Curation, collaboration and creativity in the archives of Virginia Woolf

This chapter examines how archives have supported and stimulated research in Woolf Studies. It looks at four areas: biographical studies and textual editing, starting with the Monks House Papers (owned by the University of Sussex) and the Berg Collection of English and American Literature at the New York Public Library (NYPL); book history, starting with the Washington State University (WSU) Library, which holds the personal library of Leonard and Virginia Woolf; the arts, photography and material cultures; and finally, Woolf scholarship itself, which is taking its own place in the archive. The chapter will consider how digital archives have contributed to each of these areas, evaluating how digitization is changing conceptualizations of Woolf and her work and making archival studies more democratic. Considering future directions of archival work on Woolf, the chapter concludes that it is likely to become even more collaborative and interdisciplinary.