Biographical Profile of Virginia Woolf

(1882-1941) British writer. Virginia Woolf became one of the most prominent literary figures of the early 20th century, with novels like Mrs. Dalloway (1925), Jacobs Room (1922), To the Lighthouse (1927), and The Waves (1931).Woolf learned early on that it was her fate to be the daughter of educated men. In a journal entry shortly after her fathers death in 1904, she wrote: His life would have ended mine... No writing, no books: inconceivable. Luckily, for the literary world, Woolfs conviction would be overcome by her itch to write. Virginia Woolf Birth: Virginia Woolf was born Adeline Virginia Stephen on January 25, 1882, in London. Woolf was educated at home by her father, Sir Leslie Stephen, the author of the Dictionary of English Biography, and she read extensively. Her mother, Julia Duckworth Stephen, was a nurse, who published a book on nursing. Her mother died in 1895, which was the catalyst for Virginias first mental breakdown. Virginias sister, Stella, died in 1897; and her father dies in 1904. Virginia Woolf Death: Virginia Woolf died on March 28, 1941 near Rodmell, Sussex, England. She left a note for her husband, Leonard, and for her sister, Vanessa. Then, Virginia walked to the River Ouse, put a large stone in her pocket, and drowned herself. Children found her body 18 days later. Virginia Woolf Marriage: Virginia married Leonard Wolf in 1912. Leonard was a journalist. In 1917 the she and her husband founded Hogarth Press, which became a successful publishing house, printing the early works of authors such as Forster, Katherine Mansfield, and T. S. Eliot, and introducing the works of Sigmund Freud. Except for the first printing of Woolfs first novel, The Voyage Out (1915), Hogarth Press also published all of her works. Bloomsbury Group: Together, Virginia and Leonard Woolf was a part of the famous Bloomsbury Group, which included E.M. Forster, Duncan Grant, Virginias sister, Vanessa Bell, Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, Ezra Pound, and T. S. Eliot. Virginia Woolf Achievements: Virginia Woolfs works are often closely linked to the development of feminist criticism, but she was also an important writer in the modernist movement. She revolutionized the novel with stream of consciousness, which allowed her to depict the inner lives of her characters in all too intimate detail. In A Room of Ones Own Woolf writes, we think back through our mothers if we are women. It is useless to go to the great men writers for help, however much one may go to them for pleasure. Virginia Woolf Quotes: I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.One of the signs of passing youth is the birth of a sense of fellowship with other human beings as we take our place among them.- Hours in a LibraryMrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.- Mrs. DallowayIt was an uncertain spring. The weather, perpetually changing, sent clouds of blue and purple flying over the land.- The Years To the Lighthouse Quotes: What is the meaning of life?... a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years. The great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark.The extraordinary irrationality of her remark, the folly of womens minds enraged him. He had ridden through the valley of death, been shattered and shivered; and now, she flew in the face of facts... A Room of Ones Own Quotes: Imaginative work... is like a spiders web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners.... But when the web is pulled askew, hooked up at the edge, torn in the middle, one remembers that these webs are not spun in midair by incorporeal creatures, but are the work of suffering, human beings, and are attached to the grossly material things, like health and money and the houses we live in. More Details of Virginia Woolfs Life: In A Room of Ones Own, Woolf writes, When...one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman possessed by devils, of a wise woman selling herbs, or even of a very remarkable man who had a mother, then I think we are on the track of a lost novelist, a suppressed poet, of some mute and inglorious Jane Austen, some Emily Bronte who dashed her brains out on the moor or mopped and mowed about the highways crazed with the torture that her gift had put her to. Indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.From the time of her mothers death in 1895, Woolf suffered from what is now believed to have been bipolar disorder, which is characterized by alternating moods of mania and depression. In 1941, at the apparent onset of a period of depression, Woolf drowned herself in the Ouse River. He dreaded World War II. She feared that she was about to lose her mind and become a burden on her husband. She left her husband a note explaining that she feared she was going mad and this time would not recover.