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    Virginia Woolf Kew Garden

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    Bilal B'o
    This document is the short story "Kew Gardens" by Virginia Woolf. It describes a scene in Kew Gardens on a summer day, focusing on different flowers in the garden and a couple, Simon and Eleanor, who are walking through the gardens with their children, reminiscing about their pasts. The story is published by Renard Press and includes a note on the text and a biographical note about Virginia Woolf.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    Virginia Woolf Kew Garden

    Uploaded by

    Bilal B'o
    74 views16 pages
    This document is the short story "Kew Gardens" by Virginia Woolf. It describes a scene in Kew Gardens on a summer day, focusing on different flowers in the garden and a couple, Simon and Eleanor, who are walking through the gardens with their children, reminiscing about their pasts. The story is published by Renard Press and includes a note on the text and a biographical note about Virginia Woolf.

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    This document is the short story "Kew Gardens" by Virginia Woolf. It describes a scene in Kew Gardens on a summer day, focusing on different flowers in the garden and a couple, Simon and Eleanor, who are walking through the gardens with their children, reminiscing about their pasts. The story is published by Renard Press and includes a note on the text and a biographical note about Virginia Woolf.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    74 views16 pages

    Virginia Woolf Kew Garden

    Uploaded by

    Bilal B'o
    This document is the short story "Kew Gardens" by Virginia Woolf. It describes a scene in Kew Gardens on a summer day, focusing on different flowers in the garden and a couple, Simon and Eleanor, who are walking through the gardens with their children, reminiscing about their pasts. The story is published by Renard Press and includes a note on the text and a biographical note about Virginia Woolf.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    of 16

    kew gardens

    Kew Gardens

    v i rg i n i a w o o l f

    renard press
    RENARD PRESS LTD

    Kemp House
    152–160 City Road
    London EC1V 2NX
    United Kingdom
    [email protected]
    020 8050 2928

    www.renardpress.com

    Kew Gardens first published in Monday or Tuesday in 1921


    This edition first published by Renard Press Ltd in 2020

    Edited text © Renard Press Ltd, 2022


    Biographical Note © Renard Press Ltd, 2022

    Cover design by Will Dady


    Extra Material edited by Tom Conaghan

    Printed in the United Kingdom by Severn

    ISBN: 978-1-913724-12-2

    98765432

    All rights reserved. This publication may not be reproduced,


    stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by
    any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording
    or otherwise – without the prior permission of the publisher.
    contents

    Kew Gardens 7

    Note on the Text 27

    A Biographical Note on
    Virginia Woolf  29
    kew gardens
    F
    ro m t h e ova l - s h a p e d flower-
    bed there rose perhaps a hundred
    stalks spreading into heart-shaped
    or tongue-shaped leaves halfway up and un-
    furling at the tip red or blue or yellow petals
    marked with spots of colour raised upon
    the surface; and from the red, blue or yel-
    low gloom of the throat emerged a straight
    bar, rough with gold dust and slightly
    clubbed at the end. The petals were volu-
    minous enough to be stirred by the summer
    breeze, and when they moved, the red, blue
    and yellow lights passed one over the other,
    staining an inch of the brown earth beneath
    with a spot of the most intricate colour.

    9
    v i rg i n i a w o o l f

    The light fell either upon the smooth, grey


    back of a pebble or the shell of a snail
    with its brown, circular veins, or, falling
    into a raindrop, it expanded with such
    intensity of red, blue and yellow the thin
    walls of water that one expected them to
    burst and disappear. Instead, the drop
    was left in a second silver-grey once more,
    and the light now settled upon the flesh
    of a leaf, revealing the branching thread
    of fibre beneath the surface, and again it
    moved on and spread its illumination in the
    vast green spaces beneath the dome of the
    heart-shaped and tongue-shaped leaves.
    Then the breeze stirred rather more briskly
    overhead and the colour was flashed into
    the air above, into the eyes of the men and
    women who walk in Kew Gardens in July.
    The figures of these men and women
    straggled past the flower-bed with a curi-
    ously irregular movement not unlike that of

    10
    kew gardens

    the white and blue butterflies who crossed


    the turf in zigzag flights from bed to bed.
    The man was about six inches in front of
    the woman, strolling carelessly, while she
    bore on with greater purpose, only turn-
    ing her head now and then to see that the
    children were not too far behind. The man
    kept this distance in front of the woman
    purposely, though perhaps unconsciously,
    for he wished to go on with his thoughts.
    ‘Fifteen years ago I came here with
    Lily,’ he thought. ‘We sat somewhere
    over there by a lake, and I begged her to
    marry me all through the hot afternoon.
    How the dragonfly kept circling round us;
    how clearly I see the dragonfly and her
    shoe with the square silver buckle at the
    toe. All the time I spoke I saw her shoe,
    and when it moved impatiently I knew
    without looking up what she was going to
    say: the whole of her seemed to be in her

    11
    v i rg i n i a w o o l f

    shoe. And my love, my desire, were in the


    dragonfly; for some reason I thought that
    if it settled there, on that leaf – the broad
    one with the red flower in the middle of
    it – if the dragonfly settled on the leaf she
    would say ‘Yes’ at once. But the dragon-
    fly went round and round: it never settled
    anywhere – of course not – happily not, or
    I shouldn’t be walking here with Eleanor
    and the children – tell me, Eleanor, d’you
    ever think of the past?’
    ‘Why do you ask, Simon?’
    ‘Because I’ve been thinking of the past.
    I’ve been thinking of Lily – the woman I
    might have married… Well, why are you si-
    lent? Do you mind my thinking of the past?’
    ‘Why should I mind, Simon? Doesn’t one
    always think of the past, in a garden with
    men and women lying under the trees?
    Aren’t they one’s past, all that remains of
    it, those men and women, those ghosts ly-

    12
    kew gardens

    ing under the trees… one’s happiness, one’s


    reality?’
    ‘For me, a square silver shoe buckle and a
    dragonfly—’
    ‘For me, a kiss. Imagine six little girls
    sitting before their easels twenty years ago,
    down by the side of a lake, painting the
    water-lilies – the first red water-lilies I’d
    ever seen. And suddenly a kiss, there on
    the back of my neck. And my hand shook
    all the afternoon so that I couldn’t paint. I
    took out my watch and marked the hour
    when I would allow myself to think of the
    kiss for five minutes only – it was so pre-
    cious – the kiss of an old grey-haired wo-
    man with a wart on her nose, the mother
    of all my kisses all my life. Come, Caroline;
    come, Hubert.’
    They walked on past the flower-bed, now
    walking four abreast, and soon diminished
    in size among the trees and looked half

    13
    ot h e r c l a s s i c n on - f i c t i on f r o m
    renard press

    ISBN: 9781913724016 ISBN: 978191372641 ISBN: 9781913724306


    48pp • Pamphlet • £5 160pp • Paperback • £7.99 60pp • Paperback • £5

    ISBN: 9781913724047 ISBN: 9781913724733 ISBN: 9781913724702


    64pp • Paperback • £6.99 224pp • Paperback • £7.99 128pp • Paperback • £5.99

    d i s c o v e r t h e f u l l c o l l e c t i o n at
    www.renardpress.com
    a l s o ava i l a b l e by v i r g i n i a wo o l f

    the virginia woolf collection


    beautiful editions of the major works with gold-foiled covers

    ISBN: 9781913724009 ISBN: 9781913724726 ISBN: 9781913724092


    Paperback • £7.99 • 160pp 224pp • Paperback • £7.99 Paperback • £7.99 • 224pp

    i n t h e s a m e f o r m at a s k e w g a r d e n s :
    how should one read a book?

    First delivered as a speech to schoolgirls in


    Kent in 1926, this enchanting short essay
    by the towering Modernist writer Virginia
    Woolf celebrates the importance of the
    written word.
    With a measured but ardent tone, Woolf
    weaves together thought and quote, verse
    and prose into a moving tract on the power
    literature can have over its reader, in a way
    ISBN: 9781913724474
    which still resounds with truth today.
    48pp • Paperback • £5

    www.renardpress.com

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