Footnotes

'I'M GETTING ON SLOWLY WITH MY PROOFS' – VIRGINIA WOOLF AT WORK ON THE FINAL STAGES OF THE YEARS. The Years had begun its life as a 'Novel-Essay' and was not only her longest, but her most heavily revised work, the final stage taking up most of 1936, and requiring that some 200 pages be cut. 'We had', as Leonard put it in his autobiography, 'a terrifying time with The Years in 1936' (vol.2, pp.299-302). An account of Virginia Woolf at work on The Years is given by Julia Briggs: 'The correction of galley proofs as a convenient mode of revision was more typical of the nineteenth century (before the advent of the typewriter) than the twentieth... Letters suggest that she had hopes to finish her revisions before September so that it could be published before Christmas... but missed the deadline through "another headache"... By September she was much better at first, but as the month wore on, she wrote herself out again... In October she took time off – "I must have a break before reading that vast shuffle of exhausted sentences"... and on 1 Nov. she "started to read the proofs"' (Virginia Woolf: An Inner Life, 2005, note p.483). The book was finally published on 15 March 1937; Peggy Belsher's copy being inscribed on 12 March 1937 (see below).

Included in the lot are six autograph and typed letters by Leonard Woolf to Miss Belsher; the first dated 1 February 1929, offering her the post of Assistant Secretary at the Hogarth Press ("...We would pay a salary of £125 a year to start off with and £150 after three months... The hours are 9.15 to 5, Saturdays 9.15 to 1, with every alternate Saturday off; one month's holiday in the year..."). On 7 May 1936 he writes her a letter of recommendation on leaving the Press where she has worked for eight years; and on the 29th thanks her for remembering them ("...We had a very pleasant time in Cornwall and it did Mrs Woolf good, although she is not yet really well and will have to be very careful until she has finished her book..."). On 27 April 1941 he thanks her for her letter of condolence ("...Mrs Woolf often spoke of you with affection. She had been fairly well until the end of last year. Then symptoms of the old nervous trouble came back & she became very depressed & convinced that this time she would not recover..."); the final letter dating from 1961 ("...I remember the last time I saw you, I think, was when Mrs Woolf and I came to tea with you in that part of London north of St Pancras... I go up to the Press for one day at least each week..."). Also included in the lot are two snapshots of her (one, family tradition has it, at the wheel of Leonard Woolf's car) and an autobiographical note; two snapshots of the Woolf dogs, Sally and Mitzi (one on a postcard to her from Leonard); and letters to her by Anne Olivia Bell, discussing her time at the Press.