of Charleston and Monk’s House, the literary/artistic house museums of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell, seeking out traces of their shared biography. Fresh perspectives unfold on the sisterhood of Woolf and Bell and their continuous artistic exchange, as we shadow their daily lives through the richly painted rooms and atmospheric gardens of their former Sussex homes. Discover these celebrated artists in a different light – animated, moving and gestural, handling the materials of their related arts and brought vividly to life through the tangible fabric of their past living.Nuala Hancock is a writer and researcher whose work explores the interrelated fields of architecture and garden history, art and literature. Her recent work has centred on the correspondence between biography, space and place. She has published in the areas of museum studies, garden history and Woolf scholarship.Jacket images:Front cover: The Garden Room, Charleston, photograph by Penelope Fewster © Courtesy of The Charleston Trust; Monk’s House sitting room, image ref: NTPL 5733 ©NTPL/Eric CrichtonBack cover: Virginia Woolf, Monk’s House. Photographs (MS Thr 564) © Harvard Theatre Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard University; Vanessa Bell seated outside the drawing room at Charleston, 1926 © Tate ArchiveJacket design:[EUP logo]www.euppublishing.comISBN 978-0-7486-4673-9 [please add within the barcode box, at the top]Barcode
About the Author
Nuala Hancock is a writer and researcher whose work explores the interrelated fields of architecture and garden history, art and literature. Her recent work has centred on the correspondence between biography, space and place. She has published in the areas of Museum Studies, Garden History and Woolf Scholarship. Her writing on Virginia Woolf includes a chapter on ‘Virginia Woolf and Gardens’ in The Edinburgh Companion to Virginia Woolf and the Arts, edited by Maggie Humm (EUP, 2010).
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