Virginia Woolf – Objects, Things, Matter: Objects, Things, Matter(Virginia Woolf – Variations)

Virginia Woolf's deep and creative interest in materiality is not only illuminated by but precedes current theorisations of objects, things and matter among them, new materialism, object-oriented ontology and thing theory. Through both critical and creative engagements, contributors explore the possibilities and limitations of these theoretical accounts: what new readings they afford; what they say that Woolf has already shown us; and how Woolf goes beyond or can't be fully captured by these ideas. This volume thus gathers various, sometimes even contradictory, approaches on the topic; in turn, it emphasises congruences and tensions in theoretical, literary and cultural interpretations of Woolf's material investments. What emerges in Virginia Woolf Objects, Things, Matter is an account of how Woolf reveals things to be vital, active and strange by refiguring the relationship between subject and object and, at times, even inverting, subverting or redefining those very terms.

Table of Contents:
List of Figures Note on the Cover Acknowledgements Series Preface Abbreviations Notes on Contributors Introduction: Virginia Woolf – Objects, Things, Matter Laci Mattison Part I. Approaches to Objects, Things and Matter in Woolf 1. Virginia Woolf and Modernist New Materialism Derek Ryan 2. Jacob’s Im/material Form Geoff Bender 3. Inanimacy: Virginia Woolf’s Materialisms Maurizia Boscagli 4. ‘Of being herself invisible’: Object, Thing, Matter and Use in Mrs Dalloway and Three Guineas Ann Martin 5. A Toy Boat of Her Own: Gender, Play and Education in Virginia Woolf’s Writings Imola Nagy-Seres 6. Cotton, Race, Embodiment and ‘the thing itself’ in Woolf Jane Garrity 7. Virginia Woolf’s Misuse of ‘Cotton Wool’ in ‘A Sketch of the Past’: Writing the Wound Davi Pinho Part II. Object Experiments with Woolf 8. Object Lessons Shilo McGiff 9. Material Reading: Letterpress Printing with Woolf Ane Thon Knutsen 10. The Life of Monday or Tuesday Jane Goldman 11. More Surfaces: A Monologue, or the Queer Interiorities of a Gramophone James Brock 12. six Erik Fuhrer 13. Spider Kingdom Brandi George Part III. A Collection of Woolfian Things 14. The Jug in the Borderland Douglas Mao 15. ‘Enjoying this Immortal Rhythm’: Woolf and the Gramophone Aimée Gasston 16. The Ghostly Pencil Graham Fraser 17. ‘tremb tremulous fitful’: Missed Encounters in Mirrors Melissa Alexander 18. The ‘Vanished’ Walrus Pen-Wiper: Waste and the Animal Object Laci Mattison 19. Pointz Hall as Hyperobject: Woolf’s Deep Geological History in Between the Acts Leanna Lostoski-Ho Afterword: Upheavals of Matter Bill Brown Index

About the Author :
Laci Mattison is Associate Professor in the Department of Language and Literature at Florida Gulf Coast University. She is a Series Editor for Understanding Philosophy, Understanding Modernism and co-editor of Understanding Deleuze, Understanding Modernism (2014); Understanding Bergson, Understanding Modernism (2013); and The Routledge Companion to Virginia Woolf (forthcoming 2026).

Review :
This exciting collection constitutes an important landmark in work on Woolf and materiality. Mattison’s innovatively structured volume offers a vivid diversity of viewpoints and approaches, including theoretically focused essays, creative responses and close readings which collectively animate as never before Woolf’s engagement with things, objects and matter. Thinking through things has been fundamental to twenty-first century modernist studies so far. Deploying this new work in diverse ways, the pieces in Laci Mattison’s collection do things of their own with the matters and objects to be found in Woolf’s writing. A thought-provoking assemblage.