Woolf, Virginia (1882–1941)

Virginia Woolf is one of the major British writers of the 20th century. Mainly known for her novels, Woolf was also a proficient reviewer, essayist, diarist, and writer of letters as well as an influential publisher. Her novels and essays combine psychological, philosophical, and political insights with great literary craft and an experimental style. Although her themes often center around questions of feminine identity and woman's position in society, many of Woolf's writings are also concerned with the complex questions of the nature of reality and time. Her literary works are by now regarded as classics of the modernist canon.

Virginia Woolf was born Adeline Virginia Stephen into the upper-middle-class family of the Victorian man of letters and biographer Leslie Stephen in London on January 25, 1882. She was one of eight children (among them the painter Vanessa Bell) and suffered greatly from her mother's early death when she was only 13. She was educated mainly at home and began writing [Page 1439]diaries and short prose pieces at an early age. Her first journalistic piece was published in 1904. She took up teaching female workers in 1905 and worked for the women's suffrage campaign in 1910. Her first novel, The Voyage Out, was published in 1915. Together with Leonard Woolf, whom she married in 1913, she started the Hogarth Press in 1917; it was to become an important publishing house for modernist literature, sociopolitical criticism, and psychoanalysis. Living in London and Rodmell (Sussex), they had many famous acquaintances in the fields of literature, music, psychology, economics, and politics of the time. Greatly concerned about German fascism and the ongoing war, and on the verge of another in a series of nervous breakdowns, Virginia Woolf committed suicide on March 28, 1941.