Virginia Woolf

Adeline Virginia Woolf(/wʊlf/;néeStephen; 25 January 1882 –  28 March 1941) was an English writer. She is considered one of the most importantmodernist20th-century authors. She pioneered the use ofstream of consciousnessas a narrative device.
Woolf was born into an affluent household inSouth Kensington, London. She was the seventh child ofJulia Prinsep JacksonandLeslie Stephenin a blended family of eight that included the modernist painterVanessa Bell. She was home-schooled in English classics andVictorian literaturefrom a young age. From 1897 to 1901, she attended the Ladies' Department ofKing's College London. There, she studied classics and history, coming into contact with early reformers of women's higher education and thewomen's rightsmovement.
After her father's death in 1904, the Stephen family moved from Kensington to the morebohemianBloomsbury, where, in conjunction with the brothers' intellectual friends, they formed the artistic and literaryBloomsbury Group. In 1912, she marriedLeonard Woolf, and in 1917, the couple founded theHogarth Press, which published much of her work. They rented a home in Sussex and permanently settled there in 1940.
Woolf began writing professionally in 1900. During the inter-war period, Woolf was an important part of London's literary and artistic society, and its anti-war position. In 1915, she published her first novel,The Voyage Out, through her half-brother's publishing house,Gerald Duckworth and Company. Her best-known works include the novelsMrs Dalloway(1925),To the Lighthouse(1927) andOrlando(1928). She is also known for her essays, such asA Room of One's Own(1929).
Woolf became one of the central subjects of the 1970s movement offeminist criticism. Her works, translated into more than 50 languages, have attracted attention and widespread commentary for inspiring feminism. A large body of writing is dedicated to her life and work. She has been the subject of plays, novels, and films. Woolf is commemorated by statues, societies dedicated to her work, and a building at theUniversity of London.
Virginia Woolf was born Adeline Virginia Stephen on 25 January 1882 at 22Hyde Park GateinSouth Kensington, London,toJulia (née Jackson)andSir Leslie Stephen. Her father was a writer, historian, essayist, biographer, and mountaineer,described byHelena Swanwickas a "gaunt figure with a ragged red brown beard ... a formidable man."Her mother was a noted philanthropist, and her side of the family containedJulia Margaret Cameron, a celebrated photographer, andLady Henry Somerset, a campaigner for women's rights.Virginia was named after her aunt Adeline, but because of her aunt's recent death the family decided not to use her first name.
Both of the Stephens had children from previous marriages. Julia, from her marriage to barristerHerbert Duckworth, hadGeorge, Stella, andGerald;Leslie had Laura from a marriage to Minny Thackeray, a daughter ofWilliam Makepeace Thackeray.Both former spouses had died suddenly, Duckworth of an abscess and Minny Stephen in childbirth.Leslie and Julia Stephen had four children together:Vanessa,Thoby, Virginia, andAdrian.
Virginia lived at 22 Hyde Park Gate until her father's death in 1904.She was, as she described it, "born into a large connection, born not of rich parents, but of well-to-do parents, born into a very communicative, literate, letter writing, visiting, articulate, late nineteenth century world."The house was described as dimly-lit, crowded with furniture and paintings.Within it, the younger Stephens made a close-knit group.
Virginia showed an early affinity for writing. By the age of five, she was writing letters. A fascination with books helped form a bond between her and her father.From the age of 10, with her sister Vanessa, she began an illustrated family newspaper, theHyde Park Gate News, chronicling life and events within the Stephen family,and modelled on the popular magazineTit-Bits.Virginia would run theHyde Park Gate Newsuntil 1895, a few weeks before her mother's death.In 1897 Virginia began her first diary,which she kept for the next twelve years.
In the spring of 1882, Leslie rented a large white house inSt Ives, Cornwall.The family would spend three months each summer there for the first 13 years of Virginia's life.Although the house had limited amenities, its main attraction was the view overlooking Porthminster Bay towards theGodrevy Lighthouse.The happy summers spent at Talland House would later influence Woolf's novelsJacob's Room,To the LighthouseandThe Waves.
Both at Hyde Park Gate and Talland House, the family socialised with much of the country's literary and artistic circles. Frequent guests included literary figures such asHenry JamesandGeorge Meredith, as well asJames Russell Lowell.The family did not return after 1894; a hotel was constructed in front of the house which blocked the sea view, and Julia Stephen died in May the following year.
In the 1939 essay "A Sketch of the Past", Woolf first wrote about experiencing sexual abuse by Gerald Duckworth at a young age. There is speculation that this contributed to her mental health issues later in life.There are also suggestions of sexual impropriety from George Duckworth during the period that he was caring for the Stephen sisters.
Julia Stephen fell ill with influenza in February 1895, and never properly recovered, dying on 5 May, when Virginia was 13.This precipitated what Virginia later identified as her first "breakdown"—for months afterwards she was nervous and agitated, and she wrote very little for the subsequent two years.
Stella Duckworth took on a parental role.She married in April 1897 but moved to a house very close to the Stephens to continue to support the family. However, she fell ill on her honeymoon and died on 19 July 1897.Subsequently George Duckworth took it upon himself to act as the head of the household, andbring Vanessa and Virginia out into society.This was not a rite of passage that resonated with either girl; Virginia's view was that "Society in those days was a very competent, perfectly complacent, ruthless machine. A girl had no chance against its fangs. No other desires—say to paint, or to write—could be taken seriously."Her priority was her writing;she began a new diary at the start of 1897 and filled notebooks with fragments and literary sketches.
Leslie Stephen died in February 1904, which caused Virginia to suffer another period of mental instability from April to September, and led to at least one suicide attempt.Woolf later described the period of 1897–1904 as "the seven unhappy years".
As was common at the time, Julia Stephen did not believe in formal education for her daughters.Virginia was educated in a piecemeal fashion by her parents: Julia taught her Latin, French, and history, while Leslie taught her mathematics. She also received piano lessons.She also had unrestricted access to her father's vast library, exposing her to much of the literary canon.This resulted in a greater depth of reading than any of her Cambridge contemporaries.Later, Virginia recalled:
Another source was the conversation of their father's friends, to whom she was exposed.Leslie Stephen described his circle as "most of the literary people of mark...clever young writers and barristers, chiefly of the radical persuasion...we used to meet on Wednesday and Sunday evenings, to smoke and drink and discuss the universe and the reform movement".
From 1897 Virginia received private tuition in Latin and Ancient Greek. One of her tutors wasClara Pater, and another wasJanet Case, with whom she formed a lasting friendship and who involved her in thesuffrage movement.Virginia also attended lectures at theKing's CollegeLadies' Department.
Although Virginia could not attend Cambridge, she was profoundly influenced by her brother Thoby's experiences there. When Thoby went to Trinity in 1899, he befriended a circle of young men, includingClive Bell,Lytton Strachey,Leonard Woolf(whom Virginia would later marry), andSaxon Sydney-Turner, to whom he would introduce his sisters at theTrinity May Ballin 1900.These men formed a reading group they named the Midnight Society, which the Stephen sisters would later be invited to.
After their father's death, Vanessa and Adrian decided to sell 22 Hyde Park Gate in South Kensington and move toBloomsbury. This was a much cheaper area—they had not inherited much and were unsure about their finances. The Duckworth brothers did not join the Stephens in their new home; Gerald did not wish to, and George got married during the preparations, leaving to live with his new wife.Virginia lived in the house for brief periods in the autumn – she was sent away to Cambridge and Yorkshire for her health – and settled there permanently in December 1904.
From March 1905 the Stephens began to entertain their brother Thoby's intellectual friends at Gordon Square. The circle, who were largely members of theCambridge Apostles, includedSaxon Sydney-Turner,Lytton Strachey,Clive BellandDesmond MacCarthy. Their social gatherings, referred to as "Thursday evenings", were a vision of recreating Trinity College.This circle formed the nucleus of the intellectual circle of writers and artists known as theBloomsbury Group.Later, it would includeJohn Maynard Keynes,Duncan Grant,E. M. Forster,Roger Fry, Leonard Woolf, andDavid Garnett.
Virginia began teaching evening classes on a voluntary basis atMorley Collegeand would continue intermittently for the next two years. This work would later influence themes of class and education in her novelMrs Dalloway.She made some money from reviews, including some published in church paperThe Guardianand theNational Review, capitalising on her father's literary reputation in order to earn commissions.
Vanessa added another event to their calendar with the "Friday Club", dedicated to the discussion of the fine arts.This introduced some new people into their circle, including Vanessa's friends from theRoyal Academy of ArtsandSlade School of Fine Art(where she had been studying),such asHenry LambandGwen Darwin, and also the eighteen-year-oldKatherine Laird ("Ka") Cox, who was about to attendNewnham College, Cambridge.Cox would become Virginia's intimate friend. These new members brought the Bloomsbury Group into contact with another, slightly younger, group of Cambridge intellectuals who Virginia would refer to as the "Neo-Pagans". The Friday Club continued until 1912 or 1913.
In the autumn of 1906, the siblings travelled to Greece and Turkey with Violet Dickinson.During the trip Vanessa fell ill withappendicitis. Both Violet and Thoby contractedtyphoid fever; Thoby died on 20 November.
Two days after Thoby's death, Vanessa accepted a previous proposal of marriage from Clive Bell.As a couple, their interest inavant-gardeart would have an important influence on Woolf's further development as an author.
After Vanessa's marriage, Virginia and Adrian moved into 29Fitzroy Square, still very close to Gordon Square.The house had previously been occupied byGeorge Bernard Shaw, and the area had been populated by artists since the previous century. Duncan Grant lived there, and Roger Fry moved there in 1913.Virginia resented the wealth that Vanessa's marriage had given her; Virginia and Adrian lived more humbly by comparison.
The siblings resumed the Thursday Club at their new home,while Gordon Square became the venue for a play-reading society.During this period, the group began to increasingly explore progressive ideas, with open discussions of members' homosexual inclinations, and nude dancing from Vanessa, who in 1910 went so far as to propose a libertarian society with sexual freedom for all. Virginia appears not to have shown interest in practising the group'sfree loveideology, finding an outlet for her sexual desires only in writing.Around this time she began work on her first novel,Melymbrosia, which eventually becameThe Voyage Out(1915).
In November 1911 Virginia and Adrian moved to a larger house at 38Brunswick Square, and invited John Maynard Keynes, Duncan Grant and Leonard Woolf to become lodgers there.Virginia saw it as a new opportunity: "We are going to try all kinds of experiments", she toldOttoline Morrell.This arrangement for a single woman living among men was considered scandalous.
Several members of the Bloomsbury Group attained notoriety in 1910 with theDreadnoughthoax, in which they posed as a royalAbyssinianentourage (with Virginia as "Prince Mendax") and received a tour of theHMS Dreadnoughtby Virginia's cousinCommander Fisher, who was not aware of the joke.Horace de Vere Cole, who had been one of the masterminds of the hoax along with Adrian, later leaked the story to the press and informed the Foreign Office, leading to general outrage from the establishment.
During the latter Bloomsbury years, Virginia travelled frequently with friends and family, to Dorset and Cornwall as well as further afield to Paris, Italy and Bayreuth. These trips were intended to avoid her suffering exhaustion from extended periods in London.The question arose of Virginia needing a quiet country retreat close to London, for the sake of her still-fragile mental health.In the winter of 1910 she and Adrian stayed atLewesand started exploring the area of Sussex around the town.She soon found a property in nearbyFirle, which she named "Little Talland House"; she maintained a relationship with that area for the rest of her life, tending to spend her time either in Sussex or London.
In September 1911 she and Leonard Woolf found Asham Housenearby, and Virginia and Vanessa took a joint lease on it.Located at the end of a tree-lined road, the house was in a Regency-Gothic style, "flat, pale, serene, yellow-washed", remote, without electricity or water and allegedly haunted.The sisters had two housewarming parties in January 1912.
Virginia recorded the events of the weekends and holidays she spent there in herAsham Diary, part of which was later published asA Writer's Diaryin 1953. In terms of creative writing,The Voyage Outwas completed there, and much ofNight and Day.The house itself inspired the short story "A Haunted House", published inA Haunted House and Other Short Stories.Asham provided Woolf with much-needed relief from the pace of London life and was where she found happiness that she expressed in her diary on 5 May 1919: "Oh, but how happy we've been at Asheham! It was a most melodious time. Everything went so freely; – but I can't analyse all the sources of my joy".
While at Asham, in 1916 Leonard and Virginia found a farmhouse to let about four miles away, which they thought would be ideal for her sister. Eventually, Vanessa came down to inspect it, and took possession in October of that year, as a summer home for her family. TheCharleston Farmhousewas to become the summer gathering place for the Bloomsbury Group.
Leonard Woolfwas one of Thoby Stephen's friends at Trinity College, Cambridge, and had encountered the Stephen sisters in Thoby's rooms while visiting forMay Weekbetween 1899 and 1904. He recalled that in "white dresses and large hats, with parasols in their hands, their beauty literally took one's breath away".In 1904 Leonard Woolf left Britain for a civil service position inCeylon,but returned for a year's leave in 1911 after letters from Lytton Strachey describing Virginia's beauty enticed him back.He and Virginia attended social engagements together, and he moved into Brunswick Square as a tenant in December of that year.
Leonard proposed to Virginia on 11 January 1912.Initially she expressed reluctance, but the two continued courting. Leonard decided not to return to Ceylon and resigned from his post. On 29 May Virginia declared her love for Leonard,and they married on 10 August atSt Pancras Town Hall. The couple spent their honeymoon first at Asham and theQuantock Hillsbefore travelling to the south of France and on to Spain and Italy. On their return, they moved toClifford's Inn,and began to divide their time between London and Asham.Though Virginia wanted to have children, Leonard refused, as he believed Virginia was not mentally strong enough to be a mother, and worried what having children might do to her mental health.
Virginia Woolf had completed a penultimate draft of her first novelThe Voyage Outbefore her wedding but undertook large-scale alterations to the manuscript between December 1912 and March 1913. The work was subsequently accepted by her half-brother Gerald Duckworth's publishing house, and she found the process of reading and correcting the proofs extremely emotionally difficult.This led to one of several breakdowns over the subsequent two years; Woolf attempted suicide on 9 September 1913 with an overdose ofVeronal, being saved with the help of Maynard Keynes' surgeon brotherGeoffrey Keyneswho drove Leonard toSt Bartholomew's Hospitalto fetch a stomach pump.Woolf's illness led to Duckworth delaying the publication ofThe Voyage Outuntil 26 March 1915.
In the autumn of 1914 the couple moved to a house onRichmond Green,and in late March 1915 they moved to Hogarth House, also inRichmond, after which they namedtheir publishing housein 1917.The decision to move to London's suburbs was made for the sake of Woolf's health.Many of Woolf's circle of friends were against the war, and Woolf herself opposed it from a standpoint of pacifism and anti-censorship.Leonard was exempted from theintroduction of conscription in 1916on medical grounds.The Woolfs employed two servants at the recommendation ofRoger Fryin 1916; Lottie Hope worked for some other Bloomsbury Group members, andNellie Boxallwould stay with them until 1934.
The Woolfs spent parts of the period of theFirst World Warin Asham but were obliged by the owner to leave in 1919."In despair" they purchased the Round House in Lewes, a converted windmill, for £300. No sooner had they bought the Round House, thanMonk's Housein nearbyRodmellcame up for auction, aweatherboardedhouse with oak-beamed rooms, said to date from the 15th or 16th century.The Woolfs sold the Round House and purchased Monk's House for £700.Monk's House also lacked running water but came with an acre of garden, and had a view across the Ouse towards the hills of theSouth Downs. Leonard Woolf describes this view as being unchanged since the days ofChaucer.The Woolfs would retain Monk's House until the end of Virginia's life; it became their permanent home after their London home was bombed, and it was where she completedBetween the Actsin early 1941, which was followed by her final breakdown and suicide in the nearby River Ouse on 28 March.
1920 saw a postwar reconstitution of the Bloomsbury Group, under the title of theMemoir Club, which as the name suggests focussed on self-writing, in the manner ofProust'sA La Recherche, and inspired some of the more influential books of the 20th century. The Group, which had been scattered by the war, was reconvened byMary ('Molly') MacCarthywho called them "Bloomsberries", and operated under rules derived from theCambridge Apostles, an elite university debating society of which some of them had been members. These rules emphasised candour and openness. Among the 125 memoirs presented, Virginia contributed three that were published posthumously in 1976, in the autobiographical anthologyMoments of Being. These were22 Hyde Park Gate(1921),Old Bloomsbury(1922) andAm I a Snob?(1936).
On 14 December 1922Woolf met the writer and gardenerVita Sackville-West,wife ofHarold Nicolson. This period was to prove fruitful for both authors, Woolf producing three novels,To the Lighthouse(1927),Orlando(1928), andThe Waves(1931) as well as a number of essays, including "Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown" (1924) and "A Letter to a Young Poet" (1932).The two women remained friends until Woolf's death in 1941.
Virginia Woolf also remained close to her surviving siblings, Adrian and Vanessa.
Between 1924 and 1940 the Woolfs returned to Bloomsbury, taking out a ten-year lease at 52Tavistock Square,from where they ran theHogarth Pressfrom the basement, where Virginia also had her writing room.
1925 saw the publication ofMrs Dallowayin May followed by her collapse while at Charleston in August. In 1927, her next novel,To the Lighthouse, was published, and the following year she lectured onWomen & Fictionat Cambridge University and publishedOrlandoin October.
Her two Cambridge lectures then became the basis for her major essayA Room of One's Ownin 1929.Virginia wrote only one drama,Freshwater, based on her great-auntJulia Margaret Cameron, and produced at her sister's studio onFitzroy Streetin 1935. 1936 saw the publication ofThe Years, which had its origin in a lecture Woolf gave to the National Society for Women's Service in 1931, an edited version of which would later be published as "Professions for Women".Another collapse of her health followed the novel's completionThe Years.
The Woolfs' final residence in London was at 37Mecklenburgh Square(1939–1940), destroyed duringthe Blitzin September 1940; a month later their previous home on Tavistock Square was also destroyed. After that, they made Sussex their permanent home.
After completing the manuscript of her last novel (posthumously published),Between the Acts(1941), Woolf fell into a depression similar to one which she had earlier experienced. The onset of the Second World War, the destruction of her London home duringthe Blitz, and the cool reception given toher biographyof her late friendRoger Fryall worsened her condition until she was unable to work.When Leonard enlisted in theHome Guard, Virginia disapproved. She held fast to herpacifismand criticised her husband for wearing what she considered to be "the silly uniform of the Home Guard".
After the Second World War began, Woolf's diary indicates that she was obsessed with death, which figured more and more as her mood darkened.On 28 March 1941, Woolf drowned herself by walking into the fast-flowingRiver Ousenear her home, after placing a large stone in her pocket.Her body was not found until 18 April.Her husband buried her cremated remains beneath an elm tree in the garden ofMonk's House, their home inRodmell, Sussex.
In her suicide note, addressed to her husband, she wrote:
Much examination has been made of Woolf's mental health. From the age of 13, following the death of her mother, Woolf suffered periodic mood swings.However,Hermione Leeasserts that Woolf was not "mad"; she was merely a woman who suffered from and struggled with illness for much of her life, a woman of "exceptional courage, intelligence and stoicism", who made the best use, and achieved the best understanding she could of that illness.
Her mother's death in 1895, "the greatest disaster that could happen",precipitated a crisis for which their family doctor, Dr Seton, prescribed rest, stopping lessons and writing, and regular walks supervised by Stella.Yet just two years later, Stella too was dead, bringing on Virginia's first expressed wish for death at the age of fifteen. This was a scenario she would later recreate in "Time Passes" (To the Lighthouse, 1927).
The death of her father in 1904 provoked her most alarming collapse, on 10 May, when she threw herself out of a window and she was briefly institutionalisedunder the care of her father's friend, the eminent psychiatristGeorge Savage. She spent time recovering at the house of Stella's friend Violet Dickinson, and at her auntCaroline Stephen's house in Cambridge,and by January 1905, Savage considered her cured.
Her brother Thoby's death in 1906 marked a "decade of deaths" that ended her childhood and adolescence.
On Savage's recommendation, Virginia spent three short periods in 1910, 1912, and 1913 at Burley House at 15 Cambridge Park,Twickenham, described as "a private nursing home for women with nervous disorder" run by Miss Jean Thomas.By the end of February 1910, she was becoming increasingly restless, and Savage suggested being away from London. Vanessa rented Moat House, outside Canterbury, in June, but there was no improvement, so Savage sent her to Burley for a "rest cure". This involved partial isolation, deprivation of literature, and force-feeding,and after six weeks she was able to convalesce in Cornwall and Dorset during the autumn.
She loathed the experience; writing to her sister on 28 July,she described how she found the religious atmosphere stifling and the institution ugly, and informed Vanessa that to escape "I shall soon have to jump out of a window".The threat of being sent back would later lead to her contemplating suicide.Despite her protests, Savage would refer her back in 1912 for insomnia and in 1913 for depression.
On emerging from Burley House in September 1913, she sought further opinions from two other physicians on the 13th: Maurice Wright, andHenry Head, who had beenHenry James's physician. Both recommended she return to Burley House. Distraught, she returned home and attempted suicide by taking an overdose of 100grainsofveronal(a barbiturate) and nearly dying.
On recovery, she went to Dalingridge Hall, George Duckworth's home inEast Grinstead, Sussex, to convalesce on 30 September,returning toAshamon 18 November. She remained unstable over the next two years, with another incident involving veronal that she claimed was an 'accident', and consulted another psychiatrist in April 1914,Maurice Craig, who explained that she was not sufficiently psychotic to be certified or committed to an institution.
The rest of the summer of 1914 went better for her, and they moved to Richmond, but in February 1915, just asThe Voyage Outwas due to be published, she relapsed once more, and remained in poor health for most of that year.Then she began to recover, following 20 years of ill health.Nevertheless, there was a feeling among those around her that she was now permanently changed, and not for the better.
Over the rest of her life, she suffered recurrent bouts of depression. In 1940, a number of factors appeared to overwhelm her. Her biography of Roger Fry had been published in July, and she had been disappointed in its reception. The horrors of war depressed her, and their London homes had been destroyed in the Blitz in September and October. Woolf had completedBetween the Acts(published posthumously in 1941) in November, and completing a novel was frequently accompanied by exhaustion.Her health became increasingly a matter of concern, culminating in her decision to end her life on 28 March 1941.
She also suffered many physical ailments such as headaches, backache, fevers and faints, which related closely to her psychological stress. These often lasted for weeks or even months, and impeded her work: "What a gap! ... for 60 days; & those days spent in wearisome headache, jumping pulse, aching back, frets, fidgets, lying awake, sleeping draughts, sedatives,digitalis, going for a little walk, & plunging back into bed again."
Though this instability would frequently affect her social life, she was able to continue her literary productivity with few interruptions throughout her life. Woolf herself provides not only a vivid picture of her symptoms in her diaries and letters but also her response to the demons that haunted her and at times made her long for death:"But it is always a question whether I wish to avoid these glooms... These 9 weeks give one a plunge into deep waters... One goes down into the well & nothing protects one from the assault of truth."
Psychiatry had little to offer Woolf, but she recognised that writing was one of the behaviours that enabled her to cope with her illness:"The only way I keep afloat... is by working... Directly I stop working I feel that I am sinking down, down. And as usual, I feel that if I sink further I shall reach the truth."Sinking underwater was Woolf's metaphor for both the effects of depression and psychosis— but also for finding the truth, and ultimately was her choice of death.
Throughout her life, Woolf struggled, without success, to find meaning in her illness: on the one hand, an impediment, on the other, something she visualised as an essential part of who she was, and a necessary condition of her art.Her experiences informed her work, such as the character of Septimus Warren Smith inMrs Dalloway(1925), who, like Woolf, was haunted by the dead, and ultimately takes his own life rather than be admitted to a sanitorium.
Leonard Woolf relates how during the 30 years they were married, they consulted many doctors in theHarley Streetarea, and although they were given a diagnosis ofneurasthenia, he felt they had little understanding of the causes or nature. The proposed solution was simple—as long as she lived a quiet life without any physical or mental exertion, she was well. In contrast, any mental, emotional, or physical strain resulted in a reappearance of her symptoms, beginning with a headache, followed by insomnia and thoughts that started to race. Her remedy was simple: to retire to bed in a darkened room, following which the symptoms slowly subsided.
Modern scholars, including her nephew and biographer,Quentin Bell,have suggested her breakdowns and subsequent recurring depressive periods were influenced by the sexual abuse to which she and her sister Vanessa were subjected by their half-brothersGeorgeandGerald Duckworth(which Woolf recalls in her autobiographical essays "A Sketch of the Past" and "22 Hyde Park Gate"). Biographers point out that when Stella died in 1897, there was no counterbalance to control George's predation, and his nighttime prowling."22 Hyde Park Gate" ends with the sentence "The old ladies of Kensington and Belgravia never knew that George Duckworth was not only father and mother, brother and sister to those poor Stephen girls; he was their lover also."
It is likely that other factors also played a part. It has been suggested that they includegenetic predisposition.Virginia's father, Leslie Stephen, suffered from depression, and her half-sister Laura was institutionalised. Many of Virginia's symptoms, including persistent headache, insomnia, irritability, and anxiety, resembled those of her father's.Another factor is the pressure she placed upon herself in her work; for instance, her breakdown of 1913 was at least partly triggered by the need to finishThe Voyage Out.
Virginia herself hinted that her illness was related to how she saw the repressed position of women in society when she wroteA Room of One's Own.in a 1930 letter toEthel Smyth:
Thomas Caramagnoand others,in discussing her illness, oppose the "neurotic-genius" way of looking at mental illness, where creativity and mental illness are conceptualised as linked rather than antithetical.Stephen Trombleydescribes Woolf as having a confrontational relationship with her doctors, and possibly being a woman who is a "victim of male medicine", referring to the lack of understanding, particularly at the time, about mental illness.
The Bloomsbury Group held very progressive views of sexuality and rejected the austere strictness of Victorian society. The majority of its members were homosexual or bisexual.
Woolf had several affairs with women, the most notable being withVita Sackville-West. The two women developed a deep connection; Vita was arguably one of the few people in Virginia's adult life that she was truly close to.
During their relationship, both women saw the peak of their literary careers, with the titular protagonist of Woolf's acclaimedOrlando: A Biographybeing inspired by Sackville-West. The pair remained lovers for a decade and stayed close friends for the rest of Woolf's life.Woolf had said to Sackville-West she disliked masculinity.
Among her other notable affairs were those withSibyl Colefax,Lady Ottoline Morrell, andMary Hutchinson.Some surmise that she fell in love with Madge Symonds, the wife of one of her uncles.Madge Symonds was described as one of Woolf's early loves in Sackville-West's diary.She also fell in love with Violet Dickinson, although there is some confusion as to whether the two consummated their relationship.
Virginia initially declined marriage proposals from her future husband, Leonard. She even went so far as to tell him that she was not physically attracted to him, but later declared that she did love him, and eventually agreed to marriage.Woolf preferred female lovers to male lovers and did not seem to be sexually attracted to men.
Leonard became the love of her life. Although their sexual relationship was questionable, they loved each other deeply and formed a strong and supportive marriage that led to the formation of their publishing house as well as several of her writings. Though Virginia had affairs with and attractions to women during their marriage, she and Leonard maintained a mutual love and respect.
Woolf is considered to be one of the most important 20th-century novelists.Amodernist, she was one of the pioneers of usingstream of consciousnessas anarrative device, alongside contemporaries such asMarcel Proust,Dorothy RichardsonandJames Joyce.Woolf's reputation was at its greatest during the 1930s, but declined considerably following the Second World War. The growth offeminist criticismin the 1970s helped re-establish her reputation.
Virginia submitted her first article in 1890, to a competition inTit-Bits. Although it was rejected, this shipboard romance by the 8-year-old would presage her first novel 25 years later, as would contributions to theHyde Park News, such as the model letter "to show young people the right way to express what is in their hearts", a subtle commentary on her mother's legendary matchmaking.She transitioned from juvenilia to professional journalism in 1904 at the age of 22. Violet Dickinson introduced her toKathleen Lyttelton, the editor of theWomen's SupplementofThe Guardian, a Church of England newspaper. Invited to submit a 1,500-word article, Virginia sent Lyttelton a review ofWilliam Dean Howells'The Son of Royal Langbirthand an essay about her visit toHaworththat year,Haworth, November 1904.The review was published anonymously on 4 December, and the essay on the 21st.In 1905, Woolf began writing forThe Times Literary Supplement.
Woolf would go on to publish novels and essays as a public intellectual to both critical and popular acclaim. Much of her work was self-published through theHogarth Press. "Virginia Woolf's peculiarities as a fiction writer have tended to obscure her central strength: she is arguably the majorlyricalnovelist in the English language. Her novels are highly experimental: a narrative, frequently uneventful and commonplace, is refracted—and sometimes almost dissolved—in the characters' receptive consciousness. Intense lyricism and stylistic virtuosity fuse to create a world overabundant with auditory and visual impressions.""The intensity of Virginia Woolf's poetic vision elevates the ordinary, sometimes banal settings"—often wartime environments—"of most of her novels."
Though at least one biography of Virginia Woolf appeared in her lifetime, the first authoritative study of her life was published in 1972 by her nephew Quentin Bell.Hermione Lee's 1996 biographyVirginia Woolfprovides a thorough and authoritative examination of Woolf's life and work, which she discussed in an interview in 1997.In 2001,Louise DeSalvoand Mitchell A. Leaska editedThe Letters of Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf. Julia Briggs'sVirginia Woolf: An Inner Life(2005) focuses on Woolf's writing, including her novels and her commentary on the creative process, to illuminate her life. The sociologist Pierre Bourdieu also uses Woolf's literature to understand and analyse gender domination. Woolf biographerGillian Gillnotes that Woolf's traumatic experience of sexual abuse by her half-brothers during her childhood influenced her advocacy for the protection of vulnerable children from similar experiences.Biljana Dojčinovićhas discussed the issues surrounding translations of Woolf to Serbian as a "border-crossing".
Woolf's fiction has been studied for its insight into many themes including war, shell shock, witchcraft, and the role of social class in contemporary modern British society.In the postwarMrs Dalloway(1925), Woolf addresses the moral dilemma of war and its effectsand provides an authentic voice for soldiers returning from the First World War, suffering from shell shock, in the person of Septimus Smith.InA Room of One's Own(1929) Woolf equates historical accusations of witchcraft with creativity and genius among women "When, however, one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman possessed by devils...then I think we are on the track of a lost novelist, a suppressed poet, of some mute and inglorious Jane Austen".Throughout her work Woolf tried to evaluate the degree to which her privileged backgroundframedthe lens through which she viewed class.She examined her own position as someone who would be considered an elitist snob but attacked the class structure of Britain as she found it. In her 1936 essayAm I a Snob?she examined her values and those of the privileged circle she existed in. She concluded she was, and subsequent critics and supporters have tried to deal with the dilemma of being both elite and a social critic.
The sea is a recurring motif in Woolf's work. Noting Woolf's early memory of listening to waves break in Cornwall,Katharine Smythwrites inThe Paris Reviewthat "the radiance [of] cresting water would be consecrated again and again in her writing, saturating not only essays, diaries, and letters but alsoJacob's Room,The Waves, andTo the Lighthouse."Patrizia A. Muscogiuri explains that "seascapes, sailing, diving and the sea itself are aspects of nature and of human beings' relationship with it which frequently inspired Virginia Woolf's writing."This trope is deeply embedded in her texts' structure and grammar; James Antoniou notes inSydney Morning Heraldhow "Woolf made a virtue of thesemicolon, the shape and function of which resembles the wave, her most famous motif."
Despite the considerable conceptual difficulties, given Woolf's idiosyncratic use of language,her works have been translated into over 50 languages.Some writers, such as the BelgianMarguerite Yourcenar, had rather tense encounters with her, while others, such as the ArgentinianJorge Luis Borges, produced versions that were highly controversial.
Virginia Woolf researched the life of her great-aunt, the photographerJulia Margaret Cameron, publishing her findings in an essay titled "Pattledom" (1925),and later in her introduction to her 1926 edition of Cameron's photographs.She had begun work on a play based on an episode in Cameron's life in 1923 but abandoned it. Finally, it was performed on 18 January 1935 at the studio of her sister,Vanessa Bellon Fitzroy Street in 1935.Woolf directed it herself, and the cast were mainly members of the Bloomsbury Group, including herself.Freshwateris a short three act comedy satirising theVictorian era, only performed once in Woolf's lifetime. Beneath the comedic elements, there is an exploration of both generational change and artistic freedom. Both Cameron and Woolf fought against the class and gender dynamics of Victorianismand the play shows links to bothTo the LighthouseandA Room of One's Ownthat would follow.
Woolf wrote a body of autobiographical work and more than 500 essays and reviews,some of which, likeA Room of One's Own(1929) were of book-length. Not all were published in her lifetime. Shortly after her death, Leonard Woolf produced an edited edition of unpublished essays titledThe Moment and other Essays, published by the Hogarth Press in 1947. Many of these were originally lectures that she gave,and several more volumes of essays followed, such asThe Captain's Death Bed: and other essays(1950).
Among Woolf's non-fiction works, one of the best known isA Room of One's Own(1929), a book-length essay. Considered a key work of feminist literary criticism, it was written following two lectures she delivered on "Women and Fiction" at Cambridge University the previous year. In it, she examines the historical disempowerment women have faced in many spheres, including social, educational and financial. One of her more famous dicta is contained within the book "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction". Much of her argument ("to show you how I arrived at this opinion about the room and the money") is developed through the "unsolved problems" of women and fiction writing to arrive at her conclusion, although she claimed that was only "an opinion upon one minor point".In doing so, she states a good deal about the nature of women and fiction, employing a quasi-fictional style as she examines where women writers failed because of lack of resources and opportunities, examining along the way the experiences of theBrontës,George EliotandGeorge Sand, as well as the fictional character ofShakespeare's sister, equipped with the same genius but not position. She contrasted these women who accepted a deferential status withJane Austen, who wrote entirely as a woman.
Virginia had taken up book-binding as a pastime in October 1901, at the age of 19.The Woolfs had been discussing setting up a publishing house for some time – Leonard intended for it to give Virginia a rest from the strain of writing, and thereby help her fragile mental health. Additionally, publishing her works under their own outfit would save her from the stress of submitting her work to an external company, which contributed to her breakdown during the process of publishing her first novelThe Voyage Out.The Woolfs obtained their own hand-printing press in April 1917 and set it up on their dining room table at Hogarth House, thus beginning theHogarth Press.
The first publication wasTwo Storiesin July 1917, consisting of "The Mark on the Wall" by Virginia Woolf (which has been described as "Woolf's first foray into modernism") and "Three Jews" by Leonard Woolf. The accompanying illustrations byDora Carringtonwere a success, leading Virginia to remark that the press was "specially good at printing pictures, and we see that we must make a practice of always having pictures." The process took two and a half months with a production run of 150 copies.Other short stories followed, includingKew Gardens(1919) with awoodblockby Vanessa Bell asfrontispiece.Subsequently Bell added further illustrations, adorning each page of the text.
Unlike its contemporary small printers, who specialised in expensive artisanal reprints, the Woolfs concentrated on living avant-garde authors,and over the subsequent five years printed works by authors includingKatherine Mansfield,T.S. Eliot,E. M. Forster, Clive Bell and Roger Fry. They also produced translations of Russian works withS. S. Koteliansky, and the first translation of the complete works ofSigmund Freud.They acquired a larger press in 1921 and began to sell directly to booksellers.In 1938 Virginia sold her share of the company toJohn Lehmann,who had started working for Hogarth Press seven years previously.The Press eventually became Leonard's only source of income, but his association with it ended in 1946, after publishing 527 titles, and Hogarth is now an imprint ofPenguin Random House.
The Press also produced explicitly political works. Pamphlets had fallen out of fashion due to the high production costs and low revenue, but the Hogarth Press produced several series on contemporary issues of international politics, challenging colonialism and critiquing Soviet Russia and Italian fascism.The Woolfs also published political fiction, includingTurbott Wolfe(1926) byWilliam PlomerandIn a Province(1934) byLaurens van der Post, which concern South African racial policies and revolutionary movements respectively.Virginia Woolf saw a link between international politics and feminism, publishing a biography of Indian feminist activistSaroj Nalini Duttand the memoirs ofsuffragetteElizabeth Robins.Scholar Ursula McTaggart argues that the Hogarth Press shaped and represented Woolf's later concept of an "Outsiders' Society", a non-organised group of women who would resist "the patriarchal fascism of war and nationalism" by exerting influence through private actions, as described inThree Guineas. In this view, the readers and authors form a loose network, with the Press providing the means to exchange ideas.
Sybil Oldfield examines Woolf's convinced pacifism, its sources and its expression in her life and works.
Michel Lackey argues that a major influence on Woolf, from 1912 onward, was Russian literature and Woolf adopted many of its aesthetic conventions.The style ofFyodor Dostoyevskywith his depiction of a fluid mind in operation helped to influence Woolf's writings about a "discontinuous writing process", though Woolf objected to Dostoyevsky's obsession with "psychological extremity" and the "tumultuous flux of emotions" in his characters together with his right-wing, monarchist politics as Dostoyevsky was an ardent supporter of the autocracy of theRussian Empire.In contrast to her objections to Dostoyevsky's "exaggerated emotional pitch", Woolf found much to admire in the work ofAnton ChekhovandLeo Tolstoy.Woolf admired Chekhov for his stories of ordinary people living their lives, doing banal things and plots that had no neat endings.From Tolstoy, Woolf drew lessons about how a novelist should depict a character's psychological state and the interior tension within.Lackey notes that, fromIvan Turgenev, Woolf drew the lessons that there are multiple "I's" when writing a novel, and the novelist needed to balance those multiple versions of him- or herself to balance the "mundane facts" of a story vs. the writer's overarching vision, which required a "total passion" for art.
The American writerHenry David Thoreaualso influenced Woolf. In a 1917 essay, she praised Thoreau for his statement "The millions are awake enough for physical labor, but only one in hundreds of millions is awake enough to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive." They both aimed to capture 'the moment'––as Walter Pater says, "to burn always with this hard, gem-like flame."Woolf praised Thoreau for his "simplicity" in finding "a way for setting free the delicate and complicated machinery of the soul".Like Thoreau, Woolf believed that it was silence that set the mind free to really contemplate and understand the world.Both authors believed in a certain transcendental, mystical approach to life and writing, where even banal things could be capable of generating deep emotions if one had enough silence and the presence of mind to appreciate them.Woolf and Thoreau were both concerned with the difficulty of human relationships in the modern age.
Woolf's preface toOrlandocreditsDaniel Defoe,Sir Thomas Browne,Laurence Sterne,Sir Walter Scott,Lord Macaulay,Emily Brontë,Thomas de Quincey, andWalter Pateras influences.Among her contemporaries, Woolf was influenced byMarcel Proust, writing toRoger Fry, "Oh if I could write like that!"
The intense scrutiny of Virginia Woolf's literary output has led to speculation as to her mother's influence, including psychoanalytic studies of mother and daughter.Her memories of her mother are memories of an obsession,starting with her first major breakdown on her mother's death in 1895, the loss having a profound lifelong effect.In many ways, her mother's profound influence on Virginia Woolf is conveyed in the latter's recollections, "there she is; beautiful, emphatic ... closer than any of the living are, lighting our random lives as with a burning torch, infinitely noble and delightful to her children".
Woolf's understanding of her mother and family evolved considerably between 1907 and 1940, in which the somewhat distant, yet revered figure, becomes more nuanced and complete.She described her mother as an "invisible presence" in her life, and Ellen Rosenman argues that the mother-daughter relationship is a constant in Woolf's writing.She describes how Woolf'smodernismneeds to be viewed in relationship to her ambivalence towards her Victorian mother, the centre of the former's female identity, and her voyage to her own sense of autonomy. To Woolf, "Saint Julia" was both a martyr whose perfectionism was intimidating and a source of deprivation, by her absences real and virtual and premature death.Julia's influence and memory pervade Woolf's life and work. "She has haunted me", she wrote.
According to the 2007 bookFeminism: From Mary Wollstonecraft to Betty Friedanby Bhaskar A. Shukla, "Recently, studies of Virginia Woolf have focused on feminist and lesbian themes in her work, such as in the 1997 collection of critical essays,Virginia Woolf: Lesbian Readings, edited by Eileen Barrett and Patricia Cramer."In 1928, Woolf took a grassroots approach to informing and inspiring feminism. She addressed undergraduate women at the ODTAA Society atGirton College, Cambridge, and the Arts Society at Newnham College, with two papers that eventually becameA Room of One's Own(1929).
Woolf's best-known nonfiction works,A Room of One's Own(1929) andThree Guineas(1938), examine the difficulties that female writers and intellectuals faced because men held disproportionate legal and economic power, as well as the future of women in education and society.InThe Second Sex(1949),Simone de Beauvoircounts, of all women who ever lived, only three female writers—Emily Brontë, Woolf and "sometimes"Katherine Mansfield— have explored "the given".
In her lifetime, Woolf was outspoken on many topics that were considered controversial, some of which are now considered progressive, others regressive.She was an ardentfeministat a time when women's rights were barely recognised, andanti-colonialist, anti-imperialist, anti-militarist and apacifistwhenchauvinismwas popular. On the other hand, she has been criticised for her views on class and race in her private writings and published works. Like many of her contemporaries, some of her writing is now considered offensive. As a result, she is considered polarising, a revolutionary feminist and socialist hero or a purveyor ofhate speech.
Works such asA Room of One's Own(1929) andThree Guineas(1938) are frequently taught as icons of feminist literature in courses that would be very critical of some of her views expressed elsewhere.She has also been the recipient of considerablehomophobicandmisogynistcriticism.
Virginia Woolf was born into a non-religious family and is regarded, along with fellow members of the Bloomsbury groupE. M. ForsterandG. E. Moore, as ahumanist. Both her parents were prominentagnostic atheistsalthough a significant influence was her auntCaroline Stephen.Caroline Stephenwas a convert to Quakerism, the Religious Society of Friends, and was a strong English exponent for its peace testimony in 1890.Her father,Leslie Stephen, had become famous in polite society for his writings which expressed and publicised reasons to doubt the veracity of religion and abhorred military service. Stephen was also President of theWest London Ethical Society, an earlyhumanistorganisation, and helped to found theUnion of Ethical Societiesin 1896. Woolf's mother,Julia Stephen, wrote the bookAgnostic Women(1880), which argued that agnosticism (defined here as something more like atheism) could be a highly moral approach to life.
Woolf was a critic of Christianity. In a letter toEthel Smyth, she gave a scathing denunciation of the religion, seeing it as self-righteous "egotism" and stating "my Jew [Leonard] has more religion in one toenail—more human love, in one hair".Woolf stated in her private letters that she thought of herself as an atheist.
Hermione Leecites a number of extracts from Woolf's writings that many, including Lee, would consider offensive, and these criticisms can be traced back as far as those ofWyndham LewisandQ. D. Leavisin the 1920s and 1930s.Other authors provide more nuanced contextual interpretations and stress the complexity of her character and the apparent inherent contradictions in analysing her apparent flaws.She could certainly be off-hand, rude and even cruel in her dealings with other authors, translators and biographers, such as her treatment ofRuth Gruber.Some authors, includingDavid Daiches, Brenda Silver, Alison Light and otherpostcolonialfeminists, dismiss her (and modernist authors in general) as privileged, elitist,classist, racist, andantisemitic.
Woolf's tendentious expressions, including prejudicial feelings against disabled people, have often been the topic of academic criticism:
Often accused ofantisemitism,the treatment ofJudaismandJewsby Woolf is far from straightforward.She was happily married to an irreligious Jewish man (Leonard Woolf) who had no connection with or knowledge of his people while she generally characterised Jewish characters with negative stereotypes. For instance, she described some of the Jewish characters in her work in terms that suggested they were physically repulsive or dirty. On the other hand, she could criticise her own views: "How I hated marrying a Jew — how I hated their nasal voices and their oriental jewellery, and their noses and their wattles — what a snob I was: for they have immense vitality, and I think I like that quality best of all" (Letter to Ethel Smyth 1930).These attitudes have been construed to reflect, not so much antisemitism, but social status; she married outside her social class. Leonard, "a penniless Jew from Putney", lacked the material status of the Stephens and their circle.
While travelling on a cruise to Portugal, she protested at finding "a great manyPortuguese Jewson board, and other repulsive objects, but we keep clear of them".Furthermore, she wrote in her diary: "I do not like the Jewish voice; I do not like the Jewish laugh." Her 1938 short story, written during Hitler's rule, "The Duchess and the Jeweller" (originally titled "The Duchess and the Jew") has been considered antisemitic.
Some believe that Woolf and her husband Leonard came to despise and fear the 1930s'fascismand antisemitism. Her 1938 bookThree Guineaswas an indictment of fascism and what Woolf described as a recurring propensity amongpatriarchalsocieties to enforce repressive societal mores by violence.And yet, her 1938 story "The Duchess and the Jeweller" was so deeply hateful in its depiction of Jews thatHarper's Bazaarasked her to modify it before publication; she reluctantly complied.
Virginia Woolf is known for her contributions to 20th-century literature and her essays, as well as the influence she has had on literary, particularly feminist criticism. A number of authors have stated that their work was influenced by her, includingMargaret Atwood,Michael Cunningham,Gabriel García Márquez,andToni Morrison.Her iconic imageis instantly recognisable from the Beresford portrait of her at twenty (at the top of this page) to the Beck and Macgregor portrait in her mother's dress inVogueat 44 (seeFry (1913)) orMan Ray's cover ofTimemagazine (seeRay (1937)) at 55.More postcards of Woolf are sold by theNational Portrait Gallery, London than of any other person.Her image is ubiquitous and can be found on products ranging from tea towels to T-shirts.
Virginia Woolf is studied around the world, with organisations devoted to her, such as the Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain,and The Virginia Woolf Society of Japan.In addition, trusts—such as the Asham Trust—encourage writers in her honour.
In January 2025 Sophie Oliver, a lecturer of modernism at theUniversity of Liverpool, discovered two previously unknown poems by Woolf, at theHarry Ransom Center, at theUniversity of Texas at Austin. Oliver estimated the date of the poems, which reveal "a different shade" to Woolf, as sometime after March 1927.
In 2013, Woolf was honoured by her alma mater King's College London with the opening of the Virginia Woolf Building onKingsway,together with an exhibit depicting her accompanied by the quotation "London itself perpetually attracts, stimulates, gives me a play & a story & a poem" from her 1926 diary.TheUniversity of Kentalso named a college after her—Woolf College, which was built in 2008.
Busts of Virginia Woolf have been erected at her home in Rodmell, Sussex and at Tavistock Square, London, where she lived between 1924 and 1939. She is also honored at Tavistock Square by the Woolf & Whistle, a bar which is located near where her house once stood.
In 2014, she was one of the inaugural honorees in theRainbow Honor Walk, awalk of fameinSan Francisco'sCastro neighbourhoodnotingLGBTQpeople who have "made significant contributions in their fields".
A campaign was launched in 2018 to erect a statue of Woolf in Richmond-upon-Thames, where she lived for 10 years.In November 2022 the statue, created by sculptor Laury Dizengremel, was unveiled. It depicts Woolf on a bench overlooking the River Thames and is the first full-size statue of Woolf.
Woolf's most notable works include the following.