Both, but not at the same stage. Woolf drafted her novels by hand, in pen and ink, and brought in the typewriter later when it was time to revise. The handwriting was where the book was made.
Pen and Ink, Then the Machine
The first draft of all her novels was written by hand. Leonard Woolf, who watched her work for decades, described how she wrote in a very low armchair with a large plywood board across her knees, an inkstand glued to it and a big quarto notebook of plain paper resting on top. She drafted in ink in the mornings, and the typewriter only entered the process when she went back to revise and type up what she'd written. The handwritten notebook was where the book was actually made; the machine came in afterward to test it.
She had a real fondness for purple ink. Much of Mrs Dalloway was written in it, along with her letters to Vita Sackville-West, though she used black and blue as well, which is why the surfaces she worked on carry a scatter of different ink stains. The color was a small, personal thing, the kind of habit that makes the daily work feel like yours rather than a chore.
Keeping the two stages apart mattered. The handwritten first pass could be loose and fast, getting the shape of a scene down before second thoughts arrived. Typing up was a colder, more deliberate read, the point at which she revised, cut, and reconsidered. By the time a passage reached the typewriter it was already being judged, not just produced, and she treated that as separate work from the morning's drafting.
The Standing Desk
There's a second piece of writing furniture people associate with Woolf, a tall standing desk with a sloping top, high enough that she had to stand to use it. She acquired the oak desk early, in her youth, and used it for years. Her nephew and biographer Quentin Bell traced the habit to her sister Vanessa, who painted standing at an easel so she could step back and judge a canvas from a distance. To make her own work seem just as physical and serious, Virginia chose to stand and write.
The desk's later life is well documented; it eventually passed to the Bell family, who shortened its legs, and it now sits in a university collection. In her own later years Woolf more often settled into the low armchair with the board across her knees, a posture her father Leslie Stephen had also used, so the standing desk wasn't her only mode. Still, it's become one of the lasting images of how she worked, and it captures something true about her: that even the body's position at the page was a deliberate choice.
The first draft of all of her novels was written in one of these notebooks with pen and ink in the mornings.
Leonard Woolf, on Virginia's method
For where all this happened and how the day was structured, see the full Virginia Woolf writing routine.
What You Can Steal
- Separate drafting from editing. Woolf drafted by hand and switched tools to revise, keeping the two modes apart.
- Draft loose by hand if it frees you up. The pen kept her first pass fast and unguarded.
- Make the typewriter the editing stage. Typing up forced a colder, sharper read.
- Experiment with how you physically write. Standing, sitting low with a board, whatever lets the words come.