Virginia Woolf

Adeline Virginia Woolf (; née Stephen; 25 January 1882 – 28 March 1941) was an English writer and one of the most influential 20th-century modernist authors. She helped to pioneer the use of stream of consciousness narration as a literary device.

Virginia Woolf was born in South Kensington, London, into an affluent and intellectual family as the seventh child of Julia Prinsep Jackson and Leslie Stephen. She grew up in a blended household of eight children, including her sister, the painter Vanessa Bell. Educated at home in English classics and Victorian literature, Woolf later attended King’s College London, where she studied classics and history and encountered early advocates for women’s rights and education.

After the death of her father in 1904, Woolf and her family moved to the bohemian Bloomsbury district, where she became a founding member of the influential Bloomsbury Group. She married Leonard Woolf in 1912, and together they established the Hogarth Press in 1917, which published much of her work. They eventually settled in Sussex in 1940, maintaining their involvement in literary circles throughout their lives.

Woolf began publishing professionally in 1900 and rose to prominence during the interwar period with novels like Mrs Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), and Orlando (1928), as well as the feminist essay A Room of One’s Own (1929). Her work became central to 1970s feminist criticism and remains influential worldwide, having been translated into over 50 languages. Woolf’s legacy endures extensive scholarship, cultural portrayals, and tributes such as memorials, societies, and university buildings bearing her name.

Life

Early life

Virginia Woolf was born Adeline Virginia Stephen on 25 January 1882, in South Kensington, London, to Julia (née Jackson) and Sir Leslie Stephen. Her father was a writer, historian, essayist, biographer, and mountaineer, while her mother was a noted philanthropist. Woolf's maternal relatives include Julia Margaret Cameron, a celebrated photographer, and Lady Henry Somerset, a campaigner for women's rights. Originally named after her aunt Adeline, Woolf did not use her first name due to her aunt's recent death. Virginia's great-nephew, the historian William Dalrymple, has claimed that Virginia was part Bengali through her maternal grandmother, Maria Theodosia Pattle.

Both Virginia's parents had children from previous marriages. Julia's first marriage, to barrister Herbert Duckworth, produced three children: George, Stella, and Gerald. Leslie's first marriage, to Minny Thackeray, daughter of William Makepeace Thackeray, resulted in one daughter, Laura. Leslie and Julia Stephen had four children together: Vanessa, Thoby, Virginia, and Adrian.

Virginia showed an early affinity for writing. By the age of five, she was writing letters, and her fascination with books helped form a bond with her father. From the age of 10, she began an illustrated family newspaper, the Hyde Park Gate News, chronicling life and events within the Stephen family, and modelled on the popular magazine Tit-Bits. Virginia would run the Hyde Park Gate News until 1895. In 1897, Virginia began her first diary, which she kept for the next twelve years.

Talland House

In the spring of 1882, Leslie rented a large white house in St Ives, Cornwall. The family spent three months each summer there for the first 13 years of Virginia's life. Despite its limited amenities, the house's main attraction was the view of Porthminster Bay overlooking the Godrevy Lighthouse. The happy summers spent at Talland House would later influence Woolf's novels Jacob's Room, To the Lighthouse and The Waves.

At both Talland House and her family home, the family engaged with many literary and artistic figures. Frequent guests included literary figures such as Henry James, George Meredith, and James Russell Lowell. The family did not return after 1894; a hotel was constructed in front of the house which blocked the sea view, and Julia Stephen died in May the following year.

Sexual abuse

In the 1939 essay "A Sketch of the Past", Woolf first disclosed that she had experienced sexual abuse by her half-brother, Gerald Duckworth, during childhood. There is speculation that this contributed to her mental health issues later in life. There are also suggestions of sexual impropriety from George Duckworth during the period that he was caring for the Stephen sisters when they were teenagers.

Adolescence

Her mother's death precipitated what Virginia later identified as her first "breakdown"—for months afterwards she was nervous and agitated, and she wrote very little for the subsequent two years.

Stella Duckworth took on a parental role in the household. She married in April 1897 but remained closely involved with the Stephens, moving to a house very close to the Stephens to continue to support the family. However, she fell ill on her honeymoon and died in July of that same year. After Stella's death, George Duckworth took on the role of head of the household, and sought to bring Vanessa and Virginia into society. However, this experience did not resonate with either sister. Virginia later reflected on this societal expectation, stating: "Society in those days was a very competent, perfectly complacent, ruthless machine. A girl had no chance against its fangs. No other desires—say to paint, or to write—could be taken seriously." For Virginia, writing remained a priority. She began a new diary at the start of 1897 and filled notebooks with fragments and literary sketches.

In February 1904 Leslie Stephen died, which caused Virginia to suffer another period of mental instability, lasting from April to September. During this time she experienced a severe psychological crisis, which led to at least one suicide attempt. Woolf later described the period between 1897 and 1904 as "the seven unhappy years".

Education

As was common at the time, Virginia's mother did not believe in formal education for her daughters. Instead, Virginia was educated in a piecemeal fashion by her parents. She also received piano lessons. Virginia had unrestricted access to her father's vast library, exposing her to much of the literary canon. This resulted in a greater depth of reading than any of her Cambridge contemporaries. She later recalled:

Even today there may be parents who would doubt the wisdom of allowing a girl of fifteen the free run of a large and quite unexpurgated library. But my father allowed it. There were certain facts – very briefly, very shyly he referred to them. Yet "Read what you like", he said, and all his books...were to be had without asking.

Beginning in 1897, Virginia received private tutoring in Classical Greek and Latin. One of her tutors was Clara Pater, who was instrumental to her classical education, while another, Janet Case, became a lasting friend and introduced her to the suffrage movement. Virginia also attended lectures at the King's College Ladies' Department.

Although Virginia could not attend Cambridge, she was profoundly influenced by her brother Thoby's experiences there. When Thoby went to Trinity in 1899 he became part of an intellectual circle of young men, including Clive Bell, Lytton Strachey, Leonard Woolf (whom Virginia would later marry), and Saxon Sydney-Turner. He introduced his sisters to this circle at the Trinity May Ball in 1900. This circle formed a reading group that they named the Midnight Society, to which the Stephen sisters would later be invited.

Bloomsbury (1904–1912)

Gordon Square

After their father's death, Vanessa and Adrian Stephen decided to sell their family home in South Kensington and move to Bloomsbury, a more affordable area. The Duckworth brothers did not join the Stephens in their new home; Gerald did not wish to, and George married and moved with his wife during the preparations. Virginia lived in the house for brief periods in the autumn – she was sent away to Cambridge and Yorkshire for her health. She eventually settled there permanently in December 1904.

From March 1905 the Stephens hosted gatherings with Thoby's intellectual friends at their home. Their social gatherings, referred to as "Thursday evenings", aimed to recreate the atmosphere at Trinity College. This circle formed the core of the intellectual circle of writers and artists known as the Bloomsbury Group. Later, it would include John Maynard Keynes, Duncan Grant, E. M. Forster, Roger Fry, and David Garnett. The group went on to gain notoriety for the Dreadnought hoax, in which they posed as a royal Abyssinian entourage. Among them, Virginia assumed the role of Prince Mendax.

During this period, Virginia began teaching evening classes on a voluntary basis at Morley College and continued intermittently for the next two years. Her experience here would later influence themes of class and education in her novel Mrs Dalloway. She also made some money from reviews, including some published in church paper The Guardian and the National Review, capitalising on her father's literary reputation in order to earn commissions.