F-word & Virginia Woolf

[Barry A. Popik]

"Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"
--Edward Albee play

      The NYPL has a computer database on major authors.  The databases
include full text of literature, plus letters.  I poked around with Walt
Whitman (author of the 1885 essay "Slang in America") and Virginia Woolf.

>From the Diary of Virginia Woolf:

26 November 1917
     Today I went into London with my ms: & Leonard went to Harrisons.
(which entry was broken off somehow--but my recollection is that L. found
Desmond at the L.L.; together they looked up the word f-- in the slang
dictionary, & were saddened & surprised to see how the thumb marks of members
were thick on the page.)

29 February 1932
      Did you ever hear of a Count Potocki?  Well he went and wrote a poem
about Penis in the Mount of Venus; and O What Luck to Sit and Fuck; and Come
and Hunt in Peggy's Cunt.

18 June 1934
      Necessary to say penis & fuck; but that said, no change follows.

18 October 1938
      He also says that the printer who is a personal friend of his, objects
at the last moment to printing bugger, fuck, balls and piss.  John offered to
put initials.  The printer holds out for dots only.  The matter is still in
dispute.