Odd Affinities

A new reading of Virginia Woolf in the context of “long modernism.” In recent decades, Virginia Woolf’s contribution to literary history has been located primarily within a female tradition. Elizabeth Abel dislodges Woolf from her iconic place within this tradition to uncover her shadowy presence in other literary genealogies. Abel elicits unexpected echoes of Woolf in four major writers from diverse cultural contexts: Nella Larsen, James Baldwin, Roland Barthes, and W. G. Sebald. By mappin