The Hogarth Press - from hobby to cultural force

I've been looking into the history of the Hogarth Press and marvelling that what started as a therapeutic hobby for Virginia Woolf could grow under the skillful direction of her husband Leonard into a major cultural force which embraced literature, politics, and philosophy. Mind you, it helped that they were friends with some of the most creative intellectuals of the modernist movement at that time.

Most recently I've been annotating a series of pages featuring the original jacket covers from their publications. I'll post some of the more interesting of these here from time to time. Below is a small sample.

full gallery of Hogarth Press book jackets here

The Letters of Leonard Woolf

Leonard Woolf was one of the longest living (1880-1976) and the most distinguished members of the Bloomsbury Group. He was a writer, a publisher, a political activist, a proto environmentalist and animal lover, a loyal friend, cantankerous employer, and a devoted husband.What's not so well known about him is that in fact he had two 'wives' - the second technically married to somebody else - who happened to be his business partner. This definitive selection from his voluminous correspondence begins at Cambridge, with letters to his lifelong friend Lytton Strachey, and fellow apostles G.E.Moore and Saxon Sydney-Turner. The manner of these early writings is surprisingly arch, full of classical references and undergraduate Weltschmerz - though no doubt this reflects the turn-of-the-century social mood amongst such a privileged elite... Read more

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Leonard Woolf's Love Letters

Everybody knows that Leonard Woolf nursed his wife Virginia through periods of mental and physical illness, right up to the point of her suicide in 1941. What is not so well known is that he did this at the same time as being a full time journalist and author, a Labour Party activist responsible for the development of he League of Nations, and a successful commercial publisher in charge of the Hogarth Press. Even less well known is the fact that within twelve months of his wife's death he began a relationship with a woman which was to last for the rest of his life, right up to his own death in 1969. Not that there was anything wrong with his forming a new relationship - but the woman happened to be married to someone else. She was Trekkie Parsons, an artist and book illustrator, and her second husband Ian Parsons, a publisher with Chatto and Windus, eventually became Leonard Woolf's business partner ... Read more >>

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