British writer, a novelist and essayist who used the English language superbly. After the death of her father in 1904, she and her siblings moved to Bloomsbury where their home becoming the center for the avant-garde literary salon, the Bloomsbury Group. Her first two novels were traditional in format; in 1921 she began her experimental, impressionistic style. The subsequent novels had greater success, “Jacob’s Room,” 1922, “Mrs. Dalloway,” 1925, “A Biography” 1928 and a feminist essay, “A Room of One’s Own” in 1929. Four of her books were published posthumously and her total output was 9 novels, 1 play, 14volumes of diaries and letters as well as many essays, portraits, reviews and memoirs.
The daughter of Sir Leslie Stephen, Virginia was the youngest of four children by her dad’s second marriage; her mom died when she was thirteen. The family had a total of eight kids due to prior marriages of her parents. Educated at home, she had the run of her father’s magnificent library.
She married Leonard Woolf in 1912. They were true companions though it was a sexless marriage and she later fell in love with another woman, Vita Sackville-West.
Virginia received income from a small trust fund but it was insufficient to meet her needs. In 1917, she and her husband, Leonard, founded the Hogarth Press. With a small, kitchen-table model printing press, they taught themselves to set type and print. Virginia and Leonard were budding novelists, reviewers and essayists. Their first publication, a 32-page pamphlet, sold 134 copies of the 150 printed. Within several years, they developed a commercially successful publishing company that produced 25 to 35 books per year.
Virginia and Leonard were prolific writers and managed the publishing company as a part time enterprise. The authors they published included C. Day Lewis, T. S. Eliot, Anna and Sigmund Freud, Maxim Gorky, Rainer Maria Rilke, Gertrude Stein, H. G. Wells, and many other notable writers. In the 1930s, they began using their influence in the literary community to address their social concerns. They published books on disarmament, feminism, peace, the League of Nations, problems of race and slavery, economics, education, economics and psychology. One biographer stated the Woolfs considered Hogarth Press the child their marriage never produced.
Woolf suffered from a mental breakdown during WW I, followed by subsequent periods of physical, mental and emotional breakdowns which doctors treated with psychiatric drugs. Her early childhood experience of sexual abuse by her half brothers, Gerald and George Dunkworth, was thought to be the cause. Gerald later became her publisher. Virginia had a complicated and stormy relationship with her sister, Vanessa Bell, which biographers reveal was also physical. She is also reported to have an early love interest with a close friend, Violet Dickinson.
Her writing expressed the themes that troubled her the most; life, death, suicide, madness and past memories. She was hypersensitive to criticism. Virginia was a noted biographer and critic and used writing as a distraction from realty. When she realized she could not write any longer, she chose not to live. On 3/28/1941 she drowned herself, fearing the recurrence of a mental breakdown, Sussex, England.
In December 2002, the film was released, “The Hours,” based on Michael Cunningham’s prize-winning Novel. The movie stars Nicole Kidman as Woolf, wearing a false nose to elongate her face.
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