Historical Meet-Ups

Virginia Woolf
Bipolar modernist genius

meets

Thomas Hardy
Eminent Edwardian fossil

Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf? Not Thomas Hardy, apparently. In the summer of 1926, Woolf paid a visit to Hardy, one of her literary forebears, at his home near Dorchester. The meeting didn’t go as smoothly as she had planned. The blasé Hardy didn’t seem at all interested in discussing literary matters with her. He blew off her thoughtful queries about the nature of poetry with platitudinous non-answers and offered no insight into the tribulations of the literary life. He did sign a book for her, misspelling her last name as “Wolff.”  Woolf’s reaction to the meeting? She had a nervous breakdown a few days later.