Virginia Woolf – Objects, Things, Matter

Laci Mattison is Associate Professor in the Department of Language and Literature at Florida Gulf Coast University. She is a Series Editor for Understanding Philosophy, Understanding Modernism and co-editor of Understanding Deleuze, Understanding Modernism (2014); Understanding Bergson, Understanding Modernism (2013); and The Routledge Companion to Virginia Woolf (forthcoming 2026).

• List of FiguresNote on the CoverAcknowledgementsSeries PrefaceAbbreviationsNotes on ContributorsIntroduction: Virginia Woolf – Objects, Things, MatterLaci MattisonPart I. Approaches to Objects, Things and Matter in Woolf1. Virginia Woolf and Modernist New MaterialismDerek Ryan2. Jacob’s Im/material FormGeoff Bender3. Inanimacy: Virginia Woolf’s MaterialismsMaurizia Boscagli4. ‘Of being herself invisible’: Object, Thing, Matter and Use in Mrs Dalloway and Three GuineasAnn Martin5. A Toy Boat of Her Own: Gender, Play and Education in Virginia Woolf’s WritingsImola Nagy-Seres6. Cotton, Race, Embodiment and ‘the thing itself’ in WoolfJane Garrity7. Virginia Woolf’s Misuse of ‘Cotton Wool’ in ‘A Sketch of the Past’: Writing the WoundDavi PinhoPart II. Object Experiments with Woolf8. Object LessonsShilo McGiff9. Material Reading: Letterpress Printing with WoolfAne Thon Knutsen10. The Life of Monday or Tuesday Jane Goldman11. More Surfaces: A Monologue, or the Queer Interiorities of a GramophoneJames Brock12. sixErik Fuhrer13. Spider KingdomBrandi GeorgePart III. A Collection of Woolfian Things14. The Jug in the BorderlandDouglas Mao15. ‘Enjoying this Immortal Rhythm’: Woolf and the GramophoneAimée Gasston16. The Ghostly PencilGraham Fraser17. ‘tremb tremulous fitful’: Missed Encounters in MirrorsMelissa Alexander18. The ‘Vanished’ Walrus Pen-Wiper: Waste and the Animal ObjectLaci Mattison19. Pointz Hall as Hyperobject: Woolf’s Deep Geological History in Between the ActsLeanna Lostoski-HoAfterword: Upheavals of MatterBill BrownIndex

This exciting collection constitutes an important landmark in work on Woolf and materiality. Mattison’s innovatively structured volume offers a vivid diversity of viewpoints and approaches, including theoretically focused essays, creative responses and close readings which collectively animate as never before Woolf’s engagement with things, objects and matter.