‘Trouble in the House’: Virginia Woolf and Ellen Wilkinson write the House of Commons

Dr Clara Jones (KCL) will be leading conversation in our upcoming reading group. It will be taking place in person at Senate House, London – Room 35, Ground Floor on the 8th November 2022 6:00pm – 7:15pm. All are welcome to join.

Abstract

This talk considers two pieces of writing about the House of Commons published in 1932 – Virginia Woolf’s article forGood Housekeepingmagazine, ‘This is the House of Commons’ and Ellen Wilkinson’s, thriller,The Division Bell Mystery. One fiction and the other a piece of creative non-fiction, both have much to tell us about this tumultuous moment in parliamentary politics. The proximity of these pieces to the 1928 Equal Representation Act and the fact both are written by women mean it is tempting to focus on the gender politics of their representations of Westminster. This certainly comes into it but what I want to do…