''The London Scene'' is the name given to a series of six essays that

Virginia Woolf Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer, considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device. Woolf was born i ...

wrote for ''

Good Housekeeping ''Good Housekeeping'' is an American women's magazine featuring articles about women's interests, product testing by The Good Housekeeping Institute, recipes, diet, and health, as well as literary articles. It is well known for the "Good House ...

'' magazine in 1931 and 1932. The title was not chosen by Woolf but comes from the 1975 republication of five of the essays. Originally the essays were referred to as 'Six Articles on London Life'.

Essays

The Docks of London

This was the first of the essays published in the series that Woolf wrote for ''Good Housekeeping'' and was published in the December 1931 issue of the magazine (volume 20, issue 4). In the essay, Woolf describes visiting the

Port of London The Port of London is that part of the River Thames in England lying between Teddington Lock and the defined boundary (since 1968, a line drawn from Foulness Point in Essex via Gunfleet Old Lighthouse to Warden Point in Kent) with the North Sea ...

, at the time the

World's largest port The world's busiest ports include: *List of busiest ports by cargo tonnage *List of countries by container port traffic *List of busiest container ports This article lists the world's busiest container ports (ports with container terminals tha ...

. The essay imagines a trip along the

River Thames The River Thames ( ), known alternatively in parts as the The Isis, River Isis, is a river that flows through southern England including London. At , it is the longest river entirely in England and the Longest rivers of the United Kingdom, se ...

and describes the sites of industry and trade that would be seen along the way, as well as the environmental consequences. The essay was based on Woolf's trip to the port earlier in 1931, where she accompanied the

Persian Persian may refer to: * People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language ** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples ** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...

ambassador.

The Oxford Street Tide

This second essay was published in the January 1932 issue of ''Good Housekeeping'' (volume 20, issue 5). Here, the narrator of the essay describes the busy streets and

Department Stores A department store is a retail establishment offering a wide range of consumer goods in different areas of the store, each area ("department") specializing in a product category. In modern major cities, the department store made a dramatic appea ...

Oxford Street Oxford Street is a major road in the City of Westminster in the West End of London, running from Tottenham Court Road to Marble Arch via Oxford Circus. It is Europe's busiest shopping street, with around half a million daily visitors, and as ...

. Woolf emphasises the ephemerality of modernity and the rise of consumerism, describing its allure and charm but also its potential vacuity.

Great Men's Houses

This essay was published in the March 1932 issue of ''Good Housekeeping'' (volume 21, issue 1). In it, Woolf describes visiting the houses of

Thomas Thomas may refer to: People * List of people with given name Thomas * Thomas (name) * Thomas (surname) * Saint Thomas (disambiguation) * Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, and Doctor of the Church * Thomas the Ap ...

and

Jane Welsh Carlyle Jane Baillie Carlyle ( Welsh; 14 July 1801 – 21 April 1866) was a Scottish writer and the wife of Thomas Carlyle. She did not publish any work in her lifetime, but she was widely seen as an extraordinary letter writer. Virginia Woolf ca ...

at 5

Cheyne Row Cheyne Row is a residential street in Chelsea, London. It runs roughly north to south from the crossroads with Upper Cheyne Row, where it becomes Glebe Place, leading down to a t-junction with Cheyne Walk which forms an embankment of the River ...

and the house of

John Keats John Keats (31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821) was an English poet of the second generation of Romantic poets, with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. His poems had been in publication for less than four years when he died of tuberculo ...

Hampstead Hampstead () is an area in London, which lies northwest of Charing Cross, and extends from Watling Street, the A5 road (Roman Watling Street) to Hampstead Heath, a large, hilly expanse of parkland. The area forms the northwest part of the Lon ...

. The essay finishes with a description of looking down at London from the top of

Hampstead Heath Hampstead Heath (locally known simply as the Heath) is an ancient heath in London, spanning . This grassy public space sits astride a sandy ridge, one of the highest points in London, running from Hampstead to Highgate, which rests on a band o ...

Abbeys and Cathedrals

This essay was published in the May 1932 issue of ''Good Housekeeping'' (volume 21, issue 3). Woolf describes her experience of visiting

St Paul's Cathedral St Paul's Cathedral is an Anglican cathedral in London and is the seat of the Bishop of London. The cathedral serves as the mother church of the Diocese of London. It is on Ludgate Hill at the highest point of the City of London and is a Grad ...

Westminster Abbey Westminster Abbey, formally titled the Collegiate Church of Saint Peter at Westminster, is an historic, mainly Gothic church in the City of Westminster, London, England, just to the west of the Palace of Westminster. It is one of the United ...

and

St Clement Danes St Clement Danes is an Anglican church in the City of Westminster, London. It is situated outside the Royal Courts of Justice on the Strand. Although the first church on the site was reputedly founded in the 9th century by the Danes, the current ...

"This Is The House of Commons"

This essay was published in the October 1932 issue of ''Good Housekeeping'' (volume 21, issue 9). Here, Woolf describes a trip to the

House of Commons The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of parliament. ...

inside the

Palace of Westminster The Palace of Westminster serves as the meeting place for both the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, House of Commons and the House of Lords, the two houses of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Informally known as the Houses of Parli ...

. Comparing contemporary politicians, such as

Ramsay MacDonald James Ramsay MacDonald (; 12 October 18669 November 1937) was a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, the first who belonged to the Labour Party, leading minority Labour governments for nine months in 1924 ...

and

Stanley Baldwin Stanley Baldwin, 1st Earl Baldwin of Bewdley, (3 August 186714 December 1947) was a British Conservative Party politician who dominated the government of the United Kingdom between the world wars, serving as prime minister on three occasions, ...

, to those of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, Woolf suggests that politics has become less about the personality of great leaders. "The days of single men and personal power are over," she writes. As Sonita Sarker writes, this is the only essay which has its title in quotation marks and suggests the voice of a tour guide or an awestruck sightseer.

Portrait of a Londoner

This essay was published in the December 1932 issue of ''Good Housekeeping'' (volume 21, issue 11). This essay differs from the others as it does not describe a public place within the capital, but the drawing room of a woman that Woolf describes as a "true

Cockney Cockney is an accent and dialect of English, mainly spoken in London and its environs, particularly by working-class and lower middle-class Londoners. The term "Cockney" has traditionally been used to describe a person from the East End, or b ...

", named Mrs Crowe.Woolf, 67. The short pen portrait begins with a short description of Mrs Crowe's modest home and goes on to outline the steady stream of guests she would welcome into her home. The essay concludes by describing how, now Mrs Crowe has died, London will never be the same again.

Publication History

In 1975, the American publisher Frank Hallman, with permission from

Angelica Garnett Angelica Vanessa Garnett (née Bell; 25 December 1918 – 4 May 2012), was a British writer, painter and artist. She was the author of the memoir ''Deceived with Kindness'' (1984), an account of her experience growing up at the heart of t ...

and

Quentin Bell Quentin Claudian Stephen Bell (19 August 1910 – 16 December 1996) was an English art historian and author. Early life Bell was born in London, the son of Clive Bell and Vanessa Bell (née Stephen), and the nephew of Virginia Woolf (née Ste ...

, republished the first five essays as a book, giving the collection its title, ''The London Scene''. This edition was reprinted by

Random House Random House is an American book publisher and the largest general-interest paperback publisher in the world. The company has several independently managed subsidiaries around the world. It is part of Penguin Random House, which is owned by Germ ...

and the

Hogarth Press The Hogarth Press is a book publishing imprint of Penguin Random House that was founded as an independent company in 1917 by British authors Leonard Woolf and Virginia Woolf. It was named after their house in Richmond (then in Surrey and now ...

in 1982. It is not known why 'Portrait of a Londoner' was not included in this edition. It has been suggested that Angelica and Quentin may have wished for it to be omitted, but this assertion has also been disputed. In 2004, 'Portrait of a Londoner' was claimed to have been rediscovered and was reprinted in ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'' newspaper. However, the essay had been included in the third edition of B. J. Kirkpatrick's ''A Bibliography of Virginia Woolf'' in 1980 and so its existence was public knowledge, although less well-known than the other essays. A complete edition of ''The London Scene'' was published for the first time in 2004 by the publisher Snowbooks in their 'Signature Series'. In 2013, ''The London Scene'' was again republished in full, this time by

Daunt Books Daunt Books is a chain of bookshops in England, founded in 1990 by James Daunt. It originally specialised in travel books. In 2010, it began publishing. James Daunt later became CEO of Waterstones and the US bookstore chain Barnes & Noble. Bo ...

and with a short preface by

Hermione Lee Dame Hermione Lee, (born 29 February 1948) is a British biographer, literary critic and academic. She is a former President of Wolfson College, Oxford, and a former Goldsmiths' Professor of English Literature in the University of Oxford and Pr ...

References

External links

"Portrait of a Londoner" by Virginia WoolfThe London Scene essays at the British Library website
{{DEFAULTSORT:London Scene, The 1931 essays 1932 essays Books about London Essay collections Works by Virginia Woolf