Virginia Woolf: The Reluctant Poet

At the end of 2024 a researcher from Liverpool University in the UK found two unknown poems by Virginia Woolf in a pile of letters. The letters were hastily written in pencil with crossings out. Having no children herself, they were dedicated to Woolf’s niece and nephew and intended to amuse and gently satirise them. They were never intended for publication, just as an amusing moment at a family party around 1932 and have been described as “doggerel”. Despite her extremely poetic novels, Woolf had always been rather antagonistic towards poetry and believed the novel to be the superior form.