Contributed by
Barbara Fantechi
The protagonist, Katherine Hilbery,
is a young woman who (like the author) grows up in a "literary"
family; her "job" is to help her mother both in writing a biography of
her grandfather, a famous author, and more general in running the
household. Secretly she is interested in mathematics and astronomy,
and studies them in the night because she knows her family would not
approve.
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Although there does not appear to be any serious discussion of the mathematics itself in this novel by the famous author Virginia Woolf, the fact that the character has an interest in mathematics is itself important. Professor Fantechi wrote to let me know of this, and to mention that this book was important in her "journey to become a mathematician". |