Virginia Woolf’s translation into the literary canon was not because her understanding of the modernist ideology, or her contribution to the modernist aesthetic, was universally evident and accepted. Her canonisation had a strong political dimension; it involved factional controls of interpretation; the sexual politics around it meant women like her had to be talked up while men like D.H. Lawrence had to be talked down; and it’s been widely noticed the critical writing around it lacked subtlety. While Virginia’s place in the canon is secure—and that’s a good thing—the dust has settled and more measured assessments of her stature, as…