Virginia Woolf on book awards

In 1928 To the Lighthouse was awarded the Prix Femina as best foreign book, and Woolf agreed to attend the ceremony to accept what she later called her "dog show prize." It was "an affair of dull stupid horror," attended by "elderly fur bearing women," but Woolf woke up in the middle of the night afterwards, horrified at "having looked ugly in cheap black clothes." Vanessa giggled at the picture in the Times of Virginia accepting her award from Hugh Walpole, as conventional a storyteller as Woolf was not: "Do tell us how you behaved -- did your drawers drop off?"

(Via Today in Lit)

Just imagine what she'd say to Rick Moody!