Virginia Woolf

Biography

Virginia Woolf was born on January 25, 1882 (under the full name Adeline Virginia Stephen) as the second youngest child to Leslie Stephen and Julia Jackson. Leslie, the father, was an eminent literary figure as the first editor of the Dictionary of National Biography. Julie, the mother, was known as a beautiful and artistic woman with many connections. At the age of nine, Virginia already was writing in a teasing, family newspaper which continued throughout most of her childhood. Every summer, the family travelled from their home in London, England to another residence on the Cornwall coast – separating her experiences into two distinct places. In 1895, Virginia’s mother died of a rheumatic fever and two years later, her half-sister Stella died. Soon after, in 1904, her father passed away. All of this initiated a nervous breakdown for Virginia. Her nephew, Quentin Bell, offers the description, “All that summer, she (Virginia) was mad” (Yale).

Following these deaths, the remaining children moved to Bloomsbury. Here, they hosted weekly meetings with the soon to be renown’s Clive Bell, Lytton Strachy, and Jon M. Keynes. This group became known as the “Bloomsbury Group” and is known for being quite avant-garde. In the summer of 1908 (being 26 years of age) while viewing some Italian art, Virginia committed to create in language, “some kind of whole made of shivering fragments” which will show the “flight of the mind” (Britannica). Later, this commitment continued to form the modernist style of writing she is now renown for.

In 1912, Virginia married Leonard Woolf, a recently retired colonial administrator. Leonard was a kindly man and started writing ant-colonialist novels which urged for peace and justice. Writing alongside her husband, now Virginia Woolf, was penning reviews and essays for literary journals on top of her short stories and novels. Many of her characters are based on family and friends. Woolf started to have “manic-depressive worries” later that year and even attempted suicide (Britannica). Her husband provides this description:

“In the manic stage she was extremely excited; the mind race; she talked volubly and, at the height of the attach, incoherently; she had delusions and heard voices…she was violent with her nurses. In her third attack, which began in 1914, this stage lasted for several months and ended by her falling into a coma for two days. During the depressive stage all her thoughts and emotions were the exact opposite of what they had been in the manic stage. She was in the depths of melancholia and despair; she scarcely spoke; refused to eat; refused to believe that she was ill and insisted that her condition was due to her own guilt; at the height of this stage she tried to commit suicide” (Britannica).

In 1915, she overcame the “vile imaginations” of her depression and kept them away for the remainder of her life (Britannica). Following, in 1917, Woolf and her husband founded the Hogarth Press and started publishing their own writings alongside her weekly reviews in other journals. Through typsetting, Woolf learned the art of visual layout. She was writing with white space in mind. As she said, the novel is not a form but rather, an “emotion which you feel” (Britannica).

In Bloomington, Vita Sackville-West developed a relationship with Woolf which increased to a lesbian affair. Soon after, in 1925, Mrs. Dalloway was published. As this affair cooled down, Woolf became quite famous. In 1927, she was confident enough to argue that writers should pair “grain-like solidity” truth with “rainbow-like intangibility” of imagination (Britannica). Following, Woolf became dissatisfied with the “masculine condescension to female talent” (Britannica). Her writing focused on how women in history are sparse only because the records treated them like poverty. She fought that women should not simply be recognized as “the angel in the house” (Yale).

Over her lifetime, Woolf witnessed threats and changes in class, patriarchal systems, war, and politics. When World War II and its horrors of humanity knocked at her door, Woolf’s depression returned. On March 28, 1941, she put stones in her pockets and drowned in a river. Overall, Woolf’s wrote realist works which inspire critical distinctions in anatomy and culture along with the feminine and the masculine. She created numerous works including six volumes of diaries and letters, stacks of collected essays and articles, and beloved short stories and novels. Her writings have appeared in Athenaeum, The Dial, The Criterion, The Times Literary Supplement, The Guardian, and The National Review, to name a few.