"The Right Use of Reason": Virginia Woolf, Isaac Watts, and Logic

Abstract:This paper argues for a complex and sustained engagement with logic in Virginia Woolf's early fiction. Her 1899 diary, pasted into Isaac Watts's Logick (1786), contains Woolf's earliest literary compositions. Initially, Woolf selected Watts's book because of its size and binding, but closer examination reveals considerable interaction with Logick. As the first book Woolf made, and her first formal literary experiment, it is significant that the diary responds to, and reacts against, traditional logic. Woolf's early essays and novels continue this agonistic relationship with the logic of Leslie Stephen, G. E. Moore and Bertrand Russell, creating a productive tension that helps shape To the Lighthouse.