An Important Anniversary for Self Publishing

This is an important anniversary for self-publishing: the Hogarth Press is 100 years old.

In March 1917, Leonard and Virginia Woolf, then living at Hogarth House in the London suburb of Richmond, purchased a hand-operated printing press and with it, first published "Two Stories" in July of the same year -- Leonard's mostly forgotten "Three Jews" and Virginia Woolf's experimental, modernist work entitled "The Mark on the Wall."





While "The Mark on the Wall" is revered mainly as an important example of stream of conscious, or introspective writing, I like it for a couple of other reasons.

First, Woolf was a close observer of English society and often viewed it in a satirical fashion. But rather than harsh, biting satire, hers was mostly bemused, whimsical and gentle in nature. She took considerable delight in the often eccentric foibles of her countrymen -- activities worthy of recounting in considerable detail.

In "The Mark on the Wall," the mark in question gets her thinking, among other things, about certain small mounds on England's South Downs and whether they might be the tombs or campsites of ancient people. There must be some book written by an antiquary about them, she muses, speculating that the antiquary in question was probably a retired Colonel assisted by parties of aged laborers. He engages in correspondence on the topic with the neighboring clergy and experiences a sense of importance when he opens such letters at breakfast time. He heads off on expeditions to compare arrowheads found on the South Downs with those found elsewhere, expeditious as much social as they are scientific in nature.

There is a great deal more about the Colonel and his wife in this vein before Woolf moves on to such matters as Whitaker's Table of Precedency and the nature of trees -- their "slow, delicious ooze of sap," for instance.

In essence, this is a work of associative thinking.  As the protagonist sits drinking tea and smoking, she gazes at a curious mark on the wall opposite and tries to determine what it is or what caused it. And in so doing, each possibility causes her to think about some other topic, or topics for a while.

In the end, the mark turns out to be none of what she has imagined. It is a small snail.

Readers who like this type of writing (and there don't seem to be many) might want to take a look at my own novella, "Manhattan Morning."  It is all about thoughts associated with what my protagonist experiences on a walk through midtown Manhattan.

But getting back to "The Mark on the Wall," as an early work by Woolf, it is noteworthy in that it foreshadows what will become a trademark of much of her writing -- a concern with flowers. She first takes note of three chrysanthemums in a round glass bowl on the mantelpiece; then imagines the miniature of a lady with "lips like red carnations;" then contrasts human life to the life of a flower; then speculates that the mark on the wall could actually be a small rose leaf, and finally wonders what flowers grew in the reign of Charles the First.

All of this well before Mrs. Dalloway famously declares that she herself will buy the flowers for her party that evening and sets out on a walk of about a mile to procure them. And when her husband, Richard, decides on an impulse he wants to return home with something that will express his love for Clarissa, what does he buy? Flowers, of course.

In due course, the Hogarth Press published authors other than Virginia and Leonard, but most famously turned James Joyce down when he sought to have the Woolfs publish "Ulysses," a book about which Virginia had very mixed feelings.

What about self-publishing now?  In my experience, it is an excellent means of assuring one's anonymity in the increasingly intrusive surveillance society.