Alpha and Omega (1915) is a collection of essays, lectures, and letters written by Jane Ellen Harrison and published for Harrison during the outbreak of World War I. [1]
In Alpha and Omega's preface, Harrison explains why she published such various topics, ranging from magic to post-Impressionism, in one work. She says, "Seen in the fierce glare of war, these theories -- academic in origin and interest -- ... seemed like faded photographs." (v-vi) World War I had brought a melancholy to Harrison's life because pacifist leanings, as admitted in the Epilogue, isolated her.
Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English writer. She is considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors. She pioneered the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device.
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Ellen Wordsworth Darwin was an academic, a fellow and lecturer in English Literature at Newnham College in Cambridge (1879–1883), a member of the private and scholarly Ladies Dining Society at Cambridge and the second wife of the botanist Sir Francis Darwin, son of Charles Darwin. Their daughter was the poet Frances Cornford.