Virginia Woolf
1882 - 1941
Virginia Woolf was born in London, as the daughter of Julia Jackson Duckworth, a member of the Duckworth publishing family, and Sir Leslie Stephen, a literary critic.
Woolf, who was educated at home by her father, grew up at the family home at Hyde Park Gate. Woolf's youth was shadowed by series of emotional shocks. Gerald Duckworth, her half-brother, sexually abused her. In 'Sketch of the Past' (1939) she wrote: "I can remember the feel of his hands going under my clothes; going firmly and steadily lower and lower, I remember how I hoped that he would stop; how I stiffened and wriggled as his hand approached my private parts. But he did not stop." Julia Jackson Duckworth died when Virginia was in her early teens. Stella Duckworth, her half sister, took her mother's place, but died a scant two years later. Leslie Stephen suffered a slow death from cancer. When her brother Toby died in 1906, she had a prolonged mental breakdown. Vanessa, Virginia's sister, influenced a number of her characters; in childhood they bathed and slept together. Later in FLUSH (1933) Woolf parodies her own devotion to Vanessa.
Following the death of her father in 1904, Woolf moved with her sister and two brothers to the house in Bloomsbury.
From 1905 Woolf began to write for the Times Literary Supplement. In 1912 she married the political theorist Leonard ( Sidney) Woolf (1880-1969), who had returned from serving as an administrator in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka).
THE VOYAGE OUT (1915) was Virginia Woolf's first book. In 1919 appeared NIGHT AND DAY, a realistic novel about the lifes of two friends, Katherine and Mary. JACOB'S ROOM (1922) was based upon the life and death of her brother Toby.
With TO THE LIGHTHOUSE (1927) and THE WAVES (1931)Woolf established herself as one of the leading writers of modernism.