Finding Patterns: Virginia Woolf and Marianne Moore's Poetics of Paper

Virginia Woolf and Marianne Moore took great joy in paper products and in the materials of bookmaking, and paper was insistent in their literary imaginations.1 In this essay, I extend into an early 20th century context what Joshua Calhoun calls ‘the poetics of paper’2 and posit a strong relationship between paper imaginaries and the materialities of paper in the work of these two modernist women writers. Both were interested in learning about the craft and materiality of making books. They often involved themselves actively in the publishing and bookmaking process, selecting methods of publication and materials for writerly composition that epitomised modernist design aesthetics. Woolf and Moore, too, both kept extensive reading notebooks and paid specific attention to the materialities of their compositional practices—Woolf bound her own notebooks and favoured a specific purple ink (Waterman's fountain pen ink in Patrician Purple), while Moore favoured carefully chosen personalised stationery for correspondence.3 Through an analysis of these writers' imaginative explorations and literal uses of paper, their modernist aesthetics can be understood as interdisciplinary artistic engagements that are at once material and literary. The crafting of modernism, for Woolf and for Moore, is a process-driven and affectively rich experience, made with both hands and minds. These writers' papery worlds have now been preserved in various physical and digital archives and special collections. While the most frequently researched elements of these archives are manuscript and typescript textual materials, the writers' everyday engagements with paper situate them in a dynamic world of modernist print culture. A search for ‘paper’ among Marianne Moore's personal effects now digitised and catalogued at the Rosenbach Museum in Philadelphia turns up over 1100 items, including the paper labels for her preferred sewing needles and spools of thread; postcards; calling cards; receipts; letterhead with art deco decorations; boxes of stationery from Bloomingdales; personalised letterhead and address labels; mail order labels; instructional pamphlets for filling Montblanc fountain pens; paper tape; paper cups; ‘Hot pink tissue paper that has been folded up. Looks brand new’4; a small paper bird under a bell jar; several papery gifts, including a papercut from literary critic I. A. Richards and a collage from photographer Jill Krementz; sewing patterns; paintings; prints; and drawings, among many other odds and ends. The ephemeral universe conjured by this collection preserves Marianne Moore's specific paper pleasures and its rich and detailed catalogue offers an intimate view of Moore's habits and preferences for the purchase, use and preservation of paper.5 In Woolf's case, the collections in her richly decorated home at Monk's House (now preserved as a National Trust site); Washington State University Library's collection of her bookbindings; and scattered in snippets and traces among her papers elsewhere allow us to see and to feel her textural and sensory engagements with paper in a wide range of applications. Post-impressionist wallpapers; painted paper lampshades; decorative and pattern papers for bookbinding; materials samples for making books at the Hogarth Press; and her preferred pale blue correspondence stationery are among some of the items that allow us to see evidence of Woolf's daily immersion in paper and print. From the remaining hot pink tissue paper and the scraps of wallpaper reused for covering books, we can conjure Moore and Woolf's papery surrounds. I begin this essay by outlining some of the historical conditions for paper production and for consumer cultures of stationery purchasing in the 1920s and 1930s to situate Woolf and Moore's specific engagements with paper materials. I then discuss Woolf's interactions with paper both in her literary writings and in her own bookbinding practice, and end with a close reading of Marianne Moore's poem ‘Walking-Sticks and Paperweights and Watermarks’ to demonstrate her readerly interest in book arts. Papermaking is a process that is, itself, poetic: it materialises the intellectual practices of writers drawing from raw materials and turning them from thought into literary work, just as a slurry of rags or wood pulp becomes a refined, thin, and even sheet. As Joshua Calhoun notes, papermakers are engaged in acts of material transformation, like ‘alchemists transmuting a worthless substance – an old ship sail or a ragged smock, for instance – into an object as valuable as gold in terms of social history’.6 Building on Georgina Wilson's argument that ‘[t]o “read” paper can mean both to consider the bibliographical evidence of its production, circulation, and use, and to analyse how paper is deployed as a rhetorical trope laden with “imaginative power”’, and her contention, drawing from Jonathan Senchyne's work, that paper ‘is layered in both a physical and a figurative sense, it demands both intellectual and haptic engagement from its readers’.7 I examine the ways in which both the metaphorical and material dimensions of paper were not only legible to these two writers of the early 20th century but in many cases brought them sensory and poetic satisfaction and pleasure that contributed to their vision of a multi-medial modernist aesthetics. Foregrounding the joys and pleasures of paper in this essay is in part a feminist bibliographical gesture—which seeks to centre embodied experience and domestic craft practices that often disappear as paper itself does in considerations of authorial process. In conversation with Amy E. Elkins' work connecting feminist writerly practices with their specific, intimate, and personal engagements with craft, and with Hannah Sullivan's insistence on a historicist approach to modernist print culture, I ask how the paper becomes a material site and a metaphor for the early 20th century writers for different forms of creativity.8 How do writers think about and figure paper intellectually in their work while at the same time attending to and involving themselves in acts of book production? And, further, how can we track the paper's presence by combining bibliographical techniques of examining watermarks with aesthetic analyses of the visual designs and literary contents of paper materials? Writers and artists of the early 20th century lived in what David Giuritao calls ‘a highly differentiated paper universe’ in which a wide variety of commercially and artistically produced papers was available for use as both literal materials for writing and as imaginative materials for thinking about fictionality, about craft, and about modernist aesthetics and design. 9 Cheap wood pulp paper circulated alongside fine press books and deluxe editions produced with handmade rag paper. In his book, Wastepaper Modernism, Joseph Elkanah Rosenberg notes that the relative lack of attention to paper in literary criticism about this period is not terribly surprising: ‘[c]onsidering modernism's emphasis on “new media”, “new modes” and “new methods”, it is little wonder that recent criticism seems to have learned a great deal more by picturing the modernist writer in front of a screen or a speaker than startled by a scrap of paper’.10 However, as Rosenberg and others (including notably Lothar Müller and Hannah Sullivan) point out, there was such a proliferation of paper products in the early 20th-century that paper too deserves its place in what Julian Murphet calls the ‘medially self-aware’ literary culture of modernism. 11 Rosenberg, drawing renewed attention to paper and focussing on moments in modernist fiction from Elizabeth Bowen to Henry James, figures paper chiefly as a site for brokenness and failure. Rosenberg finds examples everywhere in modernist literature of paper being destroyed, crumpled, torn, discarded and repurposed. Reading Jean-Paul Sartre's novel Nausea (1938), for instance, Rosenberg foregrounds how ‘papers are baked by the sun, caked with mud and excrement, ensnared by the earth, and even set alight’.12 In part thanks to Rosenberg's evocative archival and narrative readings, scholars frequently associate paper modernisms with an aesthetics of wreckage, when they think of them at all. This aesthetics of destruction and waste is important, certainly, in understanding the 20th century literary dynamics of paper. I focus instead in this essay, however, on how we can analyse highly specific kinds of paper, particularly ‘pattern paper’, as objects expressive of modernist aesthetics. Many writers, to put it simply, love stationery, and have finely tuned and clearly defined preferences for specific inks, pens and paper. In an advertisement for their printing services, The Curwen Press, a multi-purpose press that produced books as well as advertisements, ephemera and patterned papers, exhorts its customers to enthusiasm and enjoyment: 'get the spirit of joy into your printed things […] take your courage in both hands and have your printing done CHEERILY!'13 This is perhaps not the most expected adverb to associate with the printing process, but it serves to remind us that the joy of printing and bookmaking processes and the pleasure of craft was part of the appeal of new stationery products during the modernist period. Writing in 1922, American business historian Helen Mary Lehmann linked a renewed interest in paper with the rise of new raw materials for papermaking and with technological advances in manufacturing: ‘the materials and sources of supply for paper have changed so radically in the last ten years and they are so closely connected with other changes in our commercial situation that paper has become a particularly interesting subject for study, as well as one of the most useful and adaptable forms of merchandise’.14 No longer chiefly the concern of publishers, printers and book makers, paper of various kinds—for notebooks, wrapping papers, correspondence, and household use—were in wide circulation among everyday consumers. As Woolf wrote in her diary, the act of writing was directly connected with the materials of writing that use, which took on an a of paper and pen and ink as of even the as it were a of to than for paper and ink were highly objects that rise to both pleasure and writerly is a in modernist to that the period was by a and about and the more technological of what David has the and production a of as rag paper to wood pulp for production and commercial use, and and were by that the paper production process. While there is a small but on the of paper and papermaking in the and Helen and Georgina in the early there is for that the wide range of practices in 20th-century paper production and its specific The rise of paper in the to end of the century by the 1930s to a attention to the relationship between ephemeral paper for everyday use and fine paper for aesthetics and The Curwen to the between and in part by clearly between and for instance, is to that design and aesthetics were not to or to a of book not be a or decorated The and range of materials available for like Curwen to set a for printing and design production the for consumers. The of and stationery with a such as the and more such as and in stationery for the the and of a consumer stationery paper figures in the early 20th-century as an object of pleasure as well as The joy of paper the by Curwen of paper as an object that has the to joy in both and the during the the more These conditions of and lack some of the craft practices with fine bookbinding into domestic of and this in commercial paper production a renewed attention in the of fine design and literature to the old methods of making paper by and of it in Virginia Woolf's is useful for the but that paper can as at once material object and textual The a on a her and in imaginative of about her A the from her the of the the up from the paper the of the to a from her in the and to the paper. the to act as a of the of the such as the of reading longer serves to the from the of the as a to with the material of the to do the was the paper so that it made a even to The and of the paper, by the the of the end of the however, Woolf has a and even to and its the paper with her hands and the and her the the As the the to the an the has conjured for her an the and to the own up the of the the end of the and the the and from the As with her has to her at the the that the the to the of is what I I I I to The of the and world is for Woolf by paper, and the in the not or even chiefly as a for print but as a material object the of which social and can be by the by the The up and then the and of paper in the hands is a sensory and engagement that foregrounds paper as an object that serves a the more expected act of I of the of that I deal with it as one in the they are and I under the of the of the be on to I have end in I do not how to to and to them by some they the and that have an end in is to an is your is I do not and like the of and the of to a on the there is for to I have I like the that over the or the that on a on a of the or a or a I and like paper and press the to Woolf's intimate of paper and its was by her own engagement in craft Woolf's as a and her as a writer both the of that and on in her fiction but the material and that the literal objects of the Woolf's as a writer in her to in and of to material and sensory with of materiality and are just as in her bookmaking as they are in her Woolf was in her bookmaking, and in in which in her own scraps of and pattern papers for wrapping early Hogarth books and for and the in her physical presence in her itself with her thinking and her use of in her material The act of in a is about and the and for as the folded the in The of of a in and it an aesthetic on the is one that or as about however, the material was and often a in moments of or at the on which the printing and writing take place and which they are is a small but from the work that Helen and I have to the and of Woolf's work as a and at the Hogarth notes that the Hogarth was […] to situate in the of was an that aesthetics and use of a or deluxe and the for books in the which themselves to and deluxe editions not the of the The Hogarth Press, as notes, from the and was on under Woolf's in a The Hogarth as a new the Woolf's that their was to books that are to be and not only and is to our at the and to at and than at and Woolf's bookbinding her experience at the Hogarth as a in her In Woolf's some of craft and the practices of the design the of from the process of craft as as from the Woolf took a from and from her that be from book paper to As notes, Woolf the materials and the they Woolf a love for paper and and to do things like the of wallpaper and use them for bookbinding Woolf's of making books has not criticism and even the of Woolf's collection at Washington her bookbinding as and and Woolf a of bookmaking practices and often directly from to the of the books. This the of Woolf's bookbinding but it a specific of one that the and of patterned and decorated papers with a of and from that and were Woolf's to a joy and in craft Helen has to the materiality of Woolf's which in order to that Woolf in the 1930s to her her notebooks by with and paper, Woolf made detailed for and which the of The the of Woolf's work as a and offers the of it in a variety of ways the which it was be to be or and Woolf was not as a in making to the wrote in her that these and her was more wrote to her in have a new of which the is just as – I a some to several interesting Writing about Woolf's and engagement with book with her design and of a The which with her Woolf's approach as one that preserved books for their which was reading than a the This is the only of her to the covering of books being these were to be or it be that Woolf have to use decorative her work can be an of what craft This it it a between the and with craft practices and or and Wilson's analysis is more on craft and fine practices from a wide range of Woolf was clearly engaged in a or as a one that the of reading or writing as part of a of that be the the of the in or in the a is and instead the of a object on its of its and in Woolf's the time and to and paper for our books as the to do I think we a which many of the old papers from over the including some patterned from and we some made for us by in The books in Woolf's can and be alongside the other kinds of paper that her highly decorated As put it in and the of a that Woolf kept in her own ‘a book can be it not be as an with but as a of and interest among its a and in it is with then with a be as a but in a which is from a of rich be While and designs have as visual for Woolf's there was book and paper design which itself Woolf's bookbinding The Curwen was one of the of ‘pattern for a variety of different early 20th-century in his to The Curwen of book, to the and use of these papers their to notes that books have been and many printed the of patterned paper the 1920s been Woolf the papers not only as books but as decorative for The work of pattern for Curwen papers on other domestic designs to for on the the aesthetic of the patterned papers on a variety of are to be they often Woolf the Curwen paper by on her of by now at Washington State University A of pattern paper in the Curwen of in a with instead of the the Curwen was for and for stationery for and of paper alongside books about subject from to to with a brand and aesthetic directly with of the most effects of the use of Curwen paper was to Woolf's into world of the Curwen to that Woolf's when their was and paper their of they their attention to printing and for in In the modernist design for which Curwen was a 1920s and 1930s aesthetic to Woolf's her with her and The specific pattern paper by Woolf in her in a of Marianne Moore's in the in Moore's paper too, with and Moore with paper from its presence as both an object and a process in her to her interest in paper and poetic is legible her reading of materials and her into the publishing process of her poetic collections. Moore small and printing and publishing for her of this in Moore's work is The and the of which it the same pattern paper as Woolf's bookbinding The book was was the and was printed in a of and by made for a of the advertisement for the book that in and on its physical that it was printed at Curwen on paper, bound in paper in and and a that that the Curwen paper was ‘a from the by some of the Moore's literary work and aesthetics like connected with the Curwen ‘pattern This in a it in the fine in the by its The once or In a and richly poetic to and and Moore's speaker a the of the paper and the and of the and the made by the paper in the sheet. directly to the papermaking process, Moore the materials to paper, and in so offers a literary into the on which writing and of the papermaking process are in 20th-century not as I at the of this essay, most writers' were from the material and physical processes of book notes in and the has his last the Moore's of the pulp an to paper process that not only a but the of handmade paper production in the of paper is produced In this small poetic Moore on an in the of paper In his the and wonder early calls making paper rags as the The book of several of paper samples made a variety of materials, from to various of wood Moore have a and of an of the papermaking process not in the but in her reading of The A of the of produced in by The of in the The was as an in the essay on papermaking by with a the with the of wood pulp paper. as Mary notes, made this his of and his attention to a on his in to in its process of the wood into a paper is a and Moore and the which in to the essay on the of on the process of and the considerations of and a on the of among other it is that her was a not only to the of papery but a to the in the of wood pulp Moore's poetic which at to be a of in to paper's imaginative which is in the of papermaking in The to which Moore has a specific the papermaking process in at a paper that rag paper in under the of The for technological in papermaking in the including the of rags with and of blue to the of the rag papers that the produced paper under a variety of and and was during Moore's poetic The and of Moore's poem to the watermarks in the paper. Moore's attention to materiality in the poem and this the ‘the have an interest in the of objects to what calls Moore is the poem on moments when being and the to which the us and the it into have been an and a of a with itself as the As Jonathan notes, paper was often to be it is to However, for Woolf and Moore, intellectual and aesthetic engagements particularly with decorative patterned paper and with the craft processes of the book ways of thinking of and their material worlds into and of their books and as material and literary at Moore and paper was from an was it a of a was instead a material craft production textural and poetic were and to writerly material at a modernist both Virginia Woolf and Marianne Moore a rich metaphorical and material which they and aesthetic In their modernist material craft was from writerly practice, and paper was at the of both kinds of is an at the University of is the of and and many and on Virginia The Hogarth Press, and book and publishing

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