Biography
Anne E. Fernald is a professor of English at Fordham University and a leading scholar of Virginia Woolf, feminist modernism, and twentieth-century literature. She holds a Ph.D. from Yale and a B.A. from Wellesley. Her books include editions of Mrs. Dalloway for both Cambridge and Norton, The Oxford Handbook of Virginia Woolf (a Choice Outstanding Academic Book of 2022), and the monograph Virginia Woolf: Feminism and the Reader. She has co-edited the 13th through 16th editions of The Norton Reader and served as Co-Editor in Chief of Modernism/modernity. Her forthcoming book, Her Own Voice (Beacon Press, 2026), profiles eight modern women who rewrote life and art.
‘Reading against the grain, as she argues Woolf herself did, Fernald brilliantly illustrates the centrality of Woolf’s passionately ironic dialogues… By asking questions others haven’t thought to ask, by finding parallels that both surprise and illuminate, Fernald, like Woolf, revises literary history, substantially enriching our understanding of the writer and her world.’
– Brenda R. Silver, Dartmouth College
‘Thanks to Anne Fernald’s own gifts as a reader of literary and social texts, we can now appreciate, as never before, how Woolf’s reading and her feminism complement and reinforce each other. Fernald’s method is as striking as her argument: she traces the fine lines as well as bolder contours of Woolf’s writings through her lifelong engagement with four figures – Sappho, Hakylut, Addison and Byron who inspired her art and helped shape her politics. The result is a commanding portrait of Woolf as an exemplary reader for her time and ours.’
– Maria DiBattista, Princeton University