Emma Crossey

Imagery of bones (skeletons, ribs, spines, skulls) is rife throughout the works of Virginia Woolf, from her first pieces of writing to her very last. Whilst individual examples of this imagery may have occasionally been explored, there exists no full-length study of this topic. 

Analysis of this skeletal imagery provides valuable insights into Woolf’s conceptualisation of the body, her aesthetic method, her ecological consciousness and her profound sense of historical influence. In addition, it reveals new understanding of Woolf’s interaction with wider contexts, such as science, medicine and technology, war and imperialism, and the environment. Requiring an interdisciplinary approach, this research will contribute to the health and environmental humanities and is particularly timely, with recent movements in modernist studies around modernism and science, the human body, the senses, and ecologies.

Woolf’s bone imagery embodies her principal concerns and those of modernism more generally, driving her experiments in literary form.

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Emma Crossey is a PGR student at King’s College London whose thesis will explore the prevalence of bone and skeletal imagery throughout the works of Virginia Woolf. This is work that she started in 2014 during her BA at Exeter University, for which she was awarded the department dissertation prize.

After gaining an MA in modernism from University College London in 2015, Emma has spent the last eight years working mostly in the charity sector, managing Digital Fundraising teams at organisations such as Unicef UK, Alzheimer’s Society and Crisis UK.