Virginia Woolf and the Hogarth Press at Charleston

Virginia Woolf and the Hogarth Press is a new exhibition opening next week at Charleston which focuses on Virginia Woolf’s pivotal but lesser-known work as a printer and publisher. 

Charleston in Firle, Sussex, England, was the home and studio of painters Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, and also a gathering point for the Bloomsbury group. The new exhibition running April 1 through September 6 is part of the new 2026 season which looks at radical publishing, modernism, and artistic experimentation.

Founded in 1917 as a venture from Virginia Woolf's living room, the Hogarth Press reimagined publishing as a domestic craft and experimental creative practice. Along with her husband Leonard, Woolf learned to set type, operate the press and bind books by hand, working closely with artists including her sister Vanessa Bell to produce distinctive and visually ambitious publications of literature and art others were unwilling to publish. 

Bringing together the most complete collection to date of the press’s hand-printed books, including T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland, the organisers say that the exhibition "explores the Hogarth Press as a site of literary risk-taking, artistic collaboration and modernist invention".

A limited-edition collection of tote bags, designed exclusively for Charleston by Kim Jones using covers from the designer’s own collection of rare Bloomsbury books have also been produced to mark the exhibition.

“This programme of exhibitions brings new perspectives to the work of the Bloomsbury group," said Nathaniel Hepburn, Director of Charleston, "their contemporaries, their influences, and their continuing relevance to contemporary society. The major exhibition on the Hogarth Press brings long overdue focus to this pioneering and radical publishing house and we are hugely grateful to the group of collectors who have enabled Charleston to present this important exhibition.”