Presented by David Taylor

Thursday, 12 March 2009 . 6 p.m., reception to follow

The Grolier Club, 47 East 60th Street, New York

Although he was a friend and colleague to many famous artists, authors, and activists, the lawyer and positivist Vernon Lushington (1832–1912) remains virtually unknown today. In “Vernon Lushington: Pre-Raphaelite, Friend of William Morris, and Father of ‘Mrs. Dalloway,’” historian David Taylor will draw upon previously unavailable materials from the Lushington archive to shed light on the interesting and influential figure who arranged the first meeting between Edward Burne-Jones and Dante Gabriel Rossetti and who visited with William and Jane Morris at Kelmscott Manor. Taylor will also discuss the connection between the Lushingtons and the Stephen family. After the death of Mrs. Lushington, Vernon’s three daughters were taken under the wing of Julia Stephen, wife of Leslie Stephen and mother of Virginia Woolf. Vernon Lushington’s eldest daughter, Kitty, became the model for the title character of Woolf’s novel Mrs. Dalloway (1925). The Lushingtons also spent summers with the Stephen family at Talland House in Cornwall, which provided the setting for the Ramseys’ summer home in Woolf’s To the Lighthouse (1927). Letters in the archive offer insight into Woolf’s fiction.

David Taylor is a historian, writer, and lecturer living in Cobham, Surrey. A Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, Taylor has published several works on the history of Cobham and presented lectures to the Virginia Woolf Society, the Pre-Raphaelite Society, and the William Morris Society. Vernon Lushington is the subject of Taylor’s doctoral research.

Event sponsored by the William Morris Society in the United States, the American Friends of Arts and Crafts in Chipping Campden, The Stickley Museum at Craftsman Farms, and the Victorian Society in America.

Tickets ($12 for members of the Stickley Museum or the other co-sponsoring groups, $18 for others) may be purchased from at www.morrissociety.org or by sending a check to William Morris Society, P.O. Box 53263, Washington, DC 20009.

Vernon Lushington: Pre-Raphaelite, Friend of William Morris, and Father of ‘Mrs. Dalloway,’ is a post from The Stickley Museum At Craftsman Farms

A staged reading at the Grolier Club, New York

Wednesday, 19 November, 6 p.m.

The first American performance of Virginia Woolf’s comedy, Freshwater, will be held on Wednesday November 19th in New York’s Grolier Club. The play, a hilarious send-up of Woolf’s great-aunt, the famed photographer Julia Margaret Cameron, and her friends poet Alfred Tennyson, painter G. F. Watts, and actress Ellen Terry, was written for a private Bloomsbury theatrical party in 1931. It is being presented in conjunction with the Grolier Club’s exhibition, This Perpetual Fight: Love and Loss in Virginia Woolf’s Intimate Circle (17 September–22 November 2008).

This staged reading is sponsored by the William Morris Society in the United States, the Grolier Club, American Friends of Arts and Crafts in Chipping Campden, the Stickley Museum at Craftsman Farms, and the Victorian Society in America.

Arthur Giron, the director, is a playwright and former head of the Graduate Playwriting Program at Carnegie Mellon University. A founding member of Ensemble Studio Theatre, the nation’s foremost play development organization, Giron had been called “One of our best contemporary dramatists” by critic Rosette La Mont. His latest play Emilie’s Voltaire won the Galileo Prize and will open in New York in 2009. The cast includes Liza Vann as Julia Margaret Cameron. A recipient of the Clarence Ross Fellowship from the American Theatre Wing, she has performed extensively in regional theatre. Her latest work is Good Ol’ Girls, which airs on PBS later this year.

Tickets: $12 reduced rate for members of the Stickley Museum and other sponsoring organizations, $18 for all others, may be purchased from the William Morris Society in the United States, either online at www.morrissociety.org.

Seating is limited and available on a first-come, first-served basis. A reception will follow the performance.

For more information: (302) 831-3250.

Location: The Grolier Club is at 47 East 60th St., New York, www.grolierclub.org.

More information on this performance can be found on The William Morris Society’s blog.

Virginia Woolf's Freshwater is a post from The Stickley Museum At Craftsman Farms