Virginia Woolf

Other names: 

Adeline Virginia Stephen

1
Date of birth: 
25 Jan 1882
City of birth: 
London
Country of birth: 
England
Date of death: 
28 Mar 1941
Location of death: 
River Ouse, Sussex
Location: 

22 Hyde Park Gate, Kensington, London

46 Gordon Square, Bloomsbury, London

29 Fitzroy Square, Bloomsbury, London

Hogarth House, Richmond

Asheham House, Sussex

52 Tavistock Square, Bloomsbury, London

37 Mecklenburgh Square, Bloomsbury, London

Monk's House, Rodmell, Sussex

2
About: 

Born in 1882 to Julia and Leslie Stephen, Adeline Virginia Stephen would become a prominent modernist and feminist writer and a central figure of the 'Bloomsbury Group'. From her early childhood, her parents had encouraged her to write. The deaths of her mother, Julia, in 1895 and her step-sister, Stella, in 1897 were followed by those of her father, Leslie, in 1904 and her brother, Thoby, in 1906. This decade of family deaths had a profound effect on Virginia. She was survived by an older sister, Vanessa, who would also become part of the Bloomsbury Group, and aher brother, Adrian.

Virginia spent part of her childhood in Talland House near St Ives, Cornwall, and the rest in Kensington, London. Her memories of St Ives and of sexual abuse by her half-brother, George Duckworth, are prominent in her writing about her childhood. In the years following the deaths of her father and brother, Virginia’s mental health began to decline and she sank into depression and attempted suicide in 1913.

After her father’s death, Virginia and her siblings moved from Kensington to Bloomsbury. In Bloomsbury, Thoby introduced his two sisters to a group of men he had met in Cambridge: Leonard Woolf, Lytton Strachey, Clive Bell, Roger Fry, Duncan Grant, E. M. Forster and John Maynard Keynes. In 1912, Virginia married Leonard Woolf. The couple embarked on a life of writing and publishing. Virginia published her first novel, The Voyage Out, in 1915. In 1917, she and Leonard set up the Hogarth Press which published their own work as well as work by T. S. Eliot, Katherine Mansfield, E. M. Forster, Maynard Keynes and Freud, among others, and that of Indian writers Ahmed Ali and Rajani Palme Dutt. Virginia went on to publish a string of modernist novels.

After the Woolf’s Bloomsbury home was bombed in 1940, they retreated to their country home, Monk’s House, in Sussex. There, Virginia once again slipped into depression, and on 28 March 1941 she drowned herself in the nearby River Ouse.

Connections: 

Ahmed Ali, Mulk Raj Anand, Clive Bell, Vanessa Bell, Robert Bridges, George Duckworth, Rajani Palme Dutt, T. S. Eliot, E. M. Forster, Roger Fry, Duncan Grant, John Maynard Keynes, Leslie Stephen, Lytton Strachey, Vita Sackville-West, Leonard Sidney Woolf.

Network: 
Mulk Raj Anand
Ahmed Ali
Organizations: 
Hogarth Press
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Published works: 

The Voyage Out (London: Duckworth, 1915)

Night and Day (London: Duckworth, 1919)

Jacob's Room (London: L. & V. Woolf, 1922)

The Common Reader (London: Hogarth, 1925)

Mrs Dalloway (London: L. & V. Woolf, 1925) 

To the Lighthouse (London: Hogarth, 1927)

Orlando: A Biography (London: L. & V. Woolf, 1928)

A Room of One's Own (London: Hogarth, 1929)

On Being III (London: Hogarth, 1930)

The Waves (London: Hogarth, 1931)

The London Scene: Five Essays (London: Hogarth, [1931-2] 1982)

The Common Reader: Second Series (London: Hogarth, 1932

(with Leonard Woolf) The Hogarth Letters (London: Hogarth, 1933)

The Years (London: Hogarth, 1937)

Three Guineas (London: Hogarth, 1938)

Between the Acts (London: Hogarth, 1941)

The Death of the Moth, and Other Essays (London: Hogarth, 1942)

The Moment, and Other Essays (London: Hogarth, 1947)

The Captain's Death Bed, and Other Essays (London: Hogarth, 1950)

Collected Essays, 4 vols (London: Hogarth, 1966-7)

Moments of Being: Unpublished Autobiographical Writings (London: Chatto & Windus, 1976) 

Books and Portraits: Some Further Selections from the Literary and Biographical Writings of Virginia Woolf (London: Hogarth, 1977)

The Letters of Virginia Woolf, 6 vols (London: Hogarth Press, 1975-80)

The Diary of Virginia Woolf, 5 vols (London: Hogarth Press, 1977-84)

A Passionate Apprentice: The Early Journals, 1897-1909 (London: Chatto & Windus, 1990)

Secondary works: 

Abel, Elizabeth, Virginia Woolf and the Fictions of Psychoanalysis: Women in Culture and Society (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1989) 

Albright, Daniel, Personality and Impersonality: Lawrence, Woolf and Mann (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1978) 

Apter, T. E., Virginia Woolf: A Study of Her Novels (London: Macmillan, 1979) 

Asbee, Sue, Virginia Woolf, Life and Works (Hove: Wayland, 1989) 

Bazin, Nancy Topping, Virginia Woolf and the Androgynous Vision (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1973) 

Bell, Quentin, Virginia Woolf: A Biography, 2 vols (London: Hogarth Press, 1972) 

Berman, Jessica Schiff, and Goldman, Jane, Virginia Woolf out of Bounds: Selected Papers on the Tenth Annual Conference on Virginia Woolf, University of Maryland, Baltimore Country, June 8-11, 2000 (New York: Pace University Press, 2001) 

Bishop, Edward, A Virginia Woolf Chronology (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1989)

Blackstone, Bernard, Virginia Woolf: A Commentary (London: Hogarth Press, 1972)

Bowlby, Rachel, Virginia Woolf: Feminist Destinations, Rereading Literature (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988)

Clements, Patricia, and Grundy, Isobel, Virginia Woolf: New Critical Essays (London: Vision, 1983)

Daugherty, Beth Rigel, and Barrett, Eileen, Virginia Woolf: Texts and Contexts (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1996)

Davies, Stevie, Virginia Woolf: To the Lighthouse (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1989)

DeSalvo, Louise A., Virginia Woolf: The Impact of Childhood Sexual Abuse on Her Life and Work (London: Women's Press, 1989)

DeSalvo, Louise A., Virginia Woolf's First Voyage: A Novel in the Making (London: Macmillan, 1980) 

DiBattista, Maria, Virginia Woolf's Major Novels: The Fables of Anon (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1980)

Dick, Susan, Virginia Woolf: Modern Fiction (London: Edward Arnold, 1989)

Donahue, Delia, The Novels of Virginia Woolf (Roma: Bulzoni Editore, 1977)

Dowling, David, Bloomsbury Aesthetics and the Novels of Forster (London: Macmillan, 1985)

Dunn, Jane, A Very Close Conspiracy: Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf (London: Cape, 1990)

Ferrer, Daniel, Virginia Woolf and the Madness of Language (London: Routledge, 1990)

Fleishman, Avrom, Virginia Woolf: A Critical Reading (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975)

Fox, Alice, Virginia Woolf and the Literature of the English Renaissance (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990)

Freedman, Ralph, Virginia Woolf: Revaluation and Continuity: A Collection of Essays (Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1980)

Goldman, Mark, The Reader's Art: Virginia Woolf as Literary Critic (The Hague: Mouton, 1976)

Gordon, Lyndall, Virginia Woolf: A Writer's Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984)

Gordon, Lyndall, 'Woolf, (Adeline) Virginia (1882-1941)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004) [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/37018]

Gorsky, Susan Rubinow, Virginia Woolf (Boston, MA: Twayne, 1978)

Harper, Howard, Between Language and Silence: The Novels of Virginia Woolf (Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State University Press, 1982)

Hawthorn, Jeremy, Virginia Woolf's 'Mrs Dalloway': A Study in Alienation, Text and Context (London: Chatto & Windus for Sussex University Press, 1975)

Johnson, Manly, Virginia Woolf (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1973)

Kelley, Alice van Buren, The Novels of Virginia Woolf: Fact and Vision (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1973)

Kennedy, Richard, A Boy at the Hogarth Press (London: The Whitington Press, 1972)

Kiely, Robert, Beyond Egotism: The Fiction of James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and D. H. Lawrence (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 1980)

Kirkpatrick, B. J., A Bibliography of Virginia Woolf, 4th edn (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997)

Kumar, Shiv K., Virginia Woolf and Intuition (Folcroft, PA: Folcroft Library Editions, 1977)

Leaska, Mitchell A., The Novels of Virginia Woolf: From Beginning to End (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1979)

Lee, Hermione, The Novels of Virginia Woolf (London: Methuen, 1977)

Lee, Hermione, Virginia Woolf (London: Chatto & Windus, 1996)

Lehmann, John, Virginia Woolf and Her World (London: Thames & Hudson, 1975)

Lewis, Thomas S. W., Virginia Woolf: A Collection of Criticism, Contemporary Studies in Literature (New York and London: McGraw-Hill, 1975)

Love, Jean O., Virginia Woolf: Sources of Madness and Art (Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1977)

Majumdar, Robin, and MacLaurin, Allen, Virginia Woolf: The Critical Heritage (London and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975)

Marcus, Jane, New Feminist Essays on Virginia Woolf (London: Macmillan, 1981)

Marcus, Jane, Virginia Woolf: A Feminist Slant (Lincoln, NB, and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1983)

Marcus, Jane, Virginia Woolf and Bloomsbury: A Centenary Celebration (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1987)

McLaurin, Allen, Virginia Woolf: The Echoes Enslaved (London: Cambridge University Press, 1973)

McNichol, Stella, Virginia Woolf and the Poetry of Fiction (London: Routledge, 1990)

Meisel, Perry, The Absent Father: Virginia Woolf and Walter Pater (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1980)

Miller, C. Ruth, Virginia Woolf: The Frames of Art and Life (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1988)

Minow-Pinkney, Makiko, Virginia Woolf and the Problem of the Subject (Brighton: Harvester, 1987)

Mittal, S. P., The Aesthetic Venture (Delhi: Ajanta, 1985)

Moore, Madeline, The Short Season between Two Silences: The Mystical and the Political in the Novels of Virginia Woolf (Boston, MA, and London: Allen & Unwin, 1984)

Naremore, James, The World without a Self: Virginia Woolf and the Novel (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1973)

Nicolson, Nigel, Vita and Harold: The Letters of Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1992)

Noble, Joan Russell, Recollections of Virginia Woolf (London: Peter Owen, 1972)

Novak, Jane, The Razor Edge of Balance: A Study of Virginia Woolf (Coral Gables: University of Miami Press, 1975)

Panken, Shirley, Virginia Woolf and The 'Lust of Creation': A Psychoanalytic Exploration (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987)

Parasuram, Laxmi, Virginia Woolf: The Emerging Reality (Burdwan: University of Burdwan, 1978)

Poole, Roger, The Unknown Virginia Woolf (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978)

Poresky, Louise A., The Elusive Self: Psyche and Spirit in Virginia Woolf's Novels (Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 1981)

Radin, Grace, Virginia Woolf's 'The Years': The Evoluton of a Novel (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1981)

Rice, Thomas Jackson, Virginia Woolf: A Guide to Research (New York and London: Garland, 1984)

Roe, Sue, Writing and Gender: Virginia Woolf's Writing Practice (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1990)

Rose, Phyllis, Woman of Letters: A Life of Virginia Woolf (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978)

Rosenbaum, Stanford Patrick, The Bloomsbury Group: A Collection of Memoirs, Commentary and Criticism (London: Croom Helm, 1975)

Rosenthal, Michael, Virginia Woolf (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979)

Schlack, Beverly Ann, Continuing Presences: Virginia Woolf's Use of Literary Allusion (University Park and London: Pennsylvannia State University Press, 1979) 

Schug, Charles, The Romantic Genesis of the Modern Novel: Critical Essays in Modern Literature (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1979; London: Feffer & Simons, 1979)

Sharma, K. K., Modern Fictional Theorists: Virginia Woolf & D. H. Lawrence (Ghaziabad: Vimal Prakashan, 1981)

Spater, George, and Parsons, Ian, A Marriage of True Minds: An Intimate Portrait of Leonard and Virginia Woolf (London: Hogarth Press, 1977)

Spilka, Mark, Virginia Woolf's Quarrel with Grieving (Lincoln, NB, and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1980)

Sprague, Claire, Virginia Woolf: A Collection of Critical Essays: Twentieth Century Views (Englewood Cliffs and Hemel Hempstead: Prentice-Hall, 1971)

Steele, Elizabeth, Virginia Woolf's Literary Sources and Allusions: A Guide to the Essays (New York and London: Garland, 1983)

Steele, Elizabeth, Virginia Woolf's Rediscovered Essays: Sources and Allusions (New York and London: Garland, 1987)

Sugiyama, Yoko, Rainbow and Granite: A Study of Virginia Woolf (Tokyo: The Hokuseido Press, 1973)

Transue, Pamela J., Virginia Woolf and the Politics of Style (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986)

Trombley, Stephen, All That Summer She Was Mad: Virginia Woolf: Female Victim of Male Medicine (New York: Continuum, 1982)

Warner, Eric, Virginia Woolf: A Centenary Perspective (London: Macmillan, 1984)

Wheare, Jane, Virginia Woolf: Dramatic Novelist (Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1989)

Zwerdling, Alex, Virginia Woolf and the Real World (Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1986)

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Archive source: 

Notebook, Add. MS 61837, British Library, St Pancras

Memoir of her father, British Library, St Pancras

Papers, Girton College, Cambridge

Correspondence and literary papers, Historical Manuscripts Commission, National Register of Archives

Literary MSS and notebooks, Berg Collection, New York Public Library

Correspondence, family papers and literary MSS, University of Sussex Special Collections

Letters to S. S. Koteliansky, Add. MS 48974, British Library, St Pancras

Letters to John Lehmann, Add. MS 56234, British Library, St Pancras

Correspondence with Society of Authors, Add. MS 63351, British Library, St Pancras

Correspondence with Theodora Bosanquet, Houghton Library, Harvard University

Correspondence with Roger Fry, King's College Archive Centre, Cambridge

Letters to John Maynard Keynes, King's College Archive Centre, Cambridge

Letters and postcards to G. H. W. Rylands, King's College Archive Centre, Cambridge

Letters to W. J. H. Sprott, King's College Archive Centre, Cambridge

Letters to Thoby Stephen, King's College Archive Centre, Cambridge

Letters to Gladys Easdale, London University Library

Letters from T. S. Eliot, Berg Collection, New York Public Library

Letters to Arnold Bennett, University College, London