Virginia Woolf Summer Course

We celebrate ten years of our unique summer courses, online and in Cambridge

Mar 03, 2026

Virginia Woolf Summer Course Tenth Anniversary

The Woolf Summer Course is ten years old! We started in July 2016 with the first of our intensive five-day courses. Twenty-six people from all over the world joined us for a week of lectures, supervisions (tutorials), walks, talks, visits to colleges, and much else, all focused on the writing and life of Virginia Woolf. It was an incredibly rewarding week for all.

The Woolf Summer Course has continued every year since then, each with a different theme, apart from a break over covid.

Currently we run the Woolf Summer Course twice each year: first, live online, then later in person in Cambridge. This year our classes are at Clare Hall and participants can stay for the week at Selwyn College.

Our theme in 2026 is Virginia Woolf and Nature. It’s a rich and fascinating topic and we are really looking forward to it.

Virginia Woolf and the Natural World

From the very beginning of her life, Virginia Woolf was fascinated and moved by the natural world. She remembers how, as an infant, she listened to the waves from her bedroom at Talland House in Cornwall. All her life she loved the sea, the Sussex downs, trees and birds, and all the natural world. Her work is often set in cities, but it is infused with nature. But what does it mean? In this summer course, we will explore Woolf’s writing about nature in five of her great novels. We study one book per day, with a lecture and supervision (tutorial) on each book, plus talks on related matters, and more.

Lecture list

Alison Hennegan, Women and Nature in Jacob’s Room (1922)
Karina Jakubowicz, The Artist’s Garden in To the Lighthouse (1927)
Kate Eliot, Land and Sea in The Waves (1931)
Trudi Tate, The Weather in History: The Years (1937)
Ellie Mitchell, Earth and Sky in Between the Acts (1941)

Talks

• Ann Kennedy Smith, Virginia Woolf, Rupert Brooke and the ‘neo-pagans’
• Harriet Baker on Nature Writing in Virginia Woolf’s Diary.
• Claudia Tobin on Monks House and Garden
• Bonnie Lander Johnson on Vanishing Landscapes: Saffron
… and more

Thank you to everyone who makes our summer courses so rewarding.