Edinburgh Companion to Virginia Woolf, Modernism and Religion

Gabrielle McIntire is Professor of English Literature at Queen’s University, Canada. She is the author of Modernism, Memory, and Desire: T.S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf (2008), Unbound (2021), and the editor of The Cambridge Companion to The Waste Land (2015). Her articles have been published in journals including Modernism/modernity, Modern Fiction Studies, Narrative, and Callaloo, and in book collections including The Cambridge Companion to To the Lighthouse (2014), Futility and Anarchy: British Literature in Transition, 1920-1940 (2018), The Oxford Handbook of Virginia Woolf (2021), The Edinburgh Companion to Modernism, Myth and Religion (2023), and A History of the Bloomsbury Group (2025). The recipient of two teaching awards, McIntire has been interviewed by Radio Free Europe and other media outlets about her work in modernist studies. Also a creative writer, McIntire’s poems have appeared in journals and collections in the United States, Canada, England and France. Jane de Gay is an Anglican Priest. She was Professor of English Literature at Leeds Trinity University from 2017-25 and she is currently an Associate Lecturer at the Open University. She is the author of Virginia Woolf and Christian Culture (2018) and Virginia Woolf’s Novels and the Literary Past (2006), and editor of eight books including Virginia Woolf and Heritage: Selected Papers from the Twenty-Sixth Annual Conference on Virginia Woolf, with Tom Breckin and Anne Reus (2017), and Voyages Out, Voyages Home: Proceedings of the Eleventh Annual Virginia Woolf Conference, with Marion Dell (2010). She has published articles in Woolf Studies Annual and Christianity and Literature, as well as chapters in collections such as The Bloomsbury Handbook of Modernist Archives (2024), The Edinburgh Companion to Modernism, Myth, and Religion (2023), The Oxford Handbook to Virginia Woolf (2021), and Religion, Secularism, and the Spiritual Paths of Virginia Woolf (2020).

• AcknowledgementsList of FiguresIntroduction: Virginia Woolf, Modernism and ReligionGabrielle McIntire with Jane de GayPart I: Modernist Contexts1. Virginia Woolf and the Modernist SacredElizabeth Anderson2. ‘By conviction an atheist perhaps’: Virginia Woolf, Bloomsbury Artists and ReligionMark Hussey 3. The Hogarth Press and Religion: A Modernist MosaicDiane F. Gillespie4. Making Things More Spiritual: Virginia Woolf, Science and ReligionMichael H. Whitworth5. The Psychology of Religion: Virginia Woolf, William James and Jane HarrisonAmy C. Smith 6. Virginia Woolf, Vita Sackville-West and the Varieties of Modernist MysticismJamie Callison7. Rebellion and Renunciation: Virginia Woolf’s Religious HeritageEleanor McNees8. Leslie Stephen’s Agnostic Sensibility and the Generosity of DisbeliefRyan Hitchcock9. 'The Third Emotion’: Christianity, War and Pacifism in Three Guineas and Between the ActsCharles AndrewsPart II: Religions, Faiths, Diversities 10. Virginia Woolf and the Critique of Secular HopeDavid Sherman11. Dwelling in Possibility: Virginia Woolf and Modernist SpiritualitiesKristina K. Groover12. Gods, Goddesses and Divinities in Virginia Woolf's WritingsStephanie Paulsell13. Friendship as First Philosophy: Peace-Making and Quaker Traces in Jacob’s Room and Roger FryJ. Ashley Foster14. Virginia Woolf and JudaismVara Neverow15. Virginia Woolf and BuddhismEdward Upton16. Virginia Woolf and HinduismHeidi Stalla17. Virginia Woolf and Islam: The Androgynous Vision of Constantinople in OrlandoLeila Baradaran Jamili and Bahman Zarrinjooee18. Virginia Woolf and the Christian FaithJane de GayPart III: Theories, Interpretations, Ethics, and Spaces of the Sacred19. Virginia Woolf, Ecofeminism and SpiritualityBonnie Kime Scott20. Virginia Woolf, the Sacred and the CreaturelyVicki Tromanhauser21. ‘Granite and Rainbow:’ Agnosticism, Empiricism and Nature’s Memorials in Leslie Stephen and Virginia WoolfCatherine W. Hollis 22. ‘Moments of Being,’ Ethics and the Good LifeLorraine Sim23. On Not Knowing Everything: Generative Agnosis and Epistemic HumilityMadelyn Detloff24. ‘some “revelation” which reminds us:’: On Queer Possibility and Religious Rhetoric in To The Lighthouse and Mrs DallowayJennifer Mitchell25. Virginia Woolf and the SoulGabrielle McIntire26. ‘That great Cathedral space’: Virginia Woolf, Architecture and the SacredAlexandra Peat27. Pilgrimage and Retreat: The Holiness of Home in To The LighthouseSpencer Morrison28. Virginia Woolf and the Enchantments of ReadingBenjamin Hagen AfterwordPericles LewisContributor BiographiesIndex

This Companion is a superb contribution to modernist studies and a vital corrective to the idea that Woolf’s avowed atheism amounted to a flat rejection of religion as such. It provides extensive coverage of Woolf’s engagement with religion from several interlocking angles and demonstrates convincingly that, for Woolf, religion was less a settled rejection than an unresolved and generative tension running throughout her writing.