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On March 28, 1941, Virginia Woolf, British writer, died from suicide at the age of 59. From the article:
"English author Virginia Woolf wrote modernist classics including 'Mrs. Dalloway' and 'To the Lighthouse,' as well as pioneering feminist texts, 'A Room of One's Own' and 'Three Guineas.'
Who Was Virginia Woolf?
Born into a privileged English household in 1882, author Virginia Woolf was raised by free-thinking parents. She began writing as a young girl and published her first novel, The Voyage Out, in 1915. She wrote modernist classics including Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse and Orlando, as well as pioneering feminist works, A Room of One's Own and Three Guineas. In her personal life, she suffered bouts of deep depression. She committed suicide in 1941, at the age of 59.
Early Life
Born on January 25, 1882, Adeline Virginia Stephen was raised in a remarkable household. Her father, Sir Leslie Stephen, was a historian and author, as well as one of the most prominent figures in the golden age of mountaineering. Woolf’s mother, Julia Prinsep Stephen (née Jackson), had been born in India and later served as a model for several Pre-Raphaelite painters. She was also a nurse and wrote a book on the profession. Both of her parents had been married and widowed before marrying each other. Woolf had three full siblings — Thoby, Vanessa and Adrian — and four half-siblings — Laura Makepeace Stephen and George, Gerald and Stella Duckworth. The eight children lived under one roof at 22 Hyde Park Gate, Kensington.
Two of Woolf’s brothers had been educated at Cambridge, but all the girls were taught at home and utilized the splendid confines of the family’s lush Victorian library. Moreover, Woolf’s parents were extremely well connected, both socially and artistically. Her father was a friend to William Thackeray, the father of his first wife who died unexpectedly, and George Henry Lewes, as well as many other noted thinkers. Her mother’s aunt was the famous 19th century photographer Julia Margaret Cameron.
From the time of her birth until 1895, Woolf spent her summers in St. Ives, a beach town at the very southwestern tip of England. The Stephens’ summer home, Talland House, which is still standing today, looks out at the dramatic Porthminster Bay and has a view of the Godrevy Lighthouse, which inspired her writing. In her later memoirs, Woolf recalled St. Ives with a great fondness. In fact, she incorporated scenes from those early summers into her modernist novel, To the Lighthouse (1927).
As a young girl, Virginia was curious, light-hearted and playful. She started a family newspaper, the Hyde Park Gate News, to document her family’s humorous anecdotes. However, early traumas darkened her childhood, including being sexually abused by her half-brothers George and Gerald Duckworth, which she wrote about in her essays A Sketch of the Past and 22 Hyde Park Gate. In 1895, at the age of 13, she also had to cope with the sudden death of her mother from rheumatic fever, which led to her first mental breakdown, and the loss of her half-sister Stella, who had become the head of the household, two years later.
While dealing with her personal losses, Woolf continued her studies in German, Greek and Latin at the Ladies’ Department of King’s College London. Her four years of study introduced her to a handful of radical feminists at the helm of educational reforms. In 1904, her father died from stomach cancer, which contributed to another emotional setback that led to Woolf being institutionalized for a brief period. Virginia Woolf’s dance between literary expression and personal desolation would continue for the rest of her life. In 1905, she began writing professionally as a contributor for The Times Literary Supplement. A year later, Woolf's 26-year-old brother Thoby died from typhoid fever after a family trip to Greece.
After their father's death, Woolf's sister Vanessa and brother Adrian sold the family home in Hyde Park Gate, and purchased a house in the Bloomsbury area of London. During this period, Virginia met several members of the Bloomsbury Group, a circle of intellectuals and artists including the art critic Clive Bell, who married Virginia's sister Vanessa, the novelist E.M. Forster, the painter Duncan Grant, the biographer Lytton Strachey, economist John Maynard Keynes and essayist Leonard Woolf, among others. The group became famous in 1910 for the Dreadnought Hoax, a practical joke in which members of the group dressed up as a delegation of Ethiopian royals, including Virginia disguised as a bearded man, and successfully persuaded the English Royal Navy to show them their warship, the HMS Dreadnought. After the outrageous act, Leonard Woolf and Virginia became closer, and eventually they were married on August 10, 1912. The two shared a passionate love for one another for the rest of their lives.
Literary Work
Several years before marrying Leonard, Virginia had begun working on her first novel. The original title was Melymbrosia. After nine years and innumerable drafts, it was released in 1915 as The Voyage Out. Woolf used the book to experiment with several literary tools, including compelling and unusual narrative perspectives, dream-states and free association prose. Two years later, the Woolfs bought a used printing press and established Hogarth Press, their own publishing house operated out of their home, Hogarth House. Virginia and Leonard published some of their writing, as well as the work of Sigmund Freud, Katharine Mansfield and T.S. Eliot.
A year after the end of World War I, the Woolfs purchased Monk's House, a cottage in the village of Rodmell in 1919, and that same year Virginia published Night and Day, a novel set in Edwardian England. Her third novel Jacob's Room was published by Hogarth in 1922. Based on her brother Thoby, it was considered a significant departure from her earlier novels with its modernist elements. That year, she met author, poet and landscape gardener Vita Sackville-West, the wife of English diplomat Harold Nicolson. Virginia and Vita began a friendship that developed into a romantic affair. Although their affair eventually ended, they remained friends until Virginia Woolf's death.
In 1925, Woolf received rave reviews for Mrs. Dalloway, her fourth novel. The mesmerizing story interweaved interior monologues and raised issues of feminism, mental illness and homosexuality in post-World War I England. Mrs. Dalloway was adapted into a 1997 film, starring Vanessa Redgrave, and inspired The Hours, a 1998 novel by Michael Cunningham and a 2002 film adaptation. Her 1928 novel, To the Lighthouse, was another critical success and considered revolutionary for its stream of consciousness storytelling.The modernist classic examines the subtext of human relationships through the lives of the Ramsay family as they vacation on the Isle of Skye in Scotland.
Woolf found a literary muse in Sackville-West, the inspiration for Woolf's 1928 novel Orlando, which follows an English nobleman who mysteriously becomes a woman at the age of 30 and lives on for over three centuries of English history. The novel was a breakthrough for Woolf who received critical praise for the groundbreaking work, as well as a newfound level of popularity.
In 1929, Woolf published A Room of One's Own, a feminist essay based on lectures she had given at women's colleges, in which she examines women's role in literature. In the work, she sets forth the idea that “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” Woolf pushed narrative boundaries in her next work, The Waves (1931), which she described as "a play-poem" written in the voices of six different characters. Woolf published The Years, the final novel published in her lifetime in 1937, about a family's history over the course of a generation. The following year she published Three Guineas, an essay which continued the feminist themes of A Room of One's Own and addressed fascism and war.
Throughout her career, Woolf spoke regularly at colleges and universities, penned dramatic letters, wrote moving essays and self-published a long list of short stories. By her mid-forties, she had established herself as an intellectual, an innovative and influential writer and pioneering feminist. Her ability to balance dream-like scenes with deeply tense plot lines earned her incredible respect from peers and the public alike. Despite her outward success, she continued to regularly suffer from debilitating bouts of depression and dramatic mood swings.
Suicide and Legacy
Woolf's husband, Leonard, always by her side, was quite aware of any signs that pointed to his wife’s descent into depression. He saw, as she was working on what would be her final manuscript, Between the Acts (published posthumously in 1941),that she was sinking into deepening despair. At the time, World War II was raging on and the couple decided if England was invaded by Germany, they would commit suicide together, fearing that Leonard, who was Jewish, would be in particular danger. In 1940, the couple’s London home was destroyed during the Blitz, the Germans bombing of the city.
Unable to cope with her despair, Woolf pulled on her overcoat, filled its pockets with stones and walked into the River Ouse on March 28, 1941. As she waded into the water, the stream took her with it. The authorities found her body three weeks later. Leonard Woolf had her cremated and her remains were scattered at their home, Monk's House.
Although her popularity decreased after World War II, Woolf's work resonated again with a new generation of readers during the feminist movement of the 1970s. Woolf remains one of the most influential authors of the 21st century."
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"English author Virginia Woolf wrote modernist classics including 'Mrs. Dalloway' and 'To the Lighthouse,' as well as pioneering feminist texts, 'A Room of One's Own' and 'Three Guineas.'
Who Was Virginia Woolf?
Born into a privileged English household in 1882, author Virginia Woolf was raised by free-thinking parents. She began writing as a young girl and published her first novel, The Voyage Out, in 1915. She wrote modernist classics including Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse and Orlando, as well as pioneering feminist works, A Room of One's Own and Three Guineas. In her personal life, she suffered bouts of deep depression. She committed suicide in 1941, at the age of 59.
Early Life
Born on January 25, 1882, Adeline Virginia Stephen was raised in a remarkable household. Her father, Sir Leslie Stephen, was a historian and author, as well as one of the most prominent figures in the golden age of mountaineering. Woolf’s mother, Julia Prinsep Stephen (née Jackson), had been born in India and later served as a model for several Pre-Raphaelite painters. She was also a nurse and wrote a book on the profession. Both of her parents had been married and widowed before marrying each other. Woolf had three full siblings — Thoby, Vanessa and Adrian — and four half-siblings — Laura Makepeace Stephen and George, Gerald and Stella Duckworth. The eight children lived under one roof at 22 Hyde Park Gate, Kensington.
Two of Woolf’s brothers had been educated at Cambridge, but all the girls were taught at home and utilized the splendid confines of the family’s lush Victorian library. Moreover, Woolf’s parents were extremely well connected, both socially and artistically. Her father was a friend to William Thackeray, the father of his first wife who died unexpectedly, and George Henry Lewes, as well as many other noted thinkers. Her mother’s aunt was the famous 19th century photographer Julia Margaret Cameron.
From the time of her birth until 1895, Woolf spent her summers in St. Ives, a beach town at the very southwestern tip of England. The Stephens’ summer home, Talland House, which is still standing today, looks out at the dramatic Porthminster Bay and has a view of the Godrevy Lighthouse, which inspired her writing. In her later memoirs, Woolf recalled St. Ives with a great fondness. In fact, she incorporated scenes from those early summers into her modernist novel, To the Lighthouse (1927).
As a young girl, Virginia was curious, light-hearted and playful. She started a family newspaper, the Hyde Park Gate News, to document her family’s humorous anecdotes. However, early traumas darkened her childhood, including being sexually abused by her half-brothers George and Gerald Duckworth, which she wrote about in her essays A Sketch of the Past and 22 Hyde Park Gate. In 1895, at the age of 13, she also had to cope with the sudden death of her mother from rheumatic fever, which led to her first mental breakdown, and the loss of her half-sister Stella, who had become the head of the household, two years later.
While dealing with her personal losses, Woolf continued her studies in German, Greek and Latin at the Ladies’ Department of King’s College London. Her four years of study introduced her to a handful of radical feminists at the helm of educational reforms. In 1904, her father died from stomach cancer, which contributed to another emotional setback that led to Woolf being institutionalized for a brief period. Virginia Woolf’s dance between literary expression and personal desolation would continue for the rest of her life. In 1905, she began writing professionally as a contributor for The Times Literary Supplement. A year later, Woolf's 26-year-old brother Thoby died from typhoid fever after a family trip to Greece.
After their father's death, Woolf's sister Vanessa and brother Adrian sold the family home in Hyde Park Gate, and purchased a house in the Bloomsbury area of London. During this period, Virginia met several members of the Bloomsbury Group, a circle of intellectuals and artists including the art critic Clive Bell, who married Virginia's sister Vanessa, the novelist E.M. Forster, the painter Duncan Grant, the biographer Lytton Strachey, economist John Maynard Keynes and essayist Leonard Woolf, among others. The group became famous in 1910 for the Dreadnought Hoax, a practical joke in which members of the group dressed up as a delegation of Ethiopian royals, including Virginia disguised as a bearded man, and successfully persuaded the English Royal Navy to show them their warship, the HMS Dreadnought. After the outrageous act, Leonard Woolf and Virginia became closer, and eventually they were married on August 10, 1912. The two shared a passionate love for one another for the rest of their lives.
Literary Work
Several years before marrying Leonard, Virginia had begun working on her first novel. The original title was Melymbrosia. After nine years and innumerable drafts, it was released in 1915 as The Voyage Out. Woolf used the book to experiment with several literary tools, including compelling and unusual narrative perspectives, dream-states and free association prose. Two years later, the Woolfs bought a used printing press and established Hogarth Press, their own publishing house operated out of their home, Hogarth House. Virginia and Leonard published some of their writing, as well as the work of Sigmund Freud, Katharine Mansfield and T.S. Eliot.
A year after the end of World War I, the Woolfs purchased Monk's House, a cottage in the village of Rodmell in 1919, and that same year Virginia published Night and Day, a novel set in Edwardian England. Her third novel Jacob's Room was published by Hogarth in 1922. Based on her brother Thoby, it was considered a significant departure from her earlier novels with its modernist elements. That year, she met author, poet and landscape gardener Vita Sackville-West, the wife of English diplomat Harold Nicolson. Virginia and Vita began a friendship that developed into a romantic affair. Although their affair eventually ended, they remained friends until Virginia Woolf's death.
In 1925, Woolf received rave reviews for Mrs. Dalloway, her fourth novel. The mesmerizing story interweaved interior monologues and raised issues of feminism, mental illness and homosexuality in post-World War I England. Mrs. Dalloway was adapted into a 1997 film, starring Vanessa Redgrave, and inspired The Hours, a 1998 novel by Michael Cunningham and a 2002 film adaptation. Her 1928 novel, To the Lighthouse, was another critical success and considered revolutionary for its stream of consciousness storytelling.The modernist classic examines the subtext of human relationships through the lives of the Ramsay family as they vacation on the Isle of Skye in Scotland.
Woolf found a literary muse in Sackville-West, the inspiration for Woolf's 1928 novel Orlando, which follows an English nobleman who mysteriously becomes a woman at the age of 30 and lives on for over three centuries of English history. The novel was a breakthrough for Woolf who received critical praise for the groundbreaking work, as well as a newfound level of popularity.
In 1929, Woolf published A Room of One's Own, a feminist essay based on lectures she had given at women's colleges, in which she examines women's role in literature. In the work, she sets forth the idea that “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” Woolf pushed narrative boundaries in her next work, The Waves (1931), which she described as "a play-poem" written in the voices of six different characters. Woolf published The Years, the final novel published in her lifetime in 1937, about a family's history over the course of a generation. The following year she published Three Guineas, an essay which continued the feminist themes of A Room of One's Own and addressed fascism and war.
Throughout her career, Woolf spoke regularly at colleges and universities, penned dramatic letters, wrote moving essays and self-published a long list of short stories. By her mid-forties, she had established herself as an intellectual, an innovative and influential writer and pioneering feminist. Her ability to balance dream-like scenes with deeply tense plot lines earned her incredible respect from peers and the public alike. Despite her outward success, she continued to regularly suffer from debilitating bouts of depression and dramatic mood swings.
Suicide and Legacy
Woolf's husband, Leonard, always by her side, was quite aware of any signs that pointed to his wife’s descent into depression. He saw, as she was working on what would be her final manuscript, Between the Acts (published posthumously in 1941),that she was sinking into deepening despair. At the time, World War II was raging on and the couple decided if England was invaded by Germany, they would commit suicide together, fearing that Leonard, who was Jewish, would be in particular danger. In 1940, the couple’s London home was destroyed during the Blitz, the Germans bombing of the city.
Unable to cope with her despair, Woolf pulled on her overcoat, filled its pockets with stones and walked into the River Ouse on March 28, 1941. As she waded into the water, the stream took her with it. The authorities found her body three weeks later. Leonard Woolf had her cremated and her remains were scattered at their home, Monk's House.
Although her popularity decreased after World War II, Woolf's work resonated again with a new generation of readers during the feminist movement of the 1970s. Woolf remains one of the most influential authors of the 21st century."
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Virginia Woolf
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In her novels and essays, Virginia Woolf captured the intimate moments of the 20th century like no one else. She opens our eyes to the neglected value of dai...
Thank you my friend SGT (Join to see) for making us aware that on March 28, 1941 English author Adeline Virginia [Stephens] Woolf died from suicide at the age of 59 by drowning in the River Ouse near her home in Sussex.
LITERATURE - Virginia Woolf
In her novels and essays, Virginia Woolf captured the intimate moments of the 20th century like no one else. She opens our eyes to the neglected value of daily experience.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1W7wqXD_b0
Images:
1. Virginia Woolf by George Charles Beresford, 1902
2. Virginia Woolf and her sister, Vanessa, in the 1890s
3. Virginia Woolf by Roger Fry, 1917
4. Virginia Woolf 'I am made and remade continually. Different people draw different words from me'
Background from {[https://courses.lumenlearning.com/atd-bhcc-englishlit/chapter/biography-20/]}
Biography: Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf was born into late-Victorian London on January 25, 1882. Her mother was Julia Stephen (1846-1895), famous in the artistic and literary world for her beauty and in high demand for her skills as an informal nurse. Woolf’s father was Sir Leslie Stephen (1832-1904), a well-known literary critic and founder of the Dictionary of National Biography, who struggled with a sense of inadequacy in spite of his reputation. The family lived at 22 Hyde Park Gate in London and rented a summer house at St. Ives in Cornwall. The children grew up with governesses, and while the boys went on to school and university, the girls received much less formal education, a particularly sore point with Woolf, and a spur for her feminism. However, she read hugely from her father’s library, and developed a formidable and individual intellect. Her parents’ literary circle also helped to develop the foundations of her writing and thought.
Julia and Leslie had each been married previously. With his first wife, Minny Thackeray (1840-1875), Leslie had a daughter, Laura (1870-1884). He floundered at being widowed and left to bring up the young girl, who had increasing emotional and developmental problems. Julia, a friend of Minny’s, seemed a lifeline. She had had three children with Herbert Duckworth (1833-1870), whose sudden death gave her the sorrow that many friends saw as her main characteristic. George (1868-1934), Stella (1869-1897), and Gerald (1870-1937), along with Laura, were part of the new household when Julia and Leslie married in 1878.
Julia and Leslie had four more children together, of which Virginia was the third. Vanessa (1879-1961) was her childhood companion and fellow editor of the family newsletter, The Hyde Park Gate News; the two remained close friends and sometimes rivals in adulthood, when Vanessa married Clive Bell, who was a friend of her brother Thoby, had three children, and worked as an artist. Thoby (1880-1906) was a popular and good-looking young man whose Cambridge friends formed the initial Bloomsbury Group of writers and artists, with which all the Stephen siblings were connected to some degree. Adrian (1883-1948) was his mother’s favourite, but he clashed with his father and siblings, and became a psychoanalyst. The house at 22 Hyde Park Gate was full of children and energy, but also of sadness. Woolf wrote of being sexually molested by both her Duckworth half-brothers, which powerfully affected her. Laura was institutionalized in the 1890s as her disorders worsened. Julia Stephen suddenly died of influenza when Virginia was 13, “the worst disaster that could happen,” as she put it, which led to her first mental breakdown. In his own grief, Leslie leaned heavily on the girls, causing immense resentment. Stella Duckworth took on most of the responsibility, but she married in 1897, to Leslie’s distress. She died a few months after the wedding of peritonitis connected with pregnancy, another heavy blow to the family. Virginia’s mental health remained very fragile, but she carried on studying, reading, and writing, while helping Vanessa with their father’s demands.
When Leslie died of cancer in 1904, Virginia was saddened but liberated. With his death, she saw the Victorian past falling away. She suffered another nervous breakdown, which led to a suicide attempt, that year, but improved when she and her siblings left Hyde Park Gate and moved to unfashionable Bloomsbury to begin their own lives. Virginia enjoyed teaching adult courses at Morley College and working on her writing, as well as meeting with Thoby’s friends, but Thoby died at 26 of typhoid after a European trip, and again the family was crushed. Virginia worked on her first novel, The Voyage Out, which describes a young woman’s journey into South America and illness. In 1912, she agreed to marry Thoby’s friend Leonard Woolf (1880-1969), a Jewish writer who worked for the Colonial Civil Service, in spite of her uncertainty about their compatibility. Leonard provided support when Virginia made another suicide attempt in 1913, and had another breakdown in 1915, when The Voyage Out was finally published. With him, she established the Hogarth Press, named after their London house, in 1917, which published works by both Leonard and Virginia, as well as by other contemporary writers. The happiness of the marriage has been debated, and Virginia had a long affair with the Hogarth writer Vita Sackville-West (1892-1962) beginning in 1923, but regardless, Virginia saw Leonard as one of her most important readers and supports. In different ways, they were both interested in new artistic forms and genres, and the changing political landscape.
Over the next decades, Woolf produced many acclaimed modernist works, in spite of further troubles with mental health, often drawing on her own past and continually pushing the boundaries of form and perspective. Night and Day (1919) describes young people trying to find their own way in the new 20th century; Jacob’s Room (1922) memorializes Thoby and her family, as does The Waves (1931), with its fluid depiction of childhood’s effects, and also To the Lighthouse (1927), a resurrection of her parents and early life. Her essays collected in The Common Reader volumes (1925 and 1932) cover a broad variety of subjects, and Mrs. Dalloway (1925), set on a single day, depicts the way life attempts to carry on in spite of the shock of the World War I. An inventive biographer, Woolf wrote Orlando: A Biography (1928), a love letter to Vita Sackville-West, to equality, and to androgyny; Flush, A Biography (1933), a playful tour de force about the Brownings’ dog; and Roger Fry: A Biography (1940), which attempts truly to capture the life of her friend. A Room of One’s Own (1929), like the later Three Guineas (1938), is a seminal feminist text. The Years (1934) cost her a great effort, again returning to Victorian childhood’s effects on adulthood, and led to another depression. Fearing a German invasion of England, as well as another breakdown, she drowned herself in the River Ouse near her home in Sussex in 1941. She had completed her final novel, Between the Acts, the story of a historical pageant at a country house menaced by war. The end of the book has the central couple sitting alone in a kind of prehistoric dark, but finishes with the line, “They spoke.” Even in darkness and apparent meaninglessness, Woolf’s characters speak, and she is drawn to record them.
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LITERATURE - Virginia Woolf
In her novels and essays, Virginia Woolf captured the intimate moments of the 20th century like no one else. She opens our eyes to the neglected value of daily experience.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1W7wqXD_b0
Images:
1. Virginia Woolf by George Charles Beresford, 1902
2. Virginia Woolf and her sister, Vanessa, in the 1890s
3. Virginia Woolf by Roger Fry, 1917
4. Virginia Woolf 'I am made and remade continually. Different people draw different words from me'
Background from {[https://courses.lumenlearning.com/atd-bhcc-englishlit/chapter/biography-20/]}
Biography: Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf was born into late-Victorian London on January 25, 1882. Her mother was Julia Stephen (1846-1895), famous in the artistic and literary world for her beauty and in high demand for her skills as an informal nurse. Woolf’s father was Sir Leslie Stephen (1832-1904), a well-known literary critic and founder of the Dictionary of National Biography, who struggled with a sense of inadequacy in spite of his reputation. The family lived at 22 Hyde Park Gate in London and rented a summer house at St. Ives in Cornwall. The children grew up with governesses, and while the boys went on to school and university, the girls received much less formal education, a particularly sore point with Woolf, and a spur for her feminism. However, she read hugely from her father’s library, and developed a formidable and individual intellect. Her parents’ literary circle also helped to develop the foundations of her writing and thought.
Julia and Leslie had each been married previously. With his first wife, Minny Thackeray (1840-1875), Leslie had a daughter, Laura (1870-1884). He floundered at being widowed and left to bring up the young girl, who had increasing emotional and developmental problems. Julia, a friend of Minny’s, seemed a lifeline. She had had three children with Herbert Duckworth (1833-1870), whose sudden death gave her the sorrow that many friends saw as her main characteristic. George (1868-1934), Stella (1869-1897), and Gerald (1870-1937), along with Laura, were part of the new household when Julia and Leslie married in 1878.
Julia and Leslie had four more children together, of which Virginia was the third. Vanessa (1879-1961) was her childhood companion and fellow editor of the family newsletter, The Hyde Park Gate News; the two remained close friends and sometimes rivals in adulthood, when Vanessa married Clive Bell, who was a friend of her brother Thoby, had three children, and worked as an artist. Thoby (1880-1906) was a popular and good-looking young man whose Cambridge friends formed the initial Bloomsbury Group of writers and artists, with which all the Stephen siblings were connected to some degree. Adrian (1883-1948) was his mother’s favourite, but he clashed with his father and siblings, and became a psychoanalyst. The house at 22 Hyde Park Gate was full of children and energy, but also of sadness. Woolf wrote of being sexually molested by both her Duckworth half-brothers, which powerfully affected her. Laura was institutionalized in the 1890s as her disorders worsened. Julia Stephen suddenly died of influenza when Virginia was 13, “the worst disaster that could happen,” as she put it, which led to her first mental breakdown. In his own grief, Leslie leaned heavily on the girls, causing immense resentment. Stella Duckworth took on most of the responsibility, but she married in 1897, to Leslie’s distress. She died a few months after the wedding of peritonitis connected with pregnancy, another heavy blow to the family. Virginia’s mental health remained very fragile, but she carried on studying, reading, and writing, while helping Vanessa with their father’s demands.
When Leslie died of cancer in 1904, Virginia was saddened but liberated. With his death, she saw the Victorian past falling away. She suffered another nervous breakdown, which led to a suicide attempt, that year, but improved when she and her siblings left Hyde Park Gate and moved to unfashionable Bloomsbury to begin their own lives. Virginia enjoyed teaching adult courses at Morley College and working on her writing, as well as meeting with Thoby’s friends, but Thoby died at 26 of typhoid after a European trip, and again the family was crushed. Virginia worked on her first novel, The Voyage Out, which describes a young woman’s journey into South America and illness. In 1912, she agreed to marry Thoby’s friend Leonard Woolf (1880-1969), a Jewish writer who worked for the Colonial Civil Service, in spite of her uncertainty about their compatibility. Leonard provided support when Virginia made another suicide attempt in 1913, and had another breakdown in 1915, when The Voyage Out was finally published. With him, she established the Hogarth Press, named after their London house, in 1917, which published works by both Leonard and Virginia, as well as by other contemporary writers. The happiness of the marriage has been debated, and Virginia had a long affair with the Hogarth writer Vita Sackville-West (1892-1962) beginning in 1923, but regardless, Virginia saw Leonard as one of her most important readers and supports. In different ways, they were both interested in new artistic forms and genres, and the changing political landscape.
Over the next decades, Woolf produced many acclaimed modernist works, in spite of further troubles with mental health, often drawing on her own past and continually pushing the boundaries of form and perspective. Night and Day (1919) describes young people trying to find their own way in the new 20th century; Jacob’s Room (1922) memorializes Thoby and her family, as does The Waves (1931), with its fluid depiction of childhood’s effects, and also To the Lighthouse (1927), a resurrection of her parents and early life. Her essays collected in The Common Reader volumes (1925 and 1932) cover a broad variety of subjects, and Mrs. Dalloway (1925), set on a single day, depicts the way life attempts to carry on in spite of the shock of the World War I. An inventive biographer, Woolf wrote Orlando: A Biography (1928), a love letter to Vita Sackville-West, to equality, and to androgyny; Flush, A Biography (1933), a playful tour de force about the Brownings’ dog; and Roger Fry: A Biography (1940), which attempts truly to capture the life of her friend. A Room of One’s Own (1929), like the later Three Guineas (1938), is a seminal feminist text. The Years (1934) cost her a great effort, again returning to Victorian childhood’s effects on adulthood, and led to another depression. Fearing a German invasion of England, as well as another breakdown, she drowned herself in the River Ouse near her home in Sussex in 1941. She had completed her final novel, Between the Acts, the story of a historical pageant at a country house menaced by war. The end of the book has the central couple sitting alone in a kind of prehistoric dark, but finishes with the line, “They spoke.” Even in darkness and apparent meaninglessness, Woolf’s characters speak, and she is drawn to record them.
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LTC Stephen F.
The Recorded Voice Of Virginia Woolf
This is the only surviving recording of Virginia Woolf's voice. It is part of a BBC radio broadcast from April 29th, 1937. The talk was called "Craftsmanship...
The Recorded Voice Of Virginia Woolf
This is the only surviving recording of Virginia Woolf's voice. It is part of a BBC radio broadcast from April 29th, 1937. The talk was called "Craftsmanship" and was part of a series entitled "Words Fail Me"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8czs8v6PuI
Images:
1. Virginia and Leonard Woolf by Gisele Freund, 1939
2. Leonard Woolf by Henry Lamb, 1912
3. Virginia Woolf by Gisèle Freund, 1939 Private Collection
4. Virginia Woolf, oil on canvas by Duncan Grant c.1911
Background from {[https://www.thoughtco.com/virginia-woolf-biography-735844/]}
Virginia Woolf Biography by Esther Lombardi Updated February 01, 2020
(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), Jacob's Room (1922), To the Lighthouse (1927), and The Waves (1931).
Birth and Early Life
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 Virginia's first mental breakdown. Virginia's sister, Stella, died in 1897, and her father died in 1904.
Woolf learned early on that it was her fate to be "the daughter of educated men." In a journal entry shortly after her father's death in 1904, she wrote: "His life would have ended mine... No writing, no books; — inconceivable." Luckily, for the literary world, Woolf's conviction would be overcome by her itch to write.
Virginia Woolf's Writing Career
Virginia married Leonard Woolf, a journalist, in 1912. In 1917, she and her husband founded Hogarth Press, which became a successful publishing house, printing the early works of authors such as E.M Forster, Katherine Mansfield, and T.S. Eliot, and introducing the works of Sigmund Freud. Except for the first printing of Woolf's first novel, The Voyage Out (1915), Hogarth Press also published all of her works.
Together, Virginia and Leonard Woolf were a part of the famous Bloomsbury Group, which included E.M. Forster, Duncan Grant, Virginia's sister, Vanessa Bell, Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, Ezra Pound, and T.S. Eliot.
Virginia Woolf wrote several novels which are considered to be modern classics, including Mrs. Dalloway (1925), Jacob's Room (1922), To the Lighthouse (1927), and The Waves (1931). She also wrote A Room of One's Own (1929), which discusses the creation of literature from a feminist perspective.
Virginia Woolf's Death
From the time of her mother's 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.
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.
Virginia Woolf's Approach to Literature
Virginia Woolf's 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 One's 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." - A Room of One's Own
"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 Library"
"Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself."
- Mrs. Dalloway
"It was an uncertain spring. The weather, perpetually changing, sent clouds of blue and purple flying over the land."
- The Years
"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."
- To the Lighthouse
"The extraordinary irrationality of her remark, the folly of women's minds enraged him. He had ridden through the valley of death, been shattered and shivered; and now, she flew in the face of facts..."
- To the Lighthouse
"Imaginative work... is like a spider's 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."
- A Room of One's Own
"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 Brontë 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."
- A Room of One's Own
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This is the only surviving recording of Virginia Woolf's voice. It is part of a BBC radio broadcast from April 29th, 1937. The talk was called "Craftsmanship" and was part of a series entitled "Words Fail Me"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8czs8v6PuI
Images:
1. Virginia and Leonard Woolf by Gisele Freund, 1939
2. Leonard Woolf by Henry Lamb, 1912
3. Virginia Woolf by Gisèle Freund, 1939 Private Collection
4. Virginia Woolf, oil on canvas by Duncan Grant c.1911
Background from {[https://www.thoughtco.com/virginia-woolf-biography-735844/]}
Virginia Woolf Biography by Esther Lombardi Updated February 01, 2020
(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), Jacob's Room (1922), To the Lighthouse (1927), and The Waves (1931).
Birth and Early Life
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 Virginia's first mental breakdown. Virginia's sister, Stella, died in 1897, and her father died in 1904.
Woolf learned early on that it was her fate to be "the daughter of educated men." In a journal entry shortly after her father's death in 1904, she wrote: "His life would have ended mine... No writing, no books; — inconceivable." Luckily, for the literary world, Woolf's conviction would be overcome by her itch to write.
Virginia Woolf's Writing Career
Virginia married Leonard Woolf, a journalist, in 1912. In 1917, she and her husband founded Hogarth Press, which became a successful publishing house, printing the early works of authors such as E.M Forster, Katherine Mansfield, and T.S. Eliot, and introducing the works of Sigmund Freud. Except for the first printing of Woolf's first novel, The Voyage Out (1915), Hogarth Press also published all of her works.
Together, Virginia and Leonard Woolf were a part of the famous Bloomsbury Group, which included E.M. Forster, Duncan Grant, Virginia's sister, Vanessa Bell, Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, Ezra Pound, and T.S. Eliot.
Virginia Woolf wrote several novels which are considered to be modern classics, including Mrs. Dalloway (1925), Jacob's Room (1922), To the Lighthouse (1927), and The Waves (1931). She also wrote A Room of One's Own (1929), which discusses the creation of literature from a feminist perspective.
Virginia Woolf's Death
From the time of her mother's 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.
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.
Virginia Woolf's Approach to Literature
Virginia Woolf's 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 One's 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." - A Room of One's Own
"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 Library"
"Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself."
- Mrs. Dalloway
"It was an uncertain spring. The weather, perpetually changing, sent clouds of blue and purple flying over the land."
- The Years
"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."
- To the Lighthouse
"The extraordinary irrationality of her remark, the folly of women's minds enraged him. He had ridden through the valley of death, been shattered and shivered; and now, she flew in the face of facts..."
- To the Lighthouse
"Imaginative work... is like a spider's 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."
- A Room of One's Own
"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 Brontë 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."
- A Room of One's Own
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CSM Charles Hayden
LTC Stephen F. “Virginia Wolfe was wed Aug 10, 1912 at the St Pancras Register Office”.
My second wife and I were married on Oct 8, 1992 at the Haymarket Registrar’s Office in Edinburgh. I hand carried a large box of “See’s Candy” for the office staff in return for their having been so helpful in arranging our wedding. We then drove to nearby St Andrews. The shower enclosure of the B n B we found near St Andrews was so small that I had to open the shower’s door to be able to bend over and wash my feet. On our return trip to the originally scheduled hotel in Edinburgh, they awarded us the Honeymoon suite. That had a huge, four poster bed with a canopy and a large bathtub meant for two!
My second wife and I were married on Oct 8, 1992 at the Haymarket Registrar’s Office in Edinburgh. I hand carried a large box of “See’s Candy” for the office staff in return for their having been so helpful in arranging our wedding. We then drove to nearby St Andrews. The shower enclosure of the B n B we found near St Andrews was so small that I had to open the shower’s door to be able to bend over and wash my feet. On our return trip to the originally scheduled hotel in Edinburgh, they awarded us the Honeymoon suite. That had a huge, four poster bed with a canopy and a large bathtub meant for two!
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LTC Stephen F.
Whos Afraid of Virginia Woolf 1966 [click on null to watch]
https://youtu.be/AGI4RwY-frc
Image: Virginia Woolf 'For most of history, anonymous was a woman
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https://youtu.be/AGI4RwY-frc
Image: Virginia Woolf 'For most of history, anonymous was a woman
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1LT Peter Duston
" The Anonymous Woman"! Virginia Woolf was ahead of her time and didn't get to see women's history awaken. I'm teaching a senior college class entitled the "Invisible Woman" - the story of the colonial women of early New England. It is personalities like Virginia Woolf who led the way.
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