Books

First edition, first impression, the copy of Barbara Hiles Bagenal, a Bloomsburyite who was the second apprentice to work at the Hogarth Press. Virginia Woolf found her romantic life "a source of endless fascination" (Bell, p. 50). Barbara Hiles decided to marry Nick Bagenal in 1918 but maintained a friendship with her love interest Saxon Sidney-Turner, who gave her this copy in 1922. Her ownership inscription on the front free endpaper reads, "Barbara Bagenal, Oct. 1922, [from] S.S.T.". Virginia Woolf gossiped to Vanessa Bell about Bagenal's love triangle in 1918, "think of the three of them discussing the question over the stove in her studio and Nick saying 'No, Saxon: you must marry her;' and Saxon refusing to be happy save in their happiness, and Barbara suggesting copulation with each on alternate nights" (II, p. 214). In the 1910s, Bagenal camped on the lawn outside Vanessa Bell's Charleston home and broke into Virginia Woolf's empty Asham home for a night of gallivanting with David Garnett and Dora Carrington. The Woolfs subsequently hired her at the Hogarth Press in late 1917, succeeding their first apprentice Alix Sargant-Florence, who lasted a single day. "Virginia had plenty of opportunity for getting to know Barbara fairly well" when she helped to typeset Katherine Mansfield's Prelude (1918). Bagenal "and her friend Carrington, both ex-Slade students, with their bobbed hair and thick fringes, their free and independent ways. represented Virginia's archetypal Cropheads" (Bell, p. 49). Bagenal later became a devoted companion of Clive Bell during the last two decades of his life. Jacob's Room was the author's first truly experimental novel, the earliest full-length realization of the stream-of-consciousness style which she originated in her short stories, and the first of her own novels published by the Hogarth Press. It was printed in a run of around 1,200 copies. Kirkpatrick A6a; Woolmer 26. Quentin Bell, Virginia Woolf: A Biography, 1972; The Letters of Virginia Woolf, 1975. Octavo. Original yellow cloth, paper spine label, fore and bottom edges uncut. Publisher's 14-page catalogue at end. Blank postcard with view of Gien, France, and notepaper quoting reviews of Woolf in pencil, loosely inserted. Spine faded, wear to label touching occasional letter, pink marks on front cover, edges slightly worn, front inner hinge split but firm, browning to free endpapers, sporadic foxing of contents. A good copy.

Jacob's Room is Virginia Woolf's first novel to employ her distinct stream-of-consciousness narrative style. The story revolves around the life of Jacob Flanders and reflects on themes such as the effects of World War I on English society, the passage of time, and the challenges of understanding an individual's subjective experience.