Portrait of Virginia Woolf
Wikimedia Commons, George Charles Beresford; Public domain
The twentieth century

Virginia Woolf

1882–1941
Atheist ("there is no God", in her memoir)

Virginia Woolf was born to a clergyman who had resigned his orders to become an agnostic, and a mother who wrote for "agnostic women". She never had a faith to lose. She tried unbelief out through her characters from 1915 to 1927, and declared it privately in 1928, when Eliot's conversion struck her as obscene. In Three Guineas (1938) she turned it on the Church as an institution. In her last memoir she wrote that there was certainly no God, but a pattern behind the cotton wool of the world.

The belief timeline

18821941Inheritance1882-1895Expression in fiction1915-1927Declaration (private)1928-02-11Revision1938-1940
  1. Inheritance (1882-1895) — Born into the household of a priest-turned-agnostic and an essayist for "agnostic women" [1][3][5][8]
  2. Expression in fiction (1915-1927) — The Voyage Out to To the Lighthouse: religion treated as habit, cruelty or evasion, and "There is no God" put in a father's silhouette [14][20]
  3. Declaration (private) (1928-02-11) — Letter to Vanessa Bell on Eliot's conversion [22][23]
  4. Revision (1938-1940) — Three Guineas turns on the Church as a profession; "A Sketch of the Past" says "no God" but affirms a pattern [28][33][26]
Notes to the timeline (11)
  1. [1] Virginia Woolf was born on 25 January 1882 at 22 Hyde Park Gate, London. — Quentin Bell, Virginia Woolf: A Biography (Hogarth Press, 1972; IA virginiawoolfbio0000bell and others, lending-only), ch. 1 opening line seen in a snippet. Not read in full, 1972 ch. 1 (opening line, snippet); Hall, Bedside, Bathtub and Armchair Companion (2007) dates 25 Jan 1882. Reported at second hand; the original has not been seen.
  2. [3] A shorthand note of 26 Jan 1865, written for his own eye only: "I now believe in nothing, to put it shortly; but I do not the less believe in morality". — F. W. Maitland, The Life and Letters of Leslie Stephen (Duckworth, 1906), IA lifelettersofles00maituoft; copy of the text from episode 38 in research/texts/maitland.txt. Page numbers as cited in 38-stephen/research/fact-sheet.md, pp. 144-145.
  3. [5] "An Agnostic's Apology" appeared in the Fortnightly Review in June 1876 and was reprinted in the 1893 book (Smith, Elder); the name "Agnostic" was "originally coined by Professor Huxley about 1869". — Maitland, Life and Letters of Leslie Stephen, pp. 286 n., 290, 404-405; Leslie Stephen, An Agnostic's Apology, and Other Essays (2nd ed., Smith, Elder, 1903), IA agnosticsapology00stepuoft; copy in research/texts/stephen-apology.txt, p. 1.
  4. [8] Julia Stephen wrote an essay "Agnostic Women" (the chronology places it in 1880, the year Thoby was born); it stayed unpublished until Gillespie's 1987 edition. — Diane F. Gillespie and Elizabeth Steele, eds., Julia Duckworth Stephen: Stories for Children, Essays for Adults (Syracuse UP, 1987; IA juliaduckworthst00step), chronology snippet only, 1987 (chronology and notes, snippets); Steele, Virginia Woolf's Rediscovered Essays (1987) ("long article (unpublished) on behalf of 'Agnostic Women'").
  5. [14] In ch. XVII Rachel Vinrace, who "still went to church, because she had never, according to Helen, taken the trouble to think about it", for the first time "listened critically", is "in a state of acute discomfort", and pictures "the churches all over the world" as "vast and hard and cold". — Virginia Woolf, The Voyage Out (Duckworth, London, 1915), Project Gutenberg ebook #144, ch. XVII.
  6. [20] Mr Ramsay "chuckl[es] at the thought that Hume, the philosopher, grown enormously fat, had stuck in a bog" and "an old woman rescued him on condition he said the Lord's Prayer". — Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse (Harcourt, Brace & Company, New York, 1927), Internet Archive id tolighthouse0000virg_v9k3. research/texts/lighthouse-1927.txt. Page numbers are printed in the OCR running heads; cited pages were read from them, pp. 98 and col. 113 (the second page inferred from the head "114 THE WINDOW"; check). Not verified.
  7. [22] Woolf wrote to her sister Vanessa Bell on Saturday 11 February 1928 about an "interview" with Eliot. — The Letters of Virginia Woolf, ed. Nigel Nicolson and Joanne Trautmann (Hogarth Press / Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975-80), vol. III (1923-28) and vol. IV. In copyright, lending-only; full text not downloadable. Wording confirmed through snippets in books that quote the letters (research/notes/fts-snippets.txt), vol. III p. 457, cited as "Virginia Woolf to Vanessa Bell, 11 Feb. 1928, Letters of Virginia Woolf, iii. 457" in The Art of Survival (essays for Olwen Hufton); the Gay Community News and Lewis snippets give the same date.
  8. [23] In that letter she calls the meeting "most shameful and distressing", says Eliot "may be called dead to us all from this day forward", that he "has become an Anglo-Catholic, believes in God and immortality, and goes to church", that "a corpse would seem to me more credible than he is", and that "there's something obscene in a living person sitting by the fire and believing in God". Wording confirmed in at least eight books (Pearce, Raffel, Lewis, Yancey, Schiller, MacCabe, Timmerman, Hitchens P.). — Letters of Virginia Woolf, vol. III p. 457 via snippets.
  9. [28] *Three Guineas* (1938) tells the Church's exclusion of women as a gain: "long may she exclude us!", so that women "shall be immune" from the loyalties its endowments breed. Paraphrase only. — Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas (Hogarth Press, 1938; the scan is the 1943 printing), Internet Archive id dli.ernet.475785. research/texts/three-guineas.txt. In US copyright until 2033: paraphrase only. Page numbers from the running heads "THREE GUINEAS nnn", p. 149.
  10. [33] *Three Guineas* appeared in 1938 (Hogarth Press); the month was not checked. — IA record threeguineas00wool (1938); Woolf, Three Guineas, pp. 225 ("in England in 1938").
  11. [26] In "A Sketch of the Past" she wrote that "there is a pattern hid behind the cotton wool", that "the whole world is a work of art; that we are parts of the work of art", and "there is no Shakespeare, there is no Beethoven; certainly and emphatically there is no God; we are the words; we are the music; we are the thing itself." Wording identical in Moments of Being 1976, 1978 and 1985 snippets and in dozens of studies. — Virginia Woolf, "A Sketch of the Past" (written 1939-40), in Moments of Being, ed. Jeanne Schulkind (Sussex University Press, 1976; Harcourt 1978; rev. ed. 1985). In copyright, lending-only on the Internet Archive (momentsofbeingun0000wool, momentsofbeing00wool); the full text could not be downloaded. Wording confirmed only through Internet Archive full-text-search snippets (research/notes/fts-snippets.txt) in the book itself and in many studies quoting it, (1976 ed. p. 72; 1985 ed. p. 72-73 by two studies, p. 81 and 84 cited by others for other printings).

Certainly and Emphatically No God

In February 1928 Virginia Woolf wrote to her sister Vanessa about a visit from their friend T. S. Eliot. He had become an Anglo-Catholic, she reported; he believed in God and immortality, and went to church. As far as she was concerned, she wrote, he might be called dead to them all from that day on. A corpse would seem more credible than he was, and there was something obscene, she added, in a living person sitting by the fire and believing in God.123

It is the bluntest thing she ever wrote about religion, and she wrote it in a private letter. Woolf never lost a faith, because she was never given one. This chapter asks how a lifelong unbeliever expressed that unbelief: first through her characters, then in private, then in politics, and at last in a sentence about God and a pattern.

Virginia Stephen, later Woolf, photographed by George Charles Beresford in 1902.
Virginia Stephen, later Woolf, photographed by George Charles Beresford in 1902.Wikimedia Commons, George Charles Beresford; Public domain

An agnostic household

Her unbelief came from her parents. Her father, Leslie Stephen, had been ordained in the Church of England and taught at Cambridge. He later wrote: "Upon my stating in the summer of 1862 that I could no longer take part in the chapel services, I resigned my tutorship at the request of the Master." Three years later he wrote privately: "I now believe in nothing, to put it shortly; but I do not the less believe in morality."4567 In 1875 he gave up his orders altogether, and in 1876 he published "An Agnostic's Apology," taking the name that T. H. Huxley had coined a few years before.89 "Trust your reason, we have been told till we are tired of the phrase, and you will become Atheists or Agnostics. We take you at your word: we become Agnostics."1011

Leslie Stephen, about 1900.
Leslie Stephen, about 1900.Wikimedia Commons, Not stated; Public domain

In 1878 he married Julia Duckworth, a widow, who in about 1880 wrote an essay, never published in her lifetime, in defence of "agnostic women."1213 Their third child, Adeline Virginia, was born on 25 January 1882 at 22 Hyde Park Gate in Kensington.14 Whether the Stephen children were baptised, or went to church, is not in any source read for this chapter.15 Her timeline therefore begins not with faith but with that inheritance: a priest who had resigned and a mother who defended unbelieving women.

Julia Stephen with her infant daughter Virginia, photographed by H. H. H. Cameron in 1884.
Julia Stephen with her infant daughter Virginia, photographed by H. H. H. Cameron in 1884.Wikimedia Commons, H. H. H. Cameron; Smith College Libraries, Leslie Stephen Photo Album; Public domain
Talland House, St Ives, where the Stephens spent their summers until 1894.
Talland House, St Ives, where the Stephens spent their summers until 1894.Wikimedia Commons, Unknown; Public domain

Her mother died in May 1895, when she was thirteen, and Virginia suffered her first breakdown that year. Her father died in February 1904.1617 Looking back in 1895, Leslie Stephen wrote that he had none of the conversions or spiritual crises that give interest to some autobiographies.18 His daughter never told one either.

God as a kind of walrus

In her first novel, The Voyage Out (1915), religion is a matter for comedy and discomfort. Helen Ambrose, sailing for South America, tells her brother-in-law that she has kept her children from prayer: "So far, owing to great care on my part, they think of God as a kind of walrus." Told that a little religion never hurt anyone, she answers, "I would rather my children told lies."192021 Clarissa Dalloway, a passenger, shrugs: "I always think religion's like collecting beetles."2223 And the young heroine, Rachel, who "still went to church, because she had never, according to Helen, taken the trouble to think about it," sits through a service and, "for the first time in her life," listens "critically to what was being said."242526

Page 27 of The Voyage Out (New York edition, 1920): Helen Ambrose's children "think of God as a kind of walrus."
Page 27 of The Voyage Out (New York edition, 1920): Helen Ambrose's children "think of God as a kind of walrus."Internet Archive, University of Michigan copy (Google scan); Public domain

In Jacob's Room (1922) a reader in the British Museum is "Fraser, the atheist," whose wife secretly baptised their children in the washing basin; "Indeed, what a work--to destroy religion!"2728 In Mrs Dalloway (1925) Clarissa, now in her own novel, watches her daughter leave with a devout tutor and thinks: "Love and religion! ... How detestable, how detestable they are!"2930 In To the Lighthouse (1927), Mrs Ramsay catches herself saying "We are in the hands of the Lord," is annoyed by the insincerity of it, and asks: "How could any Lord have made this world?" Her mind had always seized the fact "that there is no reason, order, justice: but suffering, death, the poor."3132 Near the end, her son James sees his father, Mr Ramsay, standing in the boat "as if he were saying, 'There is no God.'"3334 Critics, and Woolf herself in writings not read for this chapter, identified Mr Ramsay with her father; accounts of how far to take the likeness differ.33 On her timeline, these years, 1915 to 1927, are where her unbelief is expressed: tried out through characters, never stated in her own voice.

Page 98 of To the Lighthouse (1927): "How could any Lord have made this world?"
Page 98 of To the Lighthouse (1927): "How could any Lord have made this world?"Internet Archive, to-the-lighthouse-1927 (University of Michigan / HathiTrust scan); Public Domain Mark 1.0

Eliot

Her own voice came the next year. T. S. Eliot was received into the Church of England in 1927, and in November 1928 described himself in print as "classicist in literature, royalist in politics, and anglo-catholic in religion."135 Her letter to Vanessa about him, quoted above, is where her timeline places her declaration, though a private one. Two years later she told the composer Ethel Smyth that she had read the Book of Job and did not think God came well out of it.36

T. S. Eliot in 1923, four years before his conversion.
T. S. Eliot in 1923, four years before his conversion.Wikimedia Commons, Lady Ottoline Morrell; Public domain
Ethel Smyth, the composer to whom Woolf wrote about the Book of Job in 1930.
Ethel Smyth, the composer to whom Woolf wrote about the Book of Job in 1930.Wikimedia Commons, Bain News Service / Library of Congress ggbain.33693, restoration Adam Cuerden; Public domain

Three Guineas

In 1938 she published Three Guineas, an argument about war, education and the professions, written as the "outsider" voice of the daughters of educated men. The Church appears in it as the profession that still excluded women. She described the bishops' and deans' working lives as destroying mind and soul, and examined the report of the Archbishops' Commission of 1935 on the ministry of women, which had kept women out of the priesthood on the authority of St Paul rather than the Gospels.3738 Long might the Church exclude women, she wrote, if that kept them free of the loyalties its endowments bred.39 She quoted an Oxford canon's complaint that young women were drifting further from the Church than young men, and welcomed it.40 Yet her imagined "Society of Outsiders" would read the New Testament, attend services and criticise religion, in order to free the religious spirit from its servitude and perhaps create a new religion.41

A pattern behind the cotton wool

In 1939 and 1940 she wrote a memoir, "A Sketch of the Past," published long after her death. In it she described the sudden shocks of her childhood that broke through the "cotton wool" of ordinary days, and gave what she called her philosophy: that behind the cotton wool there is a pattern, that the whole world is a work of art and we are parts of it. Then she wrote that there is no Shakespeare, no Beethoven, and certainly and emphatically no God; we are the words, the music, the thing itself.4243 It is her plainest denial of God, and in the same breath she names something in God's place.

Some readers take the pattern for a secular spirituality, others for a writer's metaphor; accounts differ.42 Together with Three Guineas, it is where her timeline places her revision: not a change of belief, but unbelief turned outward into politics and inward into a philosophy of her own.

Monk's House, Rodmell, the Woolfs' home in Sussex.
Monk's House, Rodmell, the Woolfs' home in Sussex.Wikimedia Commons, Daderot; CC0

On 28 March 1941 she drowned herself in the River Ouse near her home at Rodmell. She was fifty-nine.4445

The River Ouse near Rodmell.
The River Ouse near Rodmell.Wikimedia Commons, Mat Fascione (geograph.org.uk 7814592); CC BY-SA 2.0

Leslie Stephen, the clergyman who resigned his tutorship and named himself an agnostic, and whose household his daughter's unbelief came from, has his own chapter in this book.

Footnotes

  1. Burton Raffel, T. S. Eliot (IA tseliot00raff); [Lewis] Pericles Lewis, Religious Experience and the Modernist Novel (2010); [Pearce] Joseph Pearce, Literary Giants, Literary Catholics (2005); [Margolis] John D. Margolis, T. S. Eliot's Intellectual Development, 1922-1939 (1972): each quotes the 11 Feb 1928 letter or Eliot's 1928 preface, (snippet: "It was in 1927"); The Letters of Virginia Woolf, ed. Nigel Nicolson and Joanne Trautmann (Hogarth Press / Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975-80), vol. III (1923-28) and vol. IV. In copyright, lending-only; full text not downloadable. Wording confirmed through snippets in books that quote the letters (research/notes/fts-snippets.txt), vol. III p. 457 via snippets. Reported at second hand; the original has not been seen. ↩ ↩2

  2. Letters of Virginia Woolf, vol. III p. 457, cited as "Virginia Woolf to Vanessa Bell, 11 Feb. 1928, Letters of Virginia Woolf, iii. 457" in The Art of Survival (essays for Olwen Hufton); the Gay Community News and Lewis snippets give the same date. ↩

  3. Letters of Virginia Woolf, vol. III p. 457 via snippets. ↩

  4. F. W. Maitland, The Life and Letters of Leslie Stephen (Duckworth, 1906), IA lifelettersofles00maituoft; copy of the text from episode 38 in research/texts/maitland.txt. Page numbers as cited in 38-stephen/research/fact-sheet.md, pp. 54, 130, 136, 139; 38-stephen/research/fact-sheet.md, claims 1-60 (cited for Leslie Stephen's chronology, with Maitland pages), claims 1, 15, 16, 26. ↩

  5. Maitland, Life and Letters of Leslie Stephen, pp. 144-145. ↩

  6. Leslie Stephen, shorthand note, 26 Jan 1865: Maitland, Life and Letters of Leslie Stephen, p. 144. ↩

  7. Leslie Stephen, 1895: Maitland, Life and Letters of Leslie Stephen, p. 139. ↩

  8. Maitland, Life and Letters of Leslie Stephen, pp. 174, 263-264. ↩

  9. Maitland, Life and Letters of Leslie Stephen, pp. 286 n., 290, 404-405; Leslie Stephen, An Agnostic's Apology, and Other Essays (2nd ed., Smith, Elder, 1903), IA agnosticsapology00stepuoft; copy in research/texts/stephen-apology.txt, p. 1. ↩

  10. Stephen, Agnostic's Apology, pp. 1, 8. ↩

  11. Leslie Stephen: Stephen, Agnostic's Apology, p. 8. ↩

  12. Maitland, Life and Letters of Leslie Stephen, pp. 317, 322. ↩

  13. Diane F. Gillespie and Elizabeth Steele, eds., Julia Duckworth Stephen: Stories for Children, Essays for Adults (Syracuse UP, 1987; IA juliaduckworthst00step), chronology snippet only, 1987 (chronology and notes, snippets); Steele, Virginia Woolf's Rediscovered Essays (1987) ("long article (unpublished) on behalf of 'Agnostic Women'"). ↩

  14. Quentin Bell, Virginia Woolf: A Biography (Hogarth Press, 1972; IA virginiawoolfbio0000bell and others, lending-only), ch. 1 opening line seen in a snippet. Not read in full, 1972 ch. 1 (opening line, snippet); Hall, Bedside, Bathtub and Armchair Companion (2007) dates 25 Jan 1882. ↩

  15. —. Not verified. ↩

  16. Virginia Woolf (Blackwell/Wiley, 2005) chronology snippet; Conner, Twenty Names in Modern Literature (1987) ("1895 her mother, Julia, dies"). ↩

  17. Maitland, Life and Letters of Leslie Stephen, pp. 489-491. ↩

  18. Maitland, Life and Letters of Leslie Stephen, p. 3. ↩

  19. Virginia Woolf, The Voyage Out (Duckworth, London, 1915), Project Gutenberg ebook #144, ch. II. ↩

  20. Helen Ambrose (character): Woolf, Voyage Out, ch. II. ↩

  21. Helen Ambrose (character): Woolf, Voyage Out, ch. II. ↩

  22. Woolf, Voyage Out, chs. IV, VIII. ↩

  23. Mrs Dalloway (Clarissa), character: Woolf, Voyage Out, ch. IV. ↩

  24. Woolf, Voyage Out, ch. XVII. ↩

  25. Narrator: Woolf, Voyage Out, ch. XVII. ↩

  26. Narrator: Woolf, Voyage Out, ch. XVII. ↩

  27. Virginia Woolf, Jacob's Room (Hogarth Press, 1922), Gutenberg #5670. research/texts/jacobs-room.txt. No page numbers, (Reading Room chapter; no page numbers). ↩

  28. Narrator, of Fraser the atheist: Woolf, Jacob's Room, (Reading Room chapter). ↩

  29. Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway (Hogarth Press, 1925), Gutenberg #71865. research/texts/mrs-dalloway.txt. No page numbers, (Clarissa and Miss Kilman scene; no page numbers). ↩

  30. Clarissa Dalloway (character): Woolf, Mrs Dalloway, (after Miss Kilman leaves with Elizabeth). ↩

  31. Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse (Harcourt, Brace & Company, New York, 1927), Internet Archive id tolighthouse0000virg_v9k3. research/texts/lighthouse-1927.txt. Page numbers are printed in the OCR running heads; cited pages were read from them, p. 98 (Part I, ch. XI). ↩

  32. Mrs Ramsay (character): Woolf, To the Lighthouse, p. 98. ↩

  33. Woolf, To the Lighthouse, p. 308 (Part III, ch. XII). ↩ ↩2

  34. Narrator (James's view of Mr Ramsay): Woolf, To the Lighthouse, p. 308. ↩

  35. Margolis 1972; Raffel, T. S. Eliot, (snippets). ↩

  36. The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Quotations, ed. Peter Kemp (1997), entry for Woolf: letter to Ethel Smyth, 22 June 1930 (IA oxforddictionary00pete), 1997 entry; quoted in King, Virginia Woolf (Penguin 1995) and Nicolson, Virginia Woolf (2000). ↩

  37. Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas (Hogarth Press, 1938; the scan is the 1943 printing), Internet Archive id dli.ernet.475785. research/texts/three-guineas.txt. In US copyright until 2033: paraphrase only. Page numbers from the running heads "THREE GUINEAS nnn", p. 129. ↩

  38. Woolf, Three Guineas, pp. 219-225. ↩

  39. Woolf, Three Guineas, p. 149. ↩

  40. Woolf, Three Guineas, pp. 213-216. ↩

  41. Woolf, Three Guineas, p. 205. ↩

  42. Virginia Woolf, "A Sketch of the Past" (written 1939-40), in Moments of Being, ed. Jeanne Schulkind (Sussex University Press, 1976; Harcourt 1978; rev. ed. 1985). In copyright, lending-only on the Internet Archive (momentsofbeingun0000wool, momentsofbeing00wool); the full text could not be downloaded. Wording confirmed only through Internet Archive full-text-search snippets (research/notes/fts-snippets.txt) in the book itself and in many studies quoting it, (1976 ed. p. 72; 1985 ed. p. 72-73 by two studies, p. 81 and 84 cited by others for other printings). ↩ ↩2

  43. Woolf, Moments of Being, via snippets (Hoberman, Modernizing Lives; Smith, Subjectivity, Identity and the Body; O'Rourke, The Long Goodbye). ↩

  44. Marler, Bloomsbury Pie (1997); Hall (2007); Conner (1987); Zorichak (1976), all snippets. ↩

  45. Marler 1997; Lee, Virginia Woolf's Nose (2005); Conner 1987. ↩

Sources cited in the notes: Burton Raffel, T. S. Eliot (IA tseliot00raff); [Lewis] Pericles Lewis, Religious Experience and the Modernist Novel (2010); [Pearce] Joseph Pearce, Literary Giants, Literary Catholics (2005); [Margolis] John D. Margolis, T. S. Eliot's Intellectual Development, 1922-1939 (1972): each quotes the 11 Feb 1928 letter or Eliot's 1928 preface.; The Letters of Virginia Woolf, ed. Nigel Nicolson and Joanne Trautmann (Hogarth Press / Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975-80), vol. III (1923-28) and vol. IV. In copyright, lending-only; full text not downloadable. Wording confirmed through snippets in books that quote the letters (research/notes/fts-snippets.txt).; F. W. Maitland, The Life and Letters of Leslie Stephen (Duckworth, 1906), IA lifelettersofles00maituoft; copy of the text from episode 38 in research/texts/maitland.txt. Page numbers as cited in 38-stephen/research/fact-sheet.md.; 38-stephen/research/fact-sheet.md, claims 1-60 (cited for Leslie Stephen's chronology, with Maitland pages).; Leslie Stephen, An Agnostic's Apology, and Other Essays (2nd ed., Smith, Elder, 1903), IA agnosticsapology00stepuoft; copy in research/texts/stephen-apology.txt.; Diane F. Gillespie and Elizabeth Steele, eds., Julia Duckworth Stephen: Stories for Children, Essays for Adults (Syracuse UP, 1987; IA juliaduckworthst00step), chronology snippet only.; Quentin Bell, Virginia Woolf: A Biography (Hogarth Press, 1972; IA virginiawoolfbio0000bell and others, lending-only), ch. 1 opening line seen in a snippet. Not read in full.; Virginia Woolf, The Voyage Out (Duckworth, London, 1915), Project Gutenberg ebook #144.; Virginia Woolf, Jacob's Room (Hogarth Press, 1922), Gutenberg #5670. research/texts/jacobs-room.txt. No page numbers.; Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway (Hogarth Press, 1925), Gutenberg #71865. research/texts/mrs-dalloway.txt. No page numbers.; Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse (Harcourt, Brace & Company, New York, 1927), Internet Archive id tolighthouse0000virg_v9k3. research/texts/lighthouse-1927.txt. Page numbers are printed in the OCR running heads; cited pages were read from them.; The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Quotations, ed. Peter Kemp (1997), entry for Woolf: letter to Ethel Smyth, 22 June 1930 (IA oxforddictionary00pete).; Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas (Hogarth Press, 1938; the scan is the 1943 printing), Internet Archive id dli.ernet.475785. research/texts/three-guineas.txt. In US copyright until 2033: paraphrase only. Page numbers from the running heads "THREE GUINEAS nnn".; Virginia Woolf, "A Sketch of the Past" (written 1939-40), in Moments of Being, ed. Jeanne Schulkind (Sussex University Press, 1976; Harcourt 1978; rev. ed. 1985). In copyright, lending-only on the Internet Archive (momentsofbeingun0000wool, momentsofbeing00wool); the full text could not be downloaded. Wording confirmed only through Internet Archive full-text-search snippets (research/notes/fts-snippets.txt) in the book itself and in many studies quoting it.

In their own words

So far, owing to great care on my part, they think of God as a kind of walrus

Helen Ambrose (character) · Voyage ch. II

I would rather my children told lies

Helen Ambrose (character) · Voyage ch. II

Rachel still went to church, because she had never, according to Helen, taken the trouble to think about it.

Narrator · Voyage ch. XVII

for the first time in her life, instead of slipping at once into some curious pleasant cloud of emotion, too familiar to be considered, Rachel listened critically to what was being said.

Narrator · Voyage ch. XVII

All round her were people pretending to feel what they did not feel, while somewhere above her floated the idea which they could none of them grasp, which they pretended to grasp, always escaping out of reach, a beautiful idea, an idea like a butterfly.

Narrator (Rachel's view) · Voyage ch. XVII

I always think religion's like collecting beetles

Mrs Dalloway (Clarissa), character · Voyage ch. IV

Indeed, what a work--to destroy religion!

Narrator, of Fraser the atheist · Jacob (Reading Room chapter)

Love and religion! thought Clarissa, going back into the drawing-room, tingling all over. How detestable, how detestable they are!

Clarissa Dalloway (character) · Dalloway (after Miss Kilman leaves with Elizabeth)

but love and religion would destroy that, whatever it was, the privacy of the soul.

Clarissa Dalloway (character) · Dalloway (same scene)

How could any Lord have made this world? she asked. With her mind she had always seized the fact that there is no reason, order, justice: but suffering, death, the poor.

Mrs Ramsay (character) · Lighthouse p. 98

for all the world, James thought, as if he were saying, "There is no God,"

Narrator (James's view of Mr Ramsay) · Lighthouse p. 308

I now believe in nothing, to put it shortly; but I do not the less believe in morality, &c. &c.

Leslie Stephen, shorthand note, 26 Jan 1865 · Maitland p. 144

Upon my stating in the summer of 1862 that I could no longer take part in the chapel services, I resigned my tutorship at the request of the Master.

Leslie Stephen, 1895 · Maitland p. 139

Dogmatic Atheism — the doctrine that there is no God, whatever may be meant by God — is, to say the least, a rare phase of opinion.

Leslie Stephen · Apology p. 1

Trust your reason, we have been told till we are tired of the phrase, and you will become Atheists or Agnostics. We take you at your word: we become Agnostics.

Leslie Stephen · Apology p. 8

The other side

no medium, in true philosophy, between Atheism and Catholicity, and that a perfectly consistent mind, under those circumstances in which it finds itself here below, must embrace either the one or the other.

J. H. Newman, as quoted by Leslie Stephen (Catholic convert; the theologian her father engaged most respectfully) · Apology p. 10

It never occurred to him that his cynicism was the Medusa's head that petrified the company.

A Cambridge preacher, 1900, on Leslie Stephen (named only as "B." by Maitland) · Maitland p. 149

If Mr. Stephen ever tried to draw Mr. Hopkins or Dr. Thompson into trial of tongue-fence on sacred themes, he recoiled, I am very sure, baffled from the sport.

The same preacher, 1900 · Maitland p. 148

I would rather my children told lies

see above · Q2

Where accounts differ

PointOne accountAnotherHow the page handles it
Page of the "no God" passage in "A Sketch of the Past"p. 72 (1976 Sussex UP ed., Levenson, Lewis, Tremper "MoB 72")pp. 81 and 84 (later printings or Penguin/Pimlico editions, Simpson, Krause)Cite the work and section, not a page, until a copy is borrowed.
Does "no God" in the Sketch mean unbelief?Yes: "certainly and emphatically there is no God" (snippets)Lee and others read the "pattern" as a secular spirituality; the passage continues "we are the words" (immanent)Say plainly that she denies God and then names a pattern; accounts of what it means differ.
Mr Ramsay's "There is no God"A child's reading of a father's gesture (Lighthouse p. 307)Critics identify Mr Ramsay with Leslie StephenQuote the line; say the identification is the critics' and Woolf's own, to be checked in her diary (copyrighted).

List of illustrations

This page uses only public-domain and Creative Commons images; each is credited with its source and licence.

  1. Virginia Woolf in 1902 — George Charles Beresford, 1902 · Wikimedia Commons, George Charles Beresford; Public domain · Public domain
  2. Picture of Leslie Stephen — Not stated, c1900 · Wikimedia Commons, Not stated; Public domain · Public domain
  3. Julia Stephen with Virginia on her lap, 1884 — Henry Herschel Hay Cameron, 1884 · Wikimedia Commons, H. H. H. Cameron; Smith College Libraries, Leslie Stephen Photo Album; Public domain · Public domain
  4. Talland House, c1882–1894 — Unknown, c1882-1894 · Wikimedia Commons, Unknown; Public domain · Public domain
  5. The Voyage Out, p. 27 (Helen Ambrose: 'God as a kind of walrus') — Virginia Woolf, 1920 · Internet Archive, University of Michigan copy (Google scan); Public domain · Public domain (published 1920; Internet Archive states no rights)
  6. To the Lighthouse, p. 98 (Mrs Ramsay: 'How could any Lord have made this world?') — Virginia Woolf, 1927 · Internet Archive, to-the-lighthouse-1927 (University of Michigan / HathiTrust scan); Public Domain Mark 1.0 · Public Domain Mark 1.0 (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/), as stated by the Internet Archive item
  7. T. S. Eliot, 1923 — Lady Ottoline Morrell, 1923 · Wikimedia Commons, Lady Ottoline Morrell; Public domain · Public domain
  8. Ethel Smyth, 31 January 1922 (Bain News Service, restored) — Bain News Service (restoration by Adam Cuerden), 1922-01-31 · Wikimedia Commons, Bain News Service / Library of Congress ggbain.33693, restoration Adam Cuerden; Public domain · Public domain
  9. Monk's House, Rodmell, East Sussex — Daderot, 2016-06-04 · Wikimedia Commons, Daderot; CC0 · CC0
  10. The River Ouse near Rodmell — Mat Fascione, 2024-06-25 · Wikimedia Commons, Mat Fascione (geograph.org.uk 7814592); CC BY-SA 2.0 · CC BY-SA 2.0

Sources

Tier 1 — the subject's own words (writings, letters, diaries)

  • [Voyage] Virginia Woolf, The Voyage Out (Duckworth, London, 1915), Project Gutenberg ebook #144. Text in research/texts/voyage-out.txt. Gutenberg has no page numbers: cited by chapter.
  • [Jacob] Virginia Woolf, Jacob's Room (Hogarth Press, 1922), Gutenberg #5670. research/texts/jacobs-room.txt. No page numbers.
  • [Dalloway] Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway (Hogarth Press, 1925), Gutenberg #71865. research/texts/mrs-dalloway.txt. No page numbers.
  • [Lighthouse] Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse (Harcourt, Brace & Company, New York, 1927), Internet Archive id tolighthouse0000virg_v9k3. research/texts/lighthouse-1927.txt. Page numbers are printed in the OCR running heads; cited pages were read from them.
  • [ThreeG] Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas (Hogarth Press, 1938; the scan is the 1943 printing), Internet Archive id dli.ernet.475785. research/texts/three-guineas.txt. In US copyright until 2033: paraphrase only. Page numbers from the running heads "THREE GUINEAS nnn".
  • [MoB] Virginia Woolf, "A Sketch of the Past" (written 1939-40), in Moments of Being, ed. Jeanne Schulkind (Sussex University Press, 1976; Harcourt 1978; rev. ed. 1985). In copyright, lending-only on the Internet Archive (momentsofbeingun0000wool, momentsofbeing00wool); the full text could not be downloaded. Wording confirmed only through Internet Archive full-text-search snippets (research/notes/fts-snippets.txt) in the book itself and in many studies quoting it.
  • [Letters] The Letters of Virginia Woolf, ed. Nigel Nicolson and Joanne Trautmann (Hogarth Press / Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975-80), vol. III (1923-28) and vol. IV. In copyright, lending-only; full text not downloadable. Wording confirmed through snippets in books that quote the letters (research/notes/fts-snippets.txt).

Tier 2 — scholarly biographies and encyclopedias

  • [Maitland] F. W. Maitland, The Life and Letters of Leslie Stephen (Duckworth, 1906), IA lifelettersofles00maituoft; copy of the text from episode 38 in research/texts/maitland.txt. Page numbers as cited in 38-stephen/research/fact-sheet.md.
  • [Apology] Leslie Stephen, An Agnostic's Apology, and Other Essays (2nd ed., Smith, Elder, 1903), IA agnosticsapology00stepuoft; copy in research/texts/stephen-apology.txt.
  • [Stephen38] 38-stephen/research/fact-sheet.md, claims 1-60 (cited for Leslie Stephen's chronology, with Maitland pages).
  • [Bell] Quentin Bell, Virginia Woolf: A Biography (Hogarth Press, 1972; IA virginiawoolfbio0000bell and others, lending-only), ch. 1 opening line seen in a snippet. Not read in full.
  • [Gillespie] Diane F. Gillespie and Elizabeth Steele, eds., Julia Duckworth Stephen: Stories for Children, Essays for Adults (Syracuse UP, 1987; IA juliaduckworthst00step), chronology snippet only.

Tier 3 — popular biographies and journalism (all seen only as full-text-search snippets)

  • [Raffel] Burton Raffel, T. S. Eliot (IA tseliot00raff); [Lewis] Pericles Lewis, Religious Experience and the Modernist Novel (2010); [Pearce] Joseph Pearce, Literary Giants, Literary Catholics (2005); [Margolis] John D. Margolis, T. S. Eliot's Intellectual Development, 1922-1939 (1972): each quotes the 11 Feb 1928 letter or Eliot's 1928 preface.
  • [ODLQ] The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Quotations, ed. Peter Kemp (1997), entry for Woolf: letter to Ethel Smyth, 22 June 1930 (IA oxforddictionary00pete).

Tier 4 — Wikipedia and similar reference sites

  • None consulted.

Opposition sources — contemporary critics and religious responses

  • [Newman] J. H. Newman, Apologia, as quoted in [Apology] p. 10 (as in episode 38).
  • [Preacher 1900] A Cambridge preacher on Leslie Stephen, as quoted in [Maitland] p. 149.
  • [Eliot 1928] T. S. Eliot, preface to For Lancelot Andrewes (Faber, Nov 1928): "classicist in literature, royalist in politics, and anglo-catholic in religion" (seen only in snippets in [Margolis] and [Raffel]; the 1928 text is US public domain but no scan was reached; lead).