Romancing the phone: Woolf's first media age

Abstract

This essay takes the telephone as its subject, and in doing so responds to David Trotter’s work on interwar communication in 'Literature in the First Media Age' (2013). I focus particularly on the development of Virginia Woolf’s writing – from 'Night and Day' (1919) through 'Jacob’s Room' (1922) to 'The Years' (1937) – noting along the way the extent to which technology and technique speak to one another, sometimes to devastating effect, often at the expense of vocal clarity. Tapping into Woolf’s telephones, I argue, has a number of things to tell us about the texture of her fiction, as well as about her characters’ quality of attention and their urge to get things done at a distance.