REVIEW OF “ROOM,” THEATRICAL ADAPTATION OF VIRGINIA WOOLF

Review of Room

Editor’s Note: Patricia Laurence, Woolf scholar and professor of English at Brooklyn College, the City University of New York, attended the March 16 performance of Room and wrote this review.

Imagine a string of pearls–“moments of being”–from Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own and A Sketch of the Past strung together in a dramatic adaptation. This is the experience of attending Room, an admirable production mounted by the…

LILY BRISCOE’S CHINESE EYES: BLOOMSBURY, MODERNISM AND CHINA

Lily Briscoe’s Chinese Eyes traces the romance of Julian Bell, nephew of Virginia Woolf, and Ling Shuhua, a writer and painter Bell met while teaching at Wuhan University in China in 1935. Relying on a wide selection of previously unpublished writings, Patricia Laurence places Ling, often referred to as the Chinese Katherine Mansfield, squarely in the Bloomsbury constellation.

This book counters East-West polarities and suggests forms of understanding that counter prevailing contemporary post-colonial stances. It inaugurates a new…