The Girl Prince: Virginia Woolf, Race, and the ‘Dreadnought’ Hoax

In this kaleidoscopic study, historian Jones (An African in Imperial London) delves into Virginia Woolf’s early life and a famous 1910 “prank” she and her friends staged that embarrassed the Royal Navy. Wearing blackface makeup and dressed up as “Abyssinian royalty,” the group talked their way into receiving a VIP tour of one of Britain’s most famous warships, the Dreadnought. Jones argues that the stunt shows that Woolf and her friends held racist and imperialist attitudes: “buried at the heart of the hoax... was the assumption that Black princes could only be something of a joke.” Taking the prank as a launching point, Jones touches on many interrelated topics, including Woolf’s writers’ circle, the Bloomsbury Group; visits made by African kings and political leaders to Britain; and British prejudice and discrimination against Black people. These narratives are astutely tied together by analyses of the Dreadnought hoax’s interpretation over time—especially in the context of Woolf’s publishing company, Hogarth Press, and its strong track record of publishing Black voices—with a focus on Jamaican playwright Una Marson’s retelling of the prank in a 1937 anti-racist comedy. This thorough overview of the hoax and its afterlives presents a unique window onto the early 20th-century British empire. (Dec.)