Londoner buys beach that inspired Virginia Woolf
LONDON, July 14 (Reuters Life!) - A windswept beach on the Cornish bay that inspired Virginia Woolf's novel "To the Lighthouse" has been sold for 80,000 pounds ($130,100) to a woman in London, the auctioneer said on Tuesday.
Woolf, a member of London's Bloomsbury intellectual set, spent childhood summers in a villa overlooking St. Ives Bay where an octagonal white lighthouse stands on a craggy island.
"Nothing that we had as children made as much difference, was quite so important to us, as our summer in Cornwall," Woolf wrote in "A Sketch of the Past", according to fan websites.
"To the Lighthouse", published in 1927, exemplifies Woolf's stream-of-consciousness prose style, which focuses on thoughts rather than action and dialogue.
Graham Johnston, associate director at auction house Colliers CRE, said the anonymous telephone bidder offered 30,000 pounds more than the asking price for the 71-acre property along the cove in southwest England.
"We didn't know much about it until it was in the news," Johnston said of the property's literary importance. He said the buyer was required by law to keep the beach open to the public and could not build any houses on it.
"I should imagine that it will remain as it is," he told Reuters, declining to give any further details about the buyer.
Woolf, who committed suicide at the age of 59 in 1941, was portrayed in the 2002 film "The Hours" by Nicole Kidman.
(Reporting by Catherine Bosley; Editing by Paul Casciato)
