“THE REAL PROBLEM IS TO CLIMB TO THE TOP OF THE MOUNTAIN. WHY, IF THAT IS NOT [IT], HAVE WE THE DESIRE? WHO GAVE IT US?” (Virginia Woolf, “The Symbol”)

In order to explain what I mean by calling Virginia Woolf a mountaineer, I'd like to start by reading from an essay called “A Tent of Her Own,” originally published in 1982 in the Bryn Mawr Alumnae Bulletin:

In other words, the author—my mother—has a rescue fantasy about Virginia Woolf and proposes that had Woolf taken up mountaineering, as her father—Leslie Stephen—had done, she would have lived a longer, happier, and healthier life. This is the psychobiographical germ of my own work on Leslie Stephen as Mountaineer, fresh off the presses from Cecil Woolf this month. While I won't be talking very much about Leslie Stephen's mountaineering today, if you are interested in the scope and variety of his Alpine climbs, I'd direct you to the appendix of my monograph, which contains a “Climbing Resumé” listing all the mountains, including first ascents, that Stephen climbed in the 25 trips he made to the Alps over a lifetime (LS 57—60). This project of mine has grown to encompass both biographical scholarship and empirical practice, as though by climbing in Leslie Stephen's footsteps in the Alps, I am also thinking back through my mother's fl ight into the wilderness—and her desire to take Virginia Woolf with her.