Diary entry for January 26, 1920
Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
Diary entry
January 26, 1920
The day after her thirty-eighth birthday, Woolf wrote in this diary that she had “arrived at some idea of a new form for a new novel.” With her ultimate goal to “enclose the human heart,” Woolf planned a new approach to the form: a novel with “no scaffolding; scarcely a brick to be seen; all crepuscular, but the heart, the passion, the humour, everything as bright as fire in the mist.” Wary of providing literary “entertainments,” Woolf acknowledged that she must still “grope & experiment” to develop her method. The as yet “Unwritten Novel” would take shape in the coming months as Jacob’s Room (1922).
: Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature
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