Virginia Woolf and E. M. Forster

THE BOWERS BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER 109 labours of Fredson Bowers and his team hold aloof from any kind of vulgar interest; they will not do much to bring the "Beaumont and Fletcher" plays back to the stage; perhaps only in the way they indicate act-division (and there, as we have seen, in a debatable fashion) do they suggest an interest in the plays as such. Even so, the completed work will give us this major canon in a form which will remain standard into any foreseeable future. (CLIPFORD LEECH) VIRGINIA WOOLF AND E. M. FORSTER' Between them, Virginia Woolf and E. M. Forster have been the subjects of some two dozen full-length studies. Both have been examined in books by distinguished critics, both have had special features of tbeir art studied in monographs, both have been used and re-used as thesis-fodder. An early question to be faced by any new work on either writer, then, is whether it has avoided being a mere rehash without becoming the embodiment of an idee-fixe. There should be little doubt that neither of these evils is to be found in Professor Guiguet's and Professor Stone's books. Both, in fact, are tbe most extensive studies that have been published on their authors. Each utilizes previous studies and each goes beyond them to comment in detail on writings of these authors rarely discussed by critics. Before concentrating on her novels, Guiguet has a crucial chapter analyzing the significance of Virginia Woolf's A Writer's Diary and another discussing her attitudes towards literature as expressed in her essays; after considering her fiction Guiguet goes on to comment on her biographies. Stone has one chapter on ForsterJs aesthetics, concentrating on Aspects of the Novel, another on his criticism, and still another-one of the most interesting-on his Alexandrian writings, which he studies as a stopping place along Forster's passage to India. Yet neither of these book is an exhaustive study. Guiguet's work had to proceed in something of a biographical void. Virginia Woolf and Her Works was originally published in France in 1962, before the parts of Leonard Woolfs autobiography that describe his wife had begun to appear. Guiguet's principal source of information about Virginia Woolf is A Writer's Diary but its extensive, unindicated cuts make it an unreliable guide to her life and character. This lack of biographical information is a large problem for a critic who believes that it is as illusory to study Virginia Woolf without taking into account her periods of insanity as it is "to approach . . . Poe IfoJcan Guiguet. Virginia Woolf and Her Works, trans. Jean Stewart. London: The Hogarth Press. [Toronto: Clarke, Irwin and Company Limited.] 1965. Pp. xii, 487. $9.90. Wilfred Stone, The Cave and the Mountain: A Study of E. M. Forster. Stanford. California: Stanford University Press. 1966. Pp. xii, 436. $8.95. 110 S. :P. ROSENBAUM without mentioning opium or dipsomania." (It is to be hoped that when the authorized biography of Virginia Woolf is completed it will discourage the kinds of legends that Poe still seems to be the butt of in France.) In contrast to Virginia Woolf and Her Worhs, Stone's study presents for the first rime a certain amount of information about Forster's background. The Stanford University Press's beautifully printed book includes striking photographs of the "originals" of the main symbols in Forster's fiction. Stone's own interviews with Forster supplement his thorough research. Where The Cave and the Mountain is noticeably incomplete, however, is in the matter of Forster's manuscripts. The holograph manuscript along with cancelled pages and revised passages of Forster's nrst novel is on deposit in King's College, Cambridge, and available for study; the University of Texas owns the manuscript of A Passage to India, including early partial drafts of the novel, notes, and two related fragmentary short stories. None of this material is discussed in The Cave and the Mountain though it would seem relevant to Stone's criticism. Manuscript versions of all of Virginia Woolf's major novels are preserved in public and university libraries and available to scholars, y...