A Haunted House and Other Short Stories by Woolf, Virginia [Bell, Vanessa] - 1943

London: The Hogarth Press, 1943 First edition, first printing. One of 6,000 copies. Personal copy of author's sister Vanessa Bell, with her ownership signature "Vanessa Bell" in black ink to the front free endpaper. Publisher's dull crimson cloth boards, lettered in gilt. Good, with toning and staining to the spine and boards, small nick to left edge of the front board, bright gilt, some faint toning to pages, pencil correction to page 90; laid in to this copy is a photocopy of a broadside featuring Woolf's text from "The Mark on the Wall" with woodblocks by Bell. Housed in a custom quarter-leather clamshell box. Kirkpatrick A28a. A Haunted House is a collection of eighteen of Virginia Woolf's short stories, selected and published posthumously by her husband Leonard Woolf. The collection contains a mix of previously published and unpublished stories: six stories from Woolf's 1921 collection Monday or Tuesday (the only collection of short stories published in her lifetime), including "Monday or Tuesday," "A Haunted House," and "Kew Gardens;" six stories previously published in magazines and serial publications, including "The New Dress," "The Shooting Party," and "The Duchess and the Jeweller;" and six previously unpublished stories, including "Moments of Being," "The Man Who Loved His Kind," and "The Legacy." Although it was published after her death in 1941, Leonard Woolf wrote in his foreword that he and Virginia had discussed publishing such a collection and that he "tried to carry out her intention" with A Haunted House. Leonard explains that Virginia primarily wrote short stories "whenever an idea occurred to her" and would "sketch it out in a very rough form" before storing it away to be expanded upon or published later. "A Haunted House" was inspired by Asheham, a small early 19th century house that Vanessa and Virginia jointly rented from 1912-1919. According to passages in both Virginia's and Leonard's diaries, they believed Asheham to be haunted. Asheham House and its surroundings seemed to have had a creative effect on both Vanessa and Virginia; while living there, Vanessa executed paintings that were later shown at the Second Post-Impressionist Exhibition in London, and Virginia finished her first novel The Voyage Out and wrote much of Night and Day. Included in this collection is the short story "The Searchlight"-when Vanessa read it in 1939, she was inspired to illustrate it: "It seems to me lovely - only too full of suggestions for pictures almost. They leap into my mind at every turn. Your writing always does that for me to some extent, but I think this one more than usual." [Vanessa to Virginia, May 1939].. 1st Edition.. Hard Cover. Good.