I’m not sure what I was expecting when I cracked open Virginia Woolf’s The Life of Violet: Three Early Stories, but it certainly wasn’t a giantess who inhabits a magical garden and fights a sea monster in Tokyo. I have been an avid fan of Woolf’s novels since reading Mrs. Dalloway in high school, so I am familiar with the complicated women who grace her pages. Yet Violet Dickinson took me by surprise.
The Life of Violet is a set of three interconnected short stories that function as a mock-biography of a giantess named Violet Dickinson as she engages in self-discovery and embarks on adventure. The collection was released in its edited form by Princeton University Press for the first time in early October.
Despite being the most recently released literature from Woolf, the work actually predates her other published fiction. According to the research of the book’s editor, Urmila Seshagiri, who discovered and compiled the short-story collection, Woolf wrote these stories in 1907—eight years before her first novel, The Voyage Out, was published in 1915.
This would make Woolf 25 when she wrote the stories in The Life of Violet. Her youth is felt in the text; the stories are whimsical and playful compared with her later work, maintaining a lighthearted tone throughout. Woolf adopts the voice of an unnamed male narrator who acts as the biographer of Violet’s unusual life. He frequently interjects the narrative with comments about Violet, the world she inhabits and his approach to writing about her.
The stories in the collection are unpredictable. There is no cohesive storyline for much of the work, the setting is often quite vague, and there are sporadic references to otherworldly elements interwoven among the happenings of modern life. But underneath the fantastical elements is a narrative about a woman who refuses to sacrifice joy and ambition for virtue, who craves independence, who uses her mysterious “goddess-giantess” powers for good. On its most fundamental level, The Life of Violet tells a story about a woman who loves to make friends and loves to laugh.
Virginia Woolf met the real-life Violet Dickinson in 1902, when Woolf was 20 and Dickinson was 37. As she is described by Seshagiri in the book’s preface, Dickinson was “more than six feet tall, very wealthy, and unmarried,” and the duo “met regularly, exchanged voluminous letters, and traveled together.” Most important, Dickinson served as an “insightful reader” for Woolf in her early years of writing. She was a source of feedback and advice for Woolf and clearly served as a source of inspiration as well.
In her fiction, Woolf depicts her friend as a benevolent giantess whose personality is even bigger than her oversized body. The first story in The Life of Violet, “Friendships Gallery,” begins with Violet’s birth, where it quickly becomes clear that she is a very special child. “There was never such a child for growing,” Woolf’s narrator tells us, before explaining that “Miss Violet Dickinson grew to be as tall as the tallest hollyhock in the garden before she was eight…”
Violet’s impressive size is a concern for her family, especially the aunt appointed as her godmother. Upon attending her first ball, Violet is told that since she is not “in any way attractive,” she must be resolutely virtuous: “[I]f you are not to be a Maypole of Derision you must see to it that you shine forth as a Beacon of Godliness.”
But Violet’s sense of humor allows her to break out of this constructed dichotomy and the constraints of social expectation. Her ability to laugh at herself (and at the opulent cross necklace her aunt makes her wear to the dance) unlocks a friendship with a dance partner, changing the experience from a stifling social formality to “Rattlin’ good fun.”
The power of laughter to build relationships and change experiences for the better is one of the most consistent and impactful themes in The Life of Violet. Violet repeatedly uses humor to win the interest and affection of those around her—and it seems there has never been such an inspiring and magnetic friend. The narrator describes Violet’s impact on companions as one of infectious confidence and motivation, quoting them as exclaiming: “I too have a fire within me,” “I too sing a delightful song,” and “My God, I can write!” after being “struck” by Violet’s sharp mind and quick tongue.
Violet’s fantastic capacity for human connection continues through the collection. In the second story, “The Magic Garden,” she encounters an “old ruddy bent gardener” beat down by his repetitive, menial tasks. With a friendly “Good day,” Violet blows his world wide open. He begins to tell Violet all about his life, his work, his wife. He is humanized and empowered by her friendliness.
These moments of connection are not acts of charity for Violet; they have reciprocal and wide-reaching ripple effects that shape her as much as they shape her acquaintances. The gardener’s comments in turn inspire Violet’s ponderance over her desire to “build her own house.” When she tells the gardener’s story to the woman hosting her, her host also confesses the appeal of having “a cottage of one’s own.” Violet harnesses compassion such that it benefits everyone around her.
By the end of “The Magic Garden,” Violet does have her own cottage, where she reads, gardens and hosts friends. Her peaceful existence in her own space where she is “very happy alone” offers a preview of the most central themes in one of Woolf’s most iconic feminist works, A Room of One’s Own, which was published in 1929.
Though the third story, “A Story to Make You Sleep,” is distinct in both form and content, the importance of joyous female friendship does not fade. This installment is told by the same narrator, who chooses to tell this particular story by embodying a mother telling her child a bedtime story. The story is set in a fictional version of Tokyo that is plagued by a sea monster. Here Violet has become a mythological goddess who collaborates with another goddess (they are also called “princesses” in the text) to protect the people of Tokyo.
Yet again, humorous outlooks on both themselves and the world around them are an integral part of the women’s identities; laughter is both the vehicle of their power and the result of their influence on the people who come to celebrate them. It is fitting that one of the last scenes in the story leaves the two goddesses laughing together as they take down the monster and vanish into the ether.
In the entirety of The Life of Violet, Violet’s ability to laugh and make others laugh is not admirable simply because wit and joy are desired traits but also because humor has a tangible ability to transform experiences and relationships. That which was awkward and stilted is now joyful; that who was once a stranger is now an intimate confidant and companion. What was scary or concerning is now really nothing to worry about—ceratinly not at the expense of good humor.
It is in these moments that Woolf’s affection for the real-life Dickinson shines through. It’s easy to imagine Woolf emulating Dickinson and inserting herself among the fictional Violet’s friends, who find her to be endlessly amusing and enlightening, inspiring them to reach for their own great heights. This is perhaps the most consistent theme in the collection: a real appreciation for the way that someone’s bright shine can bring you into the light alongside them.
This article appears in January 2026.
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