Back to Virginia Woolf Seminar Home Page
Updated February 14, 1998
Created January 1998 by UAH graduate students Sheri Stanley and Mary Beth
Walker
What is the publication history of The Voyage Out?
Virginia’s half-brother’s firm, Gerald Duckworth and Company, first published Voyage in England on March 26, 1915. It was first published in the U.S. by George H. Doran Company in 1920.
Virginia’s preparations for the novel’s U.S. first edition were extensive. She omitted autobiographical information, greatly altered Rachel’s character, even cutting some chapters (chapter 16 has the most extensive changes). It is believed that she used an English first edition to record revisions for the U.S. edition. Some dispute has erupted between scholars over the validity of English edition printer’s copies of the novel with Virginia’s actual annotations and revisions. Haule asserts the importance of locating the original printer’s copies for artistic reasons and "the poignancy when one recalls that the conclusion and final correction of [Voyage] led to Woolf’s first literary breakdown" (310).
Subsequently, two different versions of Voyage have been in circulation. Louise DeSalvo has published a comparison of the English and American editions. Woolf herself chose the English edition for the 1929 Hogarth Press uniform edition of her works. Since Virginia Woolf’s copyright expired in 1991, new editions have surfaced from several publishers, and students must check to see whether these are following the English or American versions.