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Leonard Woolf
(1880-1969) |
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Leonard Woolf was born in London in 1880. He spent five years at
Trinity College, Cambridge - probably the most formative of his life - where he
began lasting friendships with men like Lytton Strachey, E. M. Forster and John
Maynard Keynes. In 1904, Woolf applied to join the home civil service but
failed the exam. Instead, he was sent to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) as a cadet in
the Ceylon Civil Service. He remained there for nearly seven years. His
resignation from the Ceylon civil service was formally accepted on 7 May 1912
and he married Virginia Stephen a few months later on 10 August.
An opponent of Britain's involvement in the First World
War, Woolf was spared becoming a conscientious objector by being rejected by the
military as unfit for duty. Woolf joined the Fabian Society in 1916 and the
following year founded the Hogarth Press. Over the next few years Leonard and
Virginia Woolf became the centre of what became known as the Bloomsbury Group.
In November 1912 his first novel The Village in the Jungle was
published, and a second novel The Wise Virgins was published in 1914.
Stories of the East was first published in 1921.
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Stories of the East
ISBN 1590482530 |
Although Leonard
Woolf has long been revered as one of the great literary minds of the 20th
century, he is seldom remembered as a writer of fiction. While his novel
The Village in the Jungle has the status of a minor classic, his superb
collection of short stories dating back to his time as a colonial
administrator in Ceylon has been almost completely forgotten.
This slender
volume represents the first time that Stories of the East has been
available to the general reader. Originally published in 1921 by the Hogarth
Press in an edition limited to 300 copies, these stories have hardly seen
the light of day since.
Sir Christopher
Ondaatje, an expert on Leonard Woolf and author of Woolf in Ceylon,
provides a specially commissioned introduction to this edition of Stories
of the East, in which he argues the case for the enduring importance of
the three stories ‘A Tale Told by Midnight,’ ‘The Two Brahmans’ and ‘Pearls
and Swine’.
Stories of the
East is not typical of Woolf, but these three pieces are of vital
importance in understanding his mistrust of and dislike for colonialism. The
stories provide disturbing commentaries about the disintegration of the
colonial process and the uncomfortable moral ground occupied by the servants
of the British Government in Ceylon prior to the Great War.
For more information, please go to
Amazon.co.uk or
Barnes & Noble. |
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The
Village in the Jungle
ISBN 1590482549 |
‘All jungles are
evil, but no jungle is more evil than that which lay about the village of
Beddagama.’
In a literary
career spanning more than 60 years the highly prolific man of letters
Leonard Woolf published hardly any fiction. Of the little he did produce, by
far the most important was The Village in the Jungle (1913), a debut
novel set in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) of such literary accomplishment that it
should have propelled him on a career to match his great contemporaries D H
Lawrence or Thomas Hardy. Instead Woolf chose to devote himself to
publishing fiction by his more famous wife, Virginia, while running the
famous Hogarth Press.
Despite being
virtually unknown The Village in the Jungle is an important classic,
rare among English novels of the Edwardian era. While most take the
viewpoint of the coloniser, Woolf tells his tale of native life in a
colonial outpost from the point of view of the colonised. It is also
a tale of superstition and murder set against a backdrop of the jungle that
threatens to swallow everything up in its path.
The Village in
the Jungle is the work of a young writer of immense skill and maturity.
His flawlessly lyrical and intense prose brings the jungle chillingly to
life, while his innate understanding of the Sinhalese people garnered from
seven years as a colonial administrator on the island gives the novel real
authenticity. Widely regarded as one of the best books in English about
Ceylon, The Village in the Jungle is regarded in Sri Lanka today as a
national treasure.
Despite the early
success of The Village in the Jungle Woolf’s only other fiction about
Ceylon is a slim volume of three short stories called Stories of the East
(1921), also available from Classic Travel Books.
With an introduction by travel
writer Nick Smith
For more information, please go to
Amazon.co.uk or
Barnes & Noble.
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