Virginia Woolf, 1882 - 1941
Author of this webpage: Renée Goodvin
Virginia Woolf was an English novelist and critic during the Modern Period whose writings are highly esteemed by modern feminist critics. Adeline Virginia Stephen was born in London on January 25, 1882. She was one of four children of the prominent Victorian critic, philosopher, biographer, and scholar, Leslie Stephen. In 1904, Virginia's father died. At that time she settled with her sister and two brothers in the Bloomsbury district of London.
During this time, Virginia, her brothers and her sister became affiliated with the intellectual circle known as "The Bloomsbury Group." The Bloomsbury Group included highly prominent thinkers of the day such as the biographer Lytton Strachey, the economist J.M. Keynes, the art critics Roger Fry and Clive Bell, the writer E.M. Forester, and the journalist and essayist Leonard Woolf.
In 1912, Virginia married Leonard Woolf. Five years later, in 1917, the Woolfs founded the Hogarth Press which in addition to publishing Virginia's writings, also published many of the era's most renowned texts; such the English translations of Freud and manuscripts by T.S. Eliot and Katherine Mansfield.
Virginia Woolf wrote many reviews and critical essays as well as novels. She was greatly concerned with the position of professional women and the constrictions under which they suffered, and in response wrote one of her most famous essays, "A Room of One's Own" (1929). Woolf experimented a great deal with her novels. Her early novels are in "traditional form," but later novels are masters of the "stream of consciousness" style.
Unfortunately, Virginia suffered bouts of nervous depression her entire adult life. This condition, along with fears that she was going insane and that she would become a burden to her husband, led her to commit suicide on March 28, 1941.
The information for Virginia Woolf's biography was adapted Merriam Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature, The Oxford Companion to the English Language, edited by T. McArthur, and The Norton Anthology to English Literature, 6th ed., Volume 2.
Selected Timeline of Virginia Woolf's Writings:
- 1915 - The Voyage Out
- 1919 - Night and Day
- 1921 - Monday or Tuesday
- 1922 - Jacob's Room
- 1925 - Mrs. Dalloway; The Common Reader (critical studies, volume 1)
- 1927 - To the Lighthouse
- 1928 - Orlando
- 1929 - A Room of One's Own
- 1932 - The Common Reader (critical studies, volume 2)
- 1933 - Flush (biography of Elizabeth Barret Browning)
- 1931 - The Waves
- 1937 - The Years
- 1938 - Three Guineas
- 1940 - biography of Roger Fry
- 1941 - Between Acts
- 1942 - The Death of the Moth
- 1958 - Granite and Rainbow
- 1975-80 - Letters (6 volumes)
- 1977-84 - The Diary of Virginia Woolf (5 volumes)
- 1919 - Night and Day
- The Virginia Woolf Collection at bartleby.com
- Woolf - Criticism
- Virginia Woolf criticism from the Internet Public Library.
- VW - Quotations
- Virginia Woolf quotations from bartleby.com
- Voices from the Archives - Virginia Woolf
- An audio interview done for the BBC by Virginia Woolf in 1929.
- The International Virginia Woolf Society
- Devoted to encouraging and facilitating the scholarly study of, critical attention to, and general interest in, the work and career of Virginia Woolf.
- The Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain
- Devoted to presenting Virginia Woolf in her true light as a great novelist, essayist, publisher and woman of letters.
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Last updated January 28, 2005