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Virginia Woolf’s Great Niece Is Continuing Woolf’s Legacy

Her Campus Placeholder Avatar Amanda Olivia
Her Campus Placeholder Avatar Amirah Mikell
This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Millersville chapter.

You know Virginia Woolf as the gentle but profoundly serious author of Mrs. Dalloway; To The Lighthouse; The Waves; A Room of One’s Own. (Note the semicolons. Woolf might as well own the rights to the semicolon.) Her work is beautiful, to be short.

Woolf’s great niece, Virginia Nicholson, is also a writer and very successful. Her favorite topic is, fittingly, women’s issues. Recently, she and her husband donated £250,000 — that’s over $270,000 — to a special project preserving part of Woolf’s legacy: a 17th century Sussex farmhouse by the name of Charleston.

 
Charleston belonged to Woolf’s sister Vanessa Bell, a post-impressionist artist, and her husband in the early 20th century. It was for several years a meeting place for the Bloomsbury Group, a set of influential English writers, artists, and critics of which Woolf was a principal member, who discussed matters such as agnosticism, feminism, and sexuality.

Both the house and grounds of Charleston have happily been restored since their glory days. But Virginia Nicholson and others like her hope for Charleston to come alive with real artists once again. Thanks largely to Nicholson, a new gallery, archive store, and creative learning studio are all on the way!

Let’s dig out our English Literature (or Feminist Literature) anthologies, read an essay or two by Woolf, and plan our trip. Just one more reason to jet off to England.

Read the full story here.

Photo courtesies of Wikimedia Commons and www.virginianicholson.co.uk.

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Amanda Olivia

Millersville

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Amirah Mikell

Millersville

Amirah Mikell is currently pursuing a bachelor’s degree in Speech Communications with a specialization in Public Relations at the University of Millersville Pennsylvania. She is a senior enrolled in media law, entrepreneurship and public relation courses. Mikell has interned with the Lancaster Mediation Center which is a non-profit organization where she practiced public relations writing skills, coordinating events, and writing organizational intakes. She currently holds a managerial position at a women's boutique in Lancaster where she performs daily task such as keeping track of sales, implementing visual enhancements, and promoting positivity throughout the company.She is serving as Vice President for Her Campus which focuses on creative writing for collegiettes.. Mikell is expected to graduate in the Spring of 2016, where she will go on in furthering her career as a public relations professional.