Over seventy years after her death, the writings of Virginia Woolf are a source of continuing power and ever-increasing influence. Recognized in her own time and country as one of the most significant of the modernists, Woolf has achieved a stature, in the twenty-first century, of international prominence. Admired first in the era of New Criticism as a supreme formalist writer, Woolf has since been recognized as one of the foundational feminist writers of the twentieth century and as a writer whose works are dynamically engaged with the political, philosophical, historical and materialist issues of her time. Rather than being categorized and isolated as “high modernism,” her work is increasingly read as part of the complex and vibrant mix of writing in her time, and as a harbinger of many later debates and concerns. Woolf scholarship has correspondingly expanded to include a wide variety of interests: historical and cultural studies; feminist and gender studies; postcolonial studies; language and genre studies; and studies with a multitude of other foci such as intertextuality and adaptation, autobiography and biography, global reception, perception and cognition, and ethics, to name but a few. In recent years, one of the most productive fields of inquiry has involved scholarly work on original manuscripts and variant editions, and the documentation of historical and cultural allusions in her texts. Despite the ever-growing catalogue of writers in the large corpus of English literature, the writings of Virginia Woolf continue to provide a vibrant meeting place for scholars, creative writers, and readers around the world.

The International Virginia Woolf Society is devoted to encouraging and facilitating the scholarly study of, critical attention to, and general interest in, the work and career of Virginia Woolf, and to facilitate ways in which all people interested in her writings— scholars, critics, teachers, students, artists and general readers—may learn from one another, meet together, contact each other, and help one another. Find out more about our organization, activities, and Virginia Woolf herself by following the links at the top of this page.