The Girl Prince: Virginia Woolf, Race and the Dreadnought Hoax

by Danell Jones

Overview

In February 1910, the future Virginia Woolf played the most famous practical joke in British military history. Blackening her face and masquerading as an Abyssinian prince, the young writer and her friends conned their way onto HMS Dreadnought, the Empire's most powerful battleship. The stunt made headlines around the world, embarrassed the Admiralty, and provoked debate in Parliament. But who was the 'girl prince' unidentified 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 actual lived experience of Black people in Edwardian Britain, from real princes to Caribbean writers and South African activists. Using letters, diaries, reporting and newly discovered archives, Danell Jones describes an extraordinary chain of events, exploring why a boundary-pushing novelist once pulled a bigoted blackface prank, and 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781805260066
Publisher:	Hurst
Publication date:	12/15/2023
Pages:	311
Product dimensions:	9.00(w) x 6.00(h) x 0.12(d)

About the Author

Danell Jones is a writer and scholar with a PhD in literature from Columbia University. She is the author of The Virginia Woolf Writers' Workshop; the poetry collection Desert Elegy; and An African in Imperial London (also available from Oxford University Press), which won the High Plains Book Award for Nonfiction.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Part I: All Clever People Are Difficult When They Are Young
Prologue
Chapter 1: Conspirators: Hyde Park Gate
Chapter 2: Conspirators: Bloomsbury
Chapter 3: I Shall Imagine that I see Africa
Part II: If the Fleet Disappears, The Empire Disappears
Chapter 4: Scenes from the Life of a Famous Battleship
Chapter 5: How A Party of Six Wild Young People Went Aboard the Dreadnought
Part III: Time Passes
Chapter 6: Time Passes
Part IV: The Bio—Or Mytho—Graphers
Chapter 7: Catching Hitler with the End of an Inky Pen
Chapter 8: How to Read a Prank
Chapter 9: What Really Happened—Maybe
Afterward

Editorial Reviews

12/04/2023

In this kaleidoscopic study, historian Jones (An African in Imperial London) delves into Virginia Woolf’s early life and a famous 1910 “prank” she and her friends staged that embarrassed the Royal Navy. Wearing blackface makeup and dressed up as “Abyssinian royalty,” the group talked their way into receiving a VIP tour of one of Britain’s most famous warships, the Dreadnought. Jones argues that the stunt shows that Woolf and her friends held racist and imperialist attitudes: “buried at the heart of the hoax... was the assumption that Black princes could only be something of a joke.” Taking the prank as a launching point, Jones touches on many interrelated topics, including Woolf’s writers’ circle, the Bloomsbury Group; visits made by African kings and political leaders to Britain; and British prejudice and discrimination against Black people. These narratives are astutely tied together by analyses of the Dreadnought hoax’s interpretation over time—especially in the context of Woolf’s publishing company, Hogarth Press, and its strong track record of publishing Black voices—with a focus on Jamaican playwright Una Marson’s retelling of the prank in a 1937 anti-racist comedy. This thorough overview of the hoax and its afterlives presents a unique window onto the early 20th-century British empire. (Dec.)

Publishers Weekly

"A fascinating, unnerving, and enlightening perspective on a transformative writer and the society that forged her sensibility, radical creativity, and despair." — Booklist

"This thorough overview of the hoax and its afterlives presents a unique window onto the early 20th-century British empire." — Publishers Weekly

"The Girl Prince is at its most interesting when Jones draws in the contemporary experiences of black people in Britain." — Literary Review

"Jones introduces many of the extraordinary Black individuals' resident in the U.K. at the time, including in Woolf's Bloomsbury, some of whom would go on to play crucial roles in the dismantling of Empire (arguably still ongoing)." — The New York Journal Review of Books

"Deeply researched and marvellously written, this is the book about Bloomsbury and the Dreadnought Hoax that we've been waiting for. Jones gives an essential racial and historical context for the event and its aftermath, which continues to this day." — Gretchen Gerzina, author of Black England: A Forgotten Georgian History

"An enthralling book. Danell Jones at last provides the nuanced context and deep historical research so often lacking in commentary on this infamous incident." — Mark Hussey, author of Virginia Woolf A-Z and Clive Bell and the Making of Modernism

"An enlightening and insightful book that keeps you reading." — Remi Adekoya, author of Biracial Britain

"A fascinating, unnerving, and enlightening perspective on a transformative writer and the society that forged her sensibility, radical creativity, and despair." — Donna Seaman, The Booklist

"A superb book, splendidly written, deeply researched and richly contextualized." — Virginia Woolf Miscellany

From the Publisher