
Letter to a young poet by Virginia Woolf (1932) - bookofjoe
https://www.berfrois.com/2019/06/letter-to-a-young-poet/
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brightball
I still will never understand the level of fame given to Virginia Woolf. We
had to read A Room of One's Own in college and I got an A on a paper detailing
why it was one of the most poorly written things I'd ever been forced to read.

EDIT: It’s been 20 years. The only reason I remember it at all is because I
was certain I was going to get a failing grade on the assignment because of
the approach that I took.

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tropdrop
But the very nature of your dissent increased the chances of you getting that
A - this is a little similar to why we have Publication bias in scientific
papers. What more interesting things would you have to say on this paper by
concurring with all the popular opinions of the time that Woolf deserves
recognition? Much easier to find something novel to say through disagreement,
and therefore, easier to receive that high mark.

That doesn't mean you had the right opinion... something about the fact that
you are lauding your own opinion on Hacker News while Woolf's place in
literary canon remains unassailable makes me think otherwise.

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formatkaka
There is an article I read by Woolf about how to read book. Sharing it here -
[https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/w/woolf/virginia/w91c2/chapte...](https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/w/woolf/virginia/w91c2/chapter22.html)

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semi-extrinsic
In case anyone else is a bit confused - I had to look this up:

Rainer Maria Rilke wrote a series of letters that were published as "Letters
to a Young Poet" in 1929 (posthumously). These were, in fact, genuine letters
from Rilke to a young poet (who was the one who eventually published the
letters).

Virginia Woolf wrote and published "A Letter to a Young Poet" in 1932 (the OP
here), as an epistolary letter prompted by the writer John Lehman (who was
ultimately dissatisfied with Woolf's work).

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bambax
It's striking how ambitious hotshots receiving letters from famous and
accomplished people never seem to amount to much. We never would have learned
about the mere existence of Lucilius if not for the lectures he got from
Seneca.

