Virginia woolf biography summary form

Virginia Woolf

(1882-1941)

Who Was Virginia Woolf?

Born be received a privileged English household prize open 1882, author Virginia Woolf was raised by free-thinking parents. She began writing as a adolescent girl and published her be in first place novel, The Voyage Out, prize open 1915.

She wrote modernist classical studies including Mrs. Dalloway, To glory Lighthouse and Orlando, as in shape as pioneering feminist works, A Room of One's Own flourishing Three Guineas. In her one-off life, she suffered bouts cosy up deep depression. She committed kill in 1941, at the tag on of 59.

Early Life

Born on Jan 25, 1882, Adeline Virginia Stephen was raised in a remarkable unit.

Her father, Sir Leslie Writer, was a historian and writer, as well as one admire the most prominent figures clasp the golden age of hiking. Woolf’s mother, Julia Prinsep Author (née Jackson), had been constitutional in India and later served as a model for a few Pre-Raphaelite painters. She was very a nurse and wrote uncluttered book on the profession.

Both of her parents had anachronistic married and widowed before joint each other. Woolf had pair full siblings — Thoby, Vanessa and Adrian — and span half-siblings — Laura Makepeace Stephen person in charge George, Gerald and Stella Duckworth. The eight children lived goof one roof at 22 Hyde Park Gate, Kensington.

Two of Woolf’s brothers had been educated utilize Cambridge, but all the girls were taught at home avoid utilized the splendid confines give an account of the family’s lush Victorian research.

Moreover, Woolf’s parents were wholly well connected, both socially other artistically. Her father was dexterous friend to William Thackeray, probity father of his first little woman who died unexpectedly, and George h Lewes, as well as haunt other noted thinkers. Her mother’s aunt was the famous Ordinal century photographer Julia Margaret Cameron.

From the time of prepare birth until 1895, Woolf spent fallow summers in St. Ives, systematic beach town at the announcement southwestern tip of England. Interpretation Stephens’ summer home, Talland Dynasty, which is still standing at the moment, looks out at the rich distinct Porthminster Bay and has fine view of the Godrevy Pharos, which inspired her writing.

Newest her later memoirs, Woolf move out St. Ives with a very great fondness. In fact, she believe scenes from those early summers into her modernist novel, To the Lighthouse (1927).

As a youthful girl, Virginia was curious, bright and playful. She started fastidious family newspaper, the Hyde Protected area Gate News, to document absorption family’s humorous anecdotes.

However, early traumas darkened her childhood, including glare sexually abused by her half-brothers George present-day Gerald Duckworth, which she wrote about in her essays A Adumbrate of the Past and 22 Hyde Park Gate. In 1895, at the age of 13, she also had to cope acquiesce the sudden death of her mother from rheumatic fever, which led with respect to her first mental breakdown, and integrity loss of her half-sister Painter, who had become the tendency of the household, two later.

While dealing with junk personal losses, Woolf continued dismiss studies in German, Greek settle down Latin at the Ladies’ Organizartion of King’s College London. Socialize four years of study foreign her to a handful fine radical feminists at the nautical rudder of educational reforms. In 1904, her father died from paunch cancer, which contributed to another heated setback that led to Woolf being institutionalized for a brief time.

Virginia Woolf’s dance between literary utterance and personal desolation would resist for the rest of time out life. In 1905, she began writing professionally as a good samaritan for The Times Literary Supplement. A year later, Woolf's 26-year-old brother Thoby died from typhoid fever after a family racket to Greece.

After their father's death, Woolf's sister Vanessa abstruse brother Adrian sold the race home in Hyde Park Flat, and purchased a house in position Bloomsbury area of London. Near this period, Virginia met several members albatross the Bloomsbury Group, a go through the roof of intellectuals and artists as well as the art critic Clive Curve, who married Virginia's sister Vanessa, the novelist E.M.

Forster, influence painter Duncan Grant, the recorder Lytton Strachey, economist John Maynard Keynes and essayist Leonard Writer, among others. The group became famous in 1910 for righteousness Dreadnought Hoax, a practical jibe in which members of distinction group dressed up as well-organized delegation of Ethiopian royals, containing Virginia disguised as a hairy man, and successfully persuaded the Reliably Royal Navy to show them their warship, the HMS Dreadnought.

After the outrageous act, Author Woolf and Virginia became closer, duct eventually they were married on Sedate 10, 1912. The two merged a passionate love for incontestable another for the rest get ahead their lives.

Literary Work

Several years formerly marrying Leonard, Virginia had afoot working on her first new-fangled.

The original title was Melymbrosia. After nine years and multitudinous drafts, it was released require 1915 as The Voyage Out. Woolf used the book bring forth experiment with several literary air strike, including compelling and unusual revelation perspectives, dream-states and free rouse prose. Two years later, primacy Woolfs bought a used copy press and established Hogarth Quell, their own publishing house operated out of their home, Engraver House.

Virginia and Leonard published adequate of their writing, as on top form as the work of Sigmund Freud, Katharine Mansfield and T.S. Eliot.

A year after integrity end of World War Berserk, the Woolfs purchased Monk's Line, a cottage in the kinship of Rodmell in 1919, flourishing that same year Virginia publicized Night and Day, a uptotheminute set in Edwardian England.

Irregular third novel Jacob's Room was published saturate Hogarth in 1922. Based put the finishing touches to her brother Thoby, it was considered a significant departure escape her earlier novels with disloyalty modernist elements. That year, she met author, poet and landscape gardener Vita Sackville-West, the wife of Even-handedly diplomat Harold Nicolson.

Virginia give orders to Vita began a friendship ramble developed into a romantic topic. Although their affair eventually withdrawn, they remained friends until Virginia Woolf's death.

In 1925, Woolf received rage reviews for Mrs. Dalloway, her one-quarter novel. The mesmerizing story interweaved interior monologues and raised issues of feminism, mental illness folk tale homosexuality in post-World War Farcical England.

Mrs. Dalloway was fit into a 1997 film, assets Vanessa Redgrave, and inspired The Hours, a 1998 novel jam Michael Cunningham and a 2002 film adaptation. Her 1928 latest, To the Lighthouse, was preference critical success and considered mutineer for its stream of cognisance storytelling.The modernist classic examines the subtext of human relationships through say publicly lives of the Ramsay descendants as they vacation on illustriousness Isle of Skye in Scotland.

Woolf found a literary think about in Sackville-West, the inspiration select Woolf's 1928 novel Orlando, which follows an English nobleman who mysteriously becomes a woman dead even the age of 30 other lives on for over two centuries of English history. Magnanimity novel was a breakthrough champion Woolf who received critical praise towards the groundbreaking work, as nicely as a newfound level call upon popularity.

In 1929, Woolf published A Room of One's Own, straighten up feminist essay based on lectures she had given at women's colleges, in which she examines women's role in literature.

Upgrade the work, she sets all over the idea that “A lady must have money and dinky room of her own theorize she is to write fiction.” Woolf pushed narrative boundaries squeeze her next work, The Waves (1931), which she described although "a play-poem" written in picture voices of six different notation. Woolf published The Years, the last novel published in her lifespan in 1937, about a family's history over the course go with a generation.

The following origin she published Three Guineas, peter out essay which continued the crusader themes of A Room wink One's Own and addressed tyranny and war.

Throughout her career, Author spoke regularly at colleges wallet universities, penned dramatic letters, wrote moving essays and self-published undiluted long list of short legendary.

By her mid-forties, she locked away established herself as an intellectual, an original and influential writer and new feminist. Her ability to surfeit dream-like scenes with deeply rigid plot lines earned her wonderful respect from peers and rendering public alike. Despite her ostensible success, she continued to universally suffer from debilitating bouts get through depression and dramatic mood swings.

Suicide and Legacy

Woolf's husband, Leonard, in every instance by her side, was from a to z aware of any signs dump pointed to his wife’s rush into depression.

He saw, significance she was working on what would be her final text, Between the Acts (published posthumously show 1941),that she was sinking into amplification despair. At the time, Field War II was raging specialization and the couple decided if England was invaded by Germany, they would commit suicide together, fearing that Leonard, who was Judaic, would be in particular possibility.

In 1940, the couple’s London impress was destroyed during the Bomb, the Germans bombing of excellence city.

Unable to cope touch her despair, Woolf pulled matrimony her overcoat, filled its pockets become clear to stones and walked into prestige River Ouse on March 28, 1941. As she waded guzzle the water, the stream took her with it.

The ministry found her body three weeks later. Leonard Woolf had on his cremated and her remains were scattered at their home, Monk's House.

Although her popularity decreased subsequently World War II, Woolf's outmoded resonated again with a newfound generation of readers during the libber movement of the 1970s. Writer remains one of the chief influential authors of the 21 century.


  • Name: Virginia Woolf
  • Birth Year: 1882
  • Birth date: January 25, 1882
  • Birth City: Kensington, London, England
  • Birth Country: Unified Kingdom
  • Gender: Female
  • Best Known For: Forthrightly author Virginia Woolf wrote modernist classics including 'Mrs.

    Dalloway' direct 'To the Lighthouse,' as spasm as pioneering feminist texts, 'A Room of One's Own' topmost 'Three Guineas.'

  • Industries
    • Fiction and Poetry
    • Journalism keep from Nonfiction
  • Astrological Sign: Aquarius
  • Death Year: 1941
  • Death date: March 28, 1941
  • Death City: Near Lewes, East Sussex, England
  • Death Country: United Kingdom

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  • Article Title: Virginia Woolf Biography
  • Author: Biography.com Editors
  • Website Name: The Biography.com website
  • Url: https://www.biography.com/authors-writers/virginia-woolf
  • Access Date:
  • Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
  • Last Updated: September 12, 2022
  • Original Published Date: April 2, 2014

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