Hogarth Press Story Told in New Exhibition at Charleston, Sussex

A new exhibition at Charleston, the historic farmhouse in Firle, East Sussex, UK, tells the story of the Hogarth Press, the influential publishing house founded by Virginia and Leonard Woolf. The exhibition, titled "Virginia Woolf and the Hogarth Press," runs through September 6 and features approximately 200 books published by the press, tracing its evolution from a handmade operation in 1917 to a major publisher of modernist literature. The press began with a hand press in the basement of Hogarth House in London, where Virginia and Leonard set type by hand, a process Virginia loved for the freedom it gave her from male editors. The exhibition highlights Virginia's own novels, including "Jacob's Room" (1922), with covers designed by her sister Vanessa Bell, and the press's landmark publication of T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land" in 1922, the first complete UK edition. The press also published works by E.M. Forster and other experimental writers, especially women. The exhibition is co-curated by Ben Majchrowicz and Stephen Barkway and is held at Charleston, which was the home of Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, central figures of the Bloomsbury Group. The show includes photographs of Virginia and Leonard Woolf from 1914, courtesy of The Charleston Trust, and items from the LUCID collective.