
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
About this book
In February 1910, the young woman who would become Virginia Woolf played the most famous practical joke in British military history. Blackening her face and masquerading as an African prince, with friends she conned her way onto the Dreadnought, the Empire's best battleship. The stunt made headlines around the world for weeks, embarrassed the Royal Navy, and provoked heated discussions in parliament. But who was the 'girl prince' unidentified in public debate at the time, and what was she doing there?
The Girl Prince intertwines three fascinating stories: a scandalous prank and its afterlife; Woolf's ideas about race and empire; and the true Black experience in Britain, from real princes to Caribbean writers and South African activists. Woolf's social circle was almost exclusively white, but Black lives edged and echoed hers within the rich fabric of national culture, including in response to the hoax. Using letters, diaries, reporting and newly discovered archives, Danell Jones describes an extraordinary chain of events, exploring how and why this future revolutionary novelist joined in a bigoted blackface prank, and probing what it tells us—about Woolf's Britain and Woolf's work.
This is a tantalisingly fresh take on an iconic writer and her deeply problematic stunt.
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Half Title
- Title
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Photos
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Cast of Characters
- Introduction
- Part I All Clever People are Difficult when they are Young
- Part II If the Fleet Disappears, The Empire Disappears
- PART III Time Passes
- PART IV The many lives of the Dreadnought Hoax
- Afterword
- Acknowledgements
- Notes
- Select Bibliography
- Index
- Back Cover