• Virginia Woolf, Penguin Paperbacks, and Mass Publishing in Mid-Century Britain
• Vike Martina Plock (bio)

“I am anxious to obtain the author’s signature to enclose with my copies of ORLANDO and A ROOM OF ONE’S OWN. Could you possibly help me in my quest?”¹ In July 1946, Allen Lane, director of Penguin Books, approached Leonard Woolf with an unusual, some might say inappropriate, request. Four years earlier, Penguin Books had published a cheap paperback edition of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando (1928) and Lane’s company had also been given permission to republish A Room of One’s Own (1929) as a paperback in 1945. Since setting up his business in 1935, Lane had developed the habit of asking authors to sign one copy of a first Penguin edition of their books for him to keep. In Woolf’s case such autograph hunting was more complicated because the author had died in 1941. Unperturbed, Lane continued to request Woolf’s autographs from her widower, who sent Lane “old cheques” which contained her signature (D 1107/2159). Whenever a Woolf title appeared for the first time as a Penguin, Lane would paste Woolf’s signature into a book that would then be added to his rapidly expanding private collection (Figures 1 and 2).²

This article explores the financial, logistic, and ideological transactions that resulted in the re-packaging of Virginia Woolf as a mass-produced Penguin author, a process that began toward the end of her career and had been mostly seen through by the time of Leonard’s death in 1969. By turning to the so-far unexplored archival resources held at the University of Bristol, the article takes note of the different stages, key actors, and main considerations that contributed to Woolf’s gradual assimilation into Britain’s paperback industry. While Leonard would continue to publish her books under the Hogarth imprint, Lane’s company negotiated deals that allowed Penguin Books to gradually lease the rights to most of Woolf’s major works. As the archive reveals, financial considerations regularly determined decision-making processes on both sides, proffering uncomfortable suggestions that [End Page 238] Woolf’s cultural legacy was controlled by two men who had different, at times coordinated, views on how to package and circulate her authorial signatures for maximum profit. The un-authorized autographs in Lane’s first editions already evoke the image of called-off economic transactions: Woolf never sent the cheques she had signed and her own negotiations with Penguin Books were cut short in 1941. After her death, others stepped in to settle accounts for her. Anyone encountering them in the archive today would be aware of the act of cutting and pasting that had transposed her signatures into their new locations. The process of transposing them from husband to editor, from discarded check to posthumously published paperback, strongly evokes the idea of misappropriated cultural capital and unintended ownership. The materials in the Penguin archive work in support of critical narratives arguing that Woolf’s works were posthumously seized by a patriarchal, institutional culture she had repeatedly and vociferously criticized.

Woolf’s cut-out signature pasted into Lane’s first Penguin edition of Orlando (1942), Penguin Archive, Special Collections, University of Bristol, DM1107/481.

Woolf’s cut-out signature pasted into Lane’s first Penguin edition of A Room of One’s Own (1951), Penguin Archive, Special Collections, University of Bristol, DM1107/481.

While it acknowledges the logic and the importance of this feminist-inflected argument previously made by Woolf scholars, this article also hopes to bring it into conversation with a slightly different critical narrative about the construction of Woolf’s cultural afterlife in twentieth-century Britain. By examining Penguin-related archival materials through the lens of Woolf’s comments about book-reading and publishing and by reading them alongside existing records about her own professional encounters with Allen Lane and his company, I will suggest that Woolf’s step-by-step re-branding as a [End Page 239] Penguin author was a process broadly in line with her suggestions about the...

• 弗吉尼亚·伍尔夫、企鹅平装书和中世纪英国的大众出版
• 维克·玛蒂娜·普洛克 (bio)

“我急于获得作者的签名，以附上我的《奥兰多》和《自己的房间》。你能帮我完成我的任务吗？” ¹ 1946 年 7 月，企鹅出版社的董事艾伦·莱恩向伦纳德·伍尔夫提出了一个不寻常的、有些人可能会说不恰当的要求。四年前，企鹅出版社出版了弗吉尼亚·伍尔夫的《奥兰多》 （1928 年）的廉价平装版，莱恩的公司也获准重新出版《自己的房间》（1929 年）作为平装书于 1945 年出版。自从 1935 年创办公司以来，莱恩养成了要求作者签署他们书籍的第一版企鹅版的副本以供他保存的习惯。在伍尔夫的案例中，由于作者已于 1941 年去世，因此此类亲笔签名的搜寻更为复杂。莱恩不为所动，继续向她的鳏夫索要伍尔夫的亲笔签名，后者寄给了莱恩的“旧支票”，上面有她的签名（D 1107/2159）。每当伍尔夫的头衔第一次以企鹅的身份出现时，莱恩都会将伍尔夫的签名粘贴在一本书中，然后将其添加到他迅速扩大的私人收藏中（图 1 和图 2）。²

本文探讨了导致弗吉尼亚·伍尔夫（Virginia Woolf）被重新包装为大规模生产的企鹅作家的金融、物流和意识形态交易，这一过程开始于她职业生涯的尾声，并且在伦纳德的时代已经基本完成。 1969 年去世。通过转向布里斯托大学迄今尚未开发的档案资源，文章注意到了导致伍尔夫逐渐融入英国平装书行业的不同阶段、主要参与者和主要考虑因素。虽然伦纳德将继续以霍加斯的名义出版她的书，但莱恩的公司通过谈判达成了交易，允许企鹅图书逐步出租伍尔夫大部分主要作品的版权。正如档案所揭示的，财务考虑经常决定双方的决策过程，[结束第 238 页]伍尔夫的文化遗产由两个人控制，他们对如何包装和传播她的作者签名以获得最大利润有不同的、有时是协调的看法。莱恩第一版中未经授权的签名已经让人联想到经济交易被取消的形象：伍尔夫从未寄出她签署的支票，她自己与企鹅图书的谈判在 1941 年中断。在她去世后，其他人介入解决占她。今天在档案馆中遇到它们的任何人都会意识到剪切和粘贴的行为将她的签名转移到了新的位置。从丈夫到编辑，从废弃的支票到死后出版的平装本，这一过程强烈地唤起了挪用文化资本和无意所有权的想法。

伍尔夫的剪纸签名粘贴到莱恩的第一本企鹅版奥兰多（1942 年），企鹅档案馆，特别收藏，布里斯托大学，DM1107/481。

伍尔夫的剪纸签名粘贴到莱恩的第一本企鹅版《自己的房间》（1951 年），企鹅档案馆，特别收藏，布里斯托大学，DM1107/481。

虽然承认伍尔夫学者先前提出的这种女权主义观点的逻辑和重要性，但本文也希望将其与关于 20 世纪英国伍尔夫文化来世构建的略有不同的批判性叙述进行对话。通过从伍尔夫关于读书和出版的评论的角度检查企鹅相关的档案材料，并通过阅读这些材料以及她自己与艾伦·莱恩和他的公司的专业接触的现有记录，我将建议伍尔夫的一步一步重新-将品牌塑造为[End Page 239] Penguin 作者是一个大致符合她关于...的建议的过程