Midorikawa and Sweeney challenge this. They were not reclusive, isolated or incapable of forming relationships, and female friendships should not be dismissed as frivolous, domestic, or fanciful. A Secret Sisterhood sets out to show the importance of the support, rivalry, and inspiration that characterises famous male literary friendships to these authors, in friendships that have been often overlooked by biographers and critics: ‘hidden alliances….until now, tantalisingly consigned to the shadows.’

In four sections, each three chapters long, we read of the unlikely friendship between Jane Austen and one of the family servants Anne Sharp, who was also a playwright. We ponder on how the lively voice of Charlotte Bronte may have been influenced by her relationship with the daring feminist author Mary Taylor. We see that across the Atlantic George Eliot and Harriet Beecher Stowe supported one another, and Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield’s multifaceted, highly charged and competitive friendship may well have been more complex than we first thought.

Their sources are previously unpublished letters and diaries. Letters shipped across oceans, jokes shared behind closed doors, and jibes delivered through male publishers. Whatever the reason for the friendship and the form that it took – helpful, inspiring, radical, scandalous or unpredictable – it’s clear that there was a depth of connection. They’ve done their research – thirty-five pages of notes and references mean that whilst aimed at the general reader, this book is sufficiently academic.

Cassandra destroyed many of Jane’s letters – why is still open to speculation – and so diaries by Anne Sharpe and Fanny have been used, offering an alternative angle to the usual one that we get. Austen focused a huge amount on class and the absurdities of convention – something that her friendship with a governess may have influenced. Education and literacy was a social leveller.

Woolf and Mansfield are usually considered enemies, not friends fuelled by cigarettes, tea and coffee. Woolf once compared Mansfield to ‘a civet cat that had taken to street-walking’ but underneath the salacious rivalry was a deep bond and connection. Woolf was hugely distress when she stumbled upon Mansfield’s negative review of Night and Day in the Athenaeum magazine, publicly criticising the second novel for failing to acknowledge the effects of the Great War. This review would eventually spur her on to produce some of her best work.

Similarly, not only did Mary Taylor call Charlotte Bronte ugly when they met in 1831 at Roe Head School, she was highly critical of Jane Eyre. Yet later on, the spirited advice of Taylor proved a fruitful mine for Bronte’s more political novels.

Many of the difficulties that these women faced centred around being recognised for what they produced on the page, not what they did off of it. It is therefore paradoxical that their talent for writing has caused us to be so fascinated with their lives. The book focuses on the effect of the friendships upon the writing, reinforcing the notion that art does not happen in a vacuum.

As well as the impact, these friendships had on their contemporaries, there’s a kind of historical friendship thread running vertically through the ages. For example, Woolf said of Austen that she had ‘less genius’ than Brontë but ‘got infinitely more said’ and Katherine Mansfield described Woolf’s Night and Day as ‘Miss Austen up to date’.

Although Sweeney and Midorikawa have written a fascinating account of the women’s lives, their argument that without this book the friendships would be lost to history seems a little stretched. In fact, it appears to be a conceit to bring in their own friendship, rather than anything else. Yet what they have done through the research is widen the ‘web of threads that linked these writers across generations, and vast expanses of land, sea and time’ and in doing so opened up a whole new world of literary wonder.

But why, in a paperless postmodern world would not only someone decide to create something as archaic as a zine, but would so many people get involved?

I decided to find out, and Séan was gracious enough to indulge my curiosity and let me know…

Why did you decide to create the zine?

Simply? A real love of Woolf, that has continued from my teenage years.

There is so much admiration for Virginia in the air, she’s like an electric current that crackles through academic dialogue and cuts into the bedrooms of moody teenagers with equal fervour. She’s an impasse, a connection, an inspiration. I wanted to bridge that gap, to make scholarship more accessible for everyone and to platform those who don’t have access to journals or conferences, their words are just as important. I wanted a big, exciting, fresh discussion of Woolf, that helps us think about her in different shades, as well as reminds us of the original colours which stamped her so deeply in our memories.

What has the response been like? Is it varied and a large community?

The response has been heart-warming. In just over a month the zine is fast approaching 1,000 followers on Twitter, and has a healthy readership. The community is rich in texture, lots of Modernists; some of my own personal academic icons have spoken about it, which has left me a little struck for words. Apart from that, it has brought the Woolfians out of the woodwork from all over the globe. Younger critics, older story tellers. The discussion is really open, and I am particularly proud of some of the non-traditional responses: the art, the reviews, the poetry.

What is your personal fascination with Woolf?

Woolf writes beautifully, first and foremost. Her work makes the everyday a spiritual experience, and I find that taps into how I think somehow – the way she sees the world as fragmented, broken, up for revision and interpretation. I also find Woolf’s politics interesting, and drew a lot of strength from her words as a teenager. Being queer and young is strange, because adults don’t often talk about gay people to children. Reading about intimacy between her characters helped me touch a history that was hidden from me, made me feel like part of something bigger. If Chloe likes Olivia, that is one thing. If you are given the opportunity find out, it’s quite another.

When did it begin and why?

Around 15. I was a very awkward teenager, as you might be able to tell. My English teacher, Mr Simpson, encouraged my love of reading and brought my attention to Woolf (for which I am very grateful). From there I found Ezra Pound, Mina Loy and H.D. – I was hooked, and now I’m working on a PhD in Modernist studies.  

As you note in your introductory letter in the first issue, it’s been over a century since the first novel, The Voyage Out was published. Why do you think Virginia Woolf continues to resonate?

Perhaps people will discourage me from saying this, but I don’t think there has been an English language writer as important to our literary cultural heritage as Shakespeare apart from Woolf. She is an institution. Multiple, difficult, readable, slippery, gifted. She tore at the fabric of writing and put it together in this ridiculously beautiful tapestry. We work and rework her constantly. This is especially interesting, considering her relatively early death. She wrote scored and scores, it’s almost unfathomable. Apart from this weight, her command of words is incredible, she writes in a way people can engage with, it’s aesthetic and meaty, a stellar rendering of some of our hardest feelings, she sets the complex in amber.

Does she speak to wider society, or is her role more for creative people, or those feeling marginalised in someway, such as due to mental health or gender? 

Woolf is there to be read, if you like her. There is no point in making someone an untouchable idol, she has a lot of issues: tensions of classism, antisemitism, and so forth. But there is something compelling about her work, and we must take the golden nuggets of truth where they fall, to lean on a reference. I grew up working class and relished her books, so I don’t think she is posturing in an inaccessible way, only open to academics or creatives.

Gender-wise, we must remain pithy. There are some amazing truths in Woolf that still ring clear, but society has moved and many of her lessons need to be expanded to include women she herself could marginalise: working class women, black women, Jewish women. If we see her as part of a longer, developing discussion however, she remains vital and useful. Read her with contemporaries such as Sojourner Truth and Nella Larsen, as well as with more modern writers like Judith Butler and bell hooks. Feminism challenges itself to be better all the time, Woolf did that in the early 20th century as she is challenged now.

I usually avoid a discussion of Woolf’s mental health problems too much. I don’t like to romanticise the death of people who are mentally unwell, especially considering the allegations of sexual abuse. I do think people can gain strength from her writing though. Reading about Septimus Smith helped me think about my own mental health at a young age, and he is a character I draw on whenever I feel at a loss even now. And, it was inspiring that a woman who struggled and faltered could still produce this amazing work, she pushed through and persevered.

What’s your favourite novel?

Of all time, D.H. Lawrence’s The Rainbow. If you haven’t read it, do. People think it’s mawkish, but I think it’s brilliant. Of Woolf’s, To The Lighthouse. I have the parenthesis from the line about Mrs Ramsay’s passing tattooed on my hip, it’s haunting in some ways, but it really reminds me to focus on what is important, especially little things, which I tend to forget about. Everything passes, so we have to enjoy it while we can.

Read the zine here, and look out for the second issue, Woolf and Others, in February. And ponder your submissions for Issue 3, Woolf and Politics.

It’s pouring with rain and my feet are soaked—a far cry from the beautiful June day in which Mrs Dalloway is set. Yet Rob Smith of London Footprints takes me on a journey that immerses me in Woolf’s novel, and not only shows me London or the book, but combines the two in an immersive way that oozes everything it has to offer. It’s what Footprints of London Literary Festival is all about. By walking London novels you get to inhabit the space lived in by the characters. It’s a way to experience London from inside the book.

Mrs Dalloway could not have been set in any other city. It’s not a book that is just about the urban environment, but of specific places, and we stop at key points mentioned in the novel. Yet through Woolf’s prose it’s also universal, and she manages to weave time, character, space, and feeling in a reach tapestry where the threads are constantly flapping for you to hold onto.

And so the walk starts at Westminster Tube so we can hear chimes of Big Ben that feature strongly in the story, marking out the rhythm of the day, and so important in a book where time flows back and forth. Every character has their own perspective on time and the city, and despite their regular rhythm there’s also a sense of shifting and timelessness.

The sound of Big Ben never fails to stir me, just like Clarissa who ‘For having lived in Westminster—How many years now? Over twenty—one feels even in the midst of the traffic, or waking at night, Clarissa was positive, a particular hush, or solemnity; an indescribable pause; a suspense (but that might be her heart, affected, they said, by influenza) before Big Ben strikes. There! Out it boomed. First a warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable. The leaden circles dissolved in the air.’

Walking on past St Margaret’s—which reminds Peter Walsh of a perfect hostess—like Clarissa, Rob and I discuss the political and social context in which women lived in the interim war era: ‘Women’s rights, that antediluvian topic.’ Ambitious and politically minded women may have been dismissed as ‘just hostesses’ but this was their way of having influence, and in this manner Clarissa evokes the lives of Margaret Asquith and her cohort.

The hierarchy of politicians, the badges of honour that wealth showed and the importance of connections and social circles were well known to Woolf, and whilst Clarissa is her own character, it’s clear that the writer’s experiences will have infiltrated the story. But whilst both Clarissa and Woolf were of very particular social circles, they were drawn into the lives of people around them and the spaces they were part of… ‘to know her, or any one, one must seek out the people who completed them; even the places. Odd affinities she had with people she had never spoken to, some woman in the street, some man behind a counter—even trees, or barns.’ On the walk you can’t help but think what your own relationship with London means.

After Westminster Abbey and the tomb of the unknown soldier, which has clear parallels to how Septimus feels, it’s a few steps to Deans Yard where Richard contemplates telling Clarissa he loves her but can’t find the words. ‘It is a thousand pities never to say what one feels.’ She writes, but it’s not at all easy. Language, like London, is another thing that seems so solid and fixed but also changes, and Woolf spoke of the inadequacy of language to express her emotions in her diaries and essays. Even someone with such literary and linguistic talent struggles to find the prose that really reflects the tumultuous internal emotional landscape, even as her prose flows worth her consciousness, and it’s important to remember how both places and our memories of them are ever changing.

We then cross Victoria Street where the immediacy of the moment delights Clarissa. It’s a busy road and the lights of cars in rush hour flash repeatedly, and it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and irritated by London in these moments. So often today we move around London with heads down and legs focused on getting to the destination that it can be easy to forget the wonder of the capital, and this walk offers a reminder.

But Clarissa embraces it. ‘Such fools we are, she thought, crossing Victoria Street. For Heaven only knows why one loves it so, how one sees it so, making it up, building it round one, tumbling it, creating it every moment afresh; but the veriest frumps, the most dejected of miseries sitting on doorsteps (drink their downfall) do the same; can’t be dealt with, she felt positive, by Acts of Parliament for that very reason: they love life. In people’s eyes, in the swing, tramp, and trudge; in the bellow and the uproar; the carriages, motor cars, omnibuses, vans, sandwich men shuffling and swinging; brass bands; barrel organs; in the triumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane overhead was what she loved; life; London; this moment in June.’

Then it’s into the beautiful St James Park where a lit up Buckingham Palace awaits us, and in the book Hugh meets Clarissa. ‘I love walking in London,’ said Mrs. Dalloway. ‘Really it’s better than walking in the country.’ I have to agree. We stop near the statue of Queen Victoria, where there is the cinematic sequence panning from the thoughts of one person to another. ‘This’, says Rob, is ‘one of the reasons I think it’s such a London book, it captures the idea that we are all experiencing this same space, but it can mean many different things to us.’ It’s how Clarissa can identify with a drunk, and a soldier, and other individuals with whom her experience quantitatively has nothing in common with, but through their physical and emotional location deep connections resonate.

The way those differences thread through the past and the future and are constantly being made becomes even more striking as we walk through Green Park and up to Devonshire House and Piccadilly. We enter into Clarissa’s mind and learn that ‘what she loved was this, here, now, in front of her; the fat lady in the cab. Did it matter then, she asked herself, walking towards Bond Street, did it matter that she must inevitably cease completely; all this must go on without her; did she resent it; or did it not become consoling to believe that death ended absolutely? but that somehow in the streets of London, on the ebb and flow of things, here, there, she survived, Peter survived, lived in each other, she being part, she was positive, of the trees at home; of the house there, ugly, rambling all to bits and pieces as it was; part of people she had never met; being laid out like a mist between the people she knew best, who lifted her on their branches as she had seen the trees lift the mist, but it spread ever so far, her life, herself.’ 

I shiver, and it’s not just because of the autumn rain. Both Rob and I love the idea that somehow we are all part of a London story ‘that will go on forever and in these streets we share space with people who lived long ago.’

That for me is the beauty of books, London, and exploring the two. Those connections that traverse space and time. The festival covers novels of completely different styles and focus but many share the idea of different Londoners sharing the same moment. Often participants go home and reread a book they thought they knew, but through their experience discover something else in. Whether it’s TS Eliot’s The Waste Land or Orwell’s dystopia, Jane Austen’s London or that of Bridget Jones, there’s something powerful in combining words, walking and the wonder of a city which we might live in but often forget to really be in.