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684

Virginia Woolf

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles / Autographs Start Price:NA Estimated At:2,000.00 - 3,000.00 USD
Virginia Woolf

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Auction Date:2012 Apr 18 @ 18:00 (UTC-05:00 : EST/CDT)
Location:5 Rt 101A Suite 5, Amherst, New Hampshire, 03031, United States
ALS - Autograph Letter Signed
ANS - Autograph Note Signed
AQS - Autograph Quotation Signed
AMQS - Autograph Musical Quotation Signed
DS - Document Signed
FDC - First Day Cover
Inscribed - “Personalized”
ISP - Inscribed Signed Photograph
LS - Letter Signed
SP - Signed Photograph
TLS - Typed Letter Signed
British author (1882–1941) revered as one of the most important writers in the English language. On March 28, 1941, after a final attack of mental illness, she loaded her pockets with stones and drowned herself near her Sussex home. TLS, one page, 6.5 x 8, Monk’s House letterhead, July 17, 1936. Letter to Swiss psychologist Heinrich Meng. In full: “I regret that your letter of 24 June has remained so long unanswered, but it is due to illness. I must say that it surprised me and I do not think that a matter of the kind should be arranged in the way. I was asked by Dr Stefan Zweig in the first instance simply whether I would allow my name to be added to those of four or five others asking various people to sign an address to Dr Freud. I agreed. Nothing was said then or at any other time about a Committee of about my being responsible for finding money to defray expenses. Now I am informed by you that I am responsible for a sum of £8 and that about £60 has been spent on the address. Apparently this is because I am supposed to be a member of a committee, but I have never been informed of any meeting of the committee or of any decision of it as a committee. If I had originally been informed that it was proposed to spend so large a sum as £60 on a simple address, I should not have approved of it.

I do not think that this is a fair or reasonable way of managing a matter of this kind and I therefore am not willing to make myself responsible for informing Mr Wells of what you propose. As regards myself, as the matter has now been settled over my head and you place me in a position in which I can hardly refuse I enclose a cheque for £7 which together with the cheque previously sent to you makes up the sum which you are calling upon me to pay.” In very good to fine condition, with central horizontal and vertical fold, a couple of extra creases, and some scattered faint toning and foxing.

In 1936, Sigmund Freud was publicly lauded on the occasion of his 80th birthday, and among the birthday tributes was a congratulatory address (the subject of this letter) written by Stefan Zweig and Thomas Mann and signed by 191 artists and writers. Woolf agreed to participate, even though her opinion of Freud was at best ambivalent. Her husband Leonard was the English publisher of Freud’s works and an admirer of the eminent psychoanalyst, but Woolf had avoided reading Freud and rebelled against the psychoanalytic paradigm. She hated psychological determinism, which she called “Freudian fiction,” and criticized the Freudian explanation as “a patent key that opens every door. It simplifies rather than complicates, detracts rather than enriches.” Nevertheless, Freud’s ideas seeped into her work through the Bloomsbury Group, an intellectual circle that from early on took interest in his theories, and her book To the Lighthouse employs Freudian concepts. An interesting letter linking the British author to the intellectual luminaries of continental Europe.
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