Dr Patricia Novillo-Corvalán, Senior Lecturer and Head of the Department of Comparative Literature, has just published an article in the latest edition of Woolf Studies Annual, Volume 23 (2917).

Woolf Studies Annual is a journal dedicated to advancing the study of the author Virginia Woolf (1882-1941).

In her article, entitled ‘Empire and Commerce in Latin America: Historicising Woolf’s The Voyage Out’, Patricia seeks to recuperate the overlooked Latin American contexts that inform Virginia Woolf’s first novel, The Voyage Out (1915).

Integrating archival research and a historicising approach, the article uses documentary evidence drawn from the research notes that Virginia Woolf made for Leonard Woolf’s study Empire and Commerce in Africa (1920) namely, empirical data relating to political-economic issues in Latin America and, more specifically, to countries such as Argentina and Brazil.

In so doing, Patricia demonstrates that Virginia Woolf puts the complex issue of Great Britain’s neo-colonial domination in Latin America squarely on the cultural agenda of The Voyage Out. In particular, she suggests that the archival documents (housed at the Leonard Woolf archive, University of Sussex) acutely illustrate the extent of Britain’s disproportionate economic control of Argentina through the development of the meat industry that turned the Argentine Republic into the abattoir of the British Empire. The article argues that this documentary evidence complements and complicates the overall political message of The Voyage Out, whereby Woolf mercilessly denounces Britain’s attempt to gain economic control of the continent through the predatory character of Willoughby Vinrace.

For more details about the journal, please see the publisher’s page here.