Virginia Woolf

Julia Stephen with Virginia on her lap 1884

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Duckworth Stephen Family 1892

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Sir Leslie Stephen 22 Hyde Park Gate Kensington London SW7 5DH

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Talland House, c1882–1894

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Virginia Woolf with her father, Sir Leslie Stephen

Virginia Woolf (25 January 1882 – 28 March 1941) 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. Her mother, Julia Prinsep Jackson, had been born in India and had later moved to Britain, where she became a model for Pre-Raphaelite painters. Her father, Leslie Stephen, was a notable historian, author, and mountaineer. Woolf was educated at home by her parents in a literate and resourceful household.

Throughout her life, Woolf was troubled by her mental health issues, which have been the subject of much discussion by biographers and scholars. Her struggles with bipolar disorder were exacerbated by the deaths of several close family members, including her mother in 1895 and her father in 1904, leading to her first of several nervous breakdowns.

In 1912, Virginia married Leonard Woolf, a political theorist, author, and publisher. Together, they founded the Hogarth Press in 1917, which published much of her work along with titles by T.S. Eliot, Sigmund Freud, and others. The press was a significant cultural and literary force in Britain throughout its operation.

Woolf's writing career began in earnest when she started to write for the Times Literary Supplement in the early 1900s. Over the next three decades, she produced an extensive body of work, including novels, essays, biographies, and literary criticism. Woolf's most famous works include Mrs Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), and Orlando: A Biography (1928), along with the non-fiction works A Room of One's Own (1929) and Three Guineas (1938). Her novels are celebrated for their lyrical prose, exploration of the human psyche, and the feminist themes that run through her work.

Woolf's innovative narrative techniques and her philosophical inquiries into gender, politics, and identity have made her a central figure in feminist criticism. A Room of One's Own is particularly noted for its argument for both a literal and figurative space for women writers within a literary tradition dominated by men.

Virginia Woolf's life ended tragically when she drowned herself in the River Ouse near her home in Sussex, England, in 1941, after a particularly debilitating bout of depression. Despite her tragic end, Woolf's legacy as a key figure in modernist literature continues to be celebrated, and her works remain influential in the fields of literature, feminism, and psychology.