Virginia Woolf’s Writing Desk by Yilin X.

Virginia Woolf’s writing desk is an oak desk with paint originally designed by herself. The table is customized as a 26.5*49.5*34.5 inches standing table. The bulk of the table is gray and off-white in color. Except for the topmost horizontal part, the desktop is tilted and divided into a left and right part and a middle panel. The center panel is lift-off, with shallower storage space underneath. Below the storage space, there is a drawer on the left and right sides. The desk had been Virginia Woolf’s writing desk since its completion (in the 1890s according to the description of the desk; 1907 according to the custodial history on the library website) and gone to Asheham and Monks House at Rodmell with her. She gave the desk to her nephew and biographer, Quentin Bell, in 1929. That is when he painted a portrait of Cleo, the muse of history in Greek mythology, holding a trumpet, on the desk (since the painting was done after Woolf gave the desk away, it does not help us with reading her). His wife, Anne Olivier Bell, shorted the table by 6 inches as it is now.

Virginia Woolf had finished many works during her possession of the desk, including The Voyage Out (1915), The Mark on the Wall (1917), Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), Jacob’s Room (1922), and Orlando (1928). There were scratches all over the desk and marks in the shape of what I identified as the bottom of an ink bottle. When the hand-written manuscript of Mrs. Dalloway, people find that most parts of this novel were written in purple ink.[1] She also used black and blue ink, which might explain the various ink bottle marks on the table.

In the description of the desk, Virginia Woolf made a special request that the desk should be a standing desk. Overall, the surface of the desk has a symmetrical pattern. The protrusion at the bottom of the desk’s surface allows the writer to put the pen down temporarily. Together with the tilt and the height, the desk seems to be a drawing board. And since she used it for over thirty years according to the description, we can assume that she might have paced during the writing and gazed at the manuscripts in the same way that a painter might look at a half-finished painting. Perhaps we can assume a standing desk offers more freedom and a sense of control than a sitting desk, and by association, expand the such comparison to the style of stream-of-consciousness writing.

The description mentioned that Virginia Woolf and Olivier Bell were both members of the Bloomsbury Group. It is a group of artists, writers, and intellectuals from wealthy backgrounds, who lived and worked in Bloomsbury, London, and shares similar values and ideas.[2] Virginia Woolf and her sister Vanessa Bell were both important members of the group.

[1] “A Masterpiece in Purple Ink,” Boundless (blog), accessed October 16, 2022, https://unbound.com/boundless/2019/06/19/a-masterpiece-in-purple-ink/.

[2] Tate, “Lifestyle and Legacy of the Bloomsbury Group,” Tate, accessed October 16, 2022, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/b/bloomsbury/lifestyle-lives-and-legacy-bloomsbury-group.