page_title: Virginia Woolf
section_title: Gordon Square (1904–1907)
hierarchical_section_title: Virginia Woolf / Life / Bloomsbury (1904–1940) / Gordon Square (1904–1907)
caption_attribution_description: English: 46 Gordon Square, London (United Kingdom). The economist John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) lived here from 1916 to 1946. Français&#160;: 46 Gordon Square, Londres (Royaume-Uni). L'économiste John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) y vécut de 1916 à 1946.
context_page_description: Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English writer, considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and also a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device.
  Woolf was born into an affluent household in South Kensington, London, the seventh child in a blended family of eight which included the modernist painter Vanessa Bell. Her mother was Julia Prinsep Jackson and her father Leslie Stephen. While the boys in the family received college educations, the girls were home-schooled in English classics and Victorian literature. An important influence in Virginia Woolf's early life was the summer home the family used in St Ives, Cornwall, where she first saw the Godrevy Lighthouse, which was to become central in her novel To the Lighthouse.
  Woolf's childhood came to an abrupt end in 1895 with the death of her mother and her first mental breakdown, followed two years later by the death of her half-sister and a mother figure to her, Stella Duckworth.
context_section_description: On their father's death, the Stephens' first instinct was to escape from the dark house of yet more mourning, and this they did immediately, accompanied by George, travelling to Manorbier, on the coast of Pembrokeshire on 27 February. There, they spent a month, and it was there that Virginia first came to realise her destiny was as a writer, as she recalls in her diary of 3 September 1922. They then further pursued their new found freedom by spending April in Italy and France, where they met up with Clive Bell again. Virginia then suffered her second nervous breakdown, and first suicidal attempt on 10 May, and convalesced over the next three months.
  Before their father died, the Stephens had discussed the need to leave South Kensington in the West End, with its tragic memories and their parents' relations. George Duckworth was 35, his brother Gerald 33. The Stephen children were now between 24 and 20. Virginia was 22. Vanessa and Adrian decided to sell 22 Hyde Park Gate in respectable South Kensington and move to Bloomsbury. Bohemian Bloomsbury, with its characteristic leafy squares seemed sufficiently far away, geographically and socially, and was a much cheaper neighbourhood to rent in. They had not inherited much and they were unsure about their finances. Also, Bloomsbury was close to the Slade School which Vanessa was then attending. While Gerald was quite happy to move on and find himself a bachelor establishment, George who had always assumed the role of quasi-parent decided to accompany them, much to their dismay. It was then that Lady Margaret Herbert appeared on the scene, George proposed, was accepted and married in September, leaving the Stephens to their own devices.
  Vanessa found a house at 46 Gordon Square in Bloomsbury, and they moved in November, to be joined by Virginia now sufficiently recovered. It was at Gordon Square that the Stephens began to regularly entertain Thoby's intellectual friends in March 1905. The circle, which largely came from the Cambridge Apostles, included writers (Saxon Sydney-Turner, Lytton Strachey) and critics (Clive Bell, Desmond MacCarthy) with Thursday evening "At Homes" that became known as the Thursday Club, a vision of recreating Trinity College ("Cambridge in London"). This circle formed the nucleus of the intellectual circle of writers and artists known as the Bloomsbury Group. Later, it would include John Maynard Keynes (1907), Duncan Grant (1908), E. M. Forster (1910), Roger Fry (1910), Leonard Woolf (1911) and David Garnett (1914).
  In 1905, Virginia and Adrian visited Portugal and Spain. Clive Bell proposed to Vanessa, but was declined, while Virginia began teaching evening classes at Morley College and Vanessa added another event to their calendar with the Friday Club, dedicated to the discussion of and later exhibition of the fine arts. This introduced some new people into their circle, including Vanessa's friends from the Royal Academy and Slade, such as Henry Lamb and Gwen Darwin (who became secretary), but also the eighteen-year-old Katherine Laird ("Ka") Cox (1887–1938), who was about to go up to Newnham. Although Virginia did not actually meet Ka until much later, Ka would come to play an important part in her life. Ka and others brought the Bloomsbury Group into contact with another, slightly younger, group of Cambridge intellectuals to whom the Stephen sisters gave the name "Neo-pagans". The Friday Club continued until 1913.
  The following year, 1906, Virginia suffered two further losses. Her cherished brother Thoby, who was only 26, died of typhoid, following a trip they had all taken to Greece, and immediately after Vanessa accepted Clive's third proposal. Vanessa and Clive were married in February 1907 and as a couple, their interest in avant-garde art would have an important influence on Woolf's further development as an author. With Vanessa's marriage, Virginia and Adrian needed to find a new home.
caption: 46 Gordon Square
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