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= Virginia_Woolf =
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Introduction
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Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 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.
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 desiressay to paint, or to writecould 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:
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.
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 autumnshe 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.
Vanessa added another event to their calendar with the "Friday Club",
dedicated to the discussion of the fine arts. This gathering attracted
some new members into their circle, including Henry Lamb, Gwen Darwin,
and Katherine Laird ("Ka") Cox. Cox was to become Virginia's intimate
friend. These new members brought the Bloomsbury Group into contact
with another, slightly younger, group of Cambridge intellectuals whom
Virginia would refer to as the "Neo-Pagans". The Friday Club continued
until 1912 or 1913.
In the autumn of 1906, the siblings travelled to Greece and Turkey
with Violet Dickinson. During the trip both Violet and Thoby
contracted typhoid fever, which led to Thoby's death on 20 November of
that year. Two days after Thoby's death, Vanessa accepted a previous
proposal of marriage from Clive Bell. As a couple, their interest in
avant-garde art would have an important influence on Virginia's
further development as an author.
Fitzroy Square and Brunswick Square
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After Vanessa's marriage, Virginia and Adrian moved into Fitzroy
Square, still very close to Gordon Square. The new house had
previously been occupied by George Bernard Shaw, and the area had been
populated by artists since the previous century. Virginia resented the
wealth that Vanessa's marriage had given her; Virginia and Adrian
lived more humbly by comparison.
The siblings resumed the Thursday Club at their new home. During this
period, the Bloomsbury group increasingly explored progressive ideas,
with open discussions of sexuality. Virginia, however, appears not to
have shown interest in practising the group's ideologies, finding an
outlet for her sexual desires only in writing. Around this time she
began work on her first novel, 'Melymbrosia', which eventually became
'The Voyage Out' (1915). In 1907, Woolf also wrote her first
mock-biographical set of three interconnected comic stories
chronicling the adventures of a giantess named Violet, titled 'The
Life of Violet', after Violet Dickinson, her first completed
experiment in literary parody and biographical writing, anticipating
her later experiments in prose.
In November 1911 Virginia and Adrian moved to a larger house in
Brunswick Square, and invited John Maynard Keynes, Duncan Grant and
Leonard Woolf to become lodgers there. Virginia saw it as a new
opportunity: "We are going to try all kinds of experiments", she told
Ottoline Morrell.
Asham House (1911–1919)
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During the later Bloomsbury years, Virginia travelled frequently with
friends and family, to Dorset, Cornwall, and farther afield to Paris,
Italy and Bayreuth. These trips were intended to prevent her from
suffering exhaustion due to extended periods in London. The question
arose of her needing a quiet country retreat close to London to
support her still-fragile mental health. In the winter of 1910 she and
Adrian stayed at Lewes and started exploring Sussex's surrounding
area. She soon found a property in nearby Firle, which she named
"Little Talland House"; she maintained a relationship with that region
for the rest of her life, spending her time either in Sussex or
London.
In September 1911 she and Leonard Woolf found Asham House nearby, and
she and Vanessa took a joint lease on it. Located at the end of a
tree-lined road, the house was in a Regency-Gothic style, "flat, pale,
serene, yellow-washed", remote, without electricity or water and
allegedly haunted. The sisters had two housewarming parties in January
1912.
Virginia recorded the weekends and holidays she spent there in her
Asham Diary, part of which was later published as 'A Writer's Diary'
in 1953. Creatively, 'The Voyage Out' was completed there, as was much
of 'Night and Day'. The house itself inspired the short story "A
Haunted House", published in 'A Haunted House and Other Short
Stories'. Asham provided Virginia with much-needed relief from the
London's fast-paced life and was where she found happiness that she
expressed in her diary on 5 May 1919: "Oh, but how happy we've been at
Asheham! It was a most melodious time. Everything went so freely; -
but I can't analyse all the sources of my joy".
While at Asham, in 1916 Leonard and Virginia found a farmhouse about
four miles away that they thought would be ideal for her sister.
Eventually, Vanessa visited to inspect it, and took possession in
October of that year, establishing it as a summer home for her family.
The Charleston Farmhouse was to become the summer gathering place for
the Bloomsbury Group.
Marriage and war (1912–1920)
==============================
Leonard Woolf was one of Thoby Stephen's friends at Trinity College,
Cambridge, and had encountered the Stephen sisters in Thoby's rooms
while visiting for May Week between 1899 and 1904. He recalled that in
"white dresses and large hats, with parasols in their hands, their
beauty literally took one's breath away". In 1904 Leonard left Britain
for a civil service position in Ceylon, but returned for a year's
leave in 1911 after letters from Lytton Strachey, describing
Virginia's beauty, enticed him back. He and Virginia attended social
engagements together, and he moved into Brunswick Square as a tenant
in December of that year.
Leonard proposed to Virginia on 11 January 1912. Initially she
expressed reluctance, but the two continued courting. Leonard decided
not to return to Ceylon and resigned from his post. On 29 May Virginia
declared her love for Leonard, and they married on 10 August at St
Pancras Town Hall. The couple spent their honeymoon first at Asham and
the Quantock Hills before travelling to the south of France, Spain and
Italy. Upon returning, they moved to Clifford's Inn, and began to
divide their time between London and Asham. Though Virginia wanted to
have children, Leonard refused, as he believed Virginia was not
mentally strong enough to be a mother, and worried that having
children might worsen her mental health.
Virginia had completed a penultimate draft of her first novel 'The
Voyage Out' before her wedding but made large-scale alterations to the
manuscript between December 1912 and March 1913. The work was later
accepted by her half-brother Gerald Duckworth's publishing house, and
she found the process of reading and correcting the proofs extremely
emotionally difficult. This led to one of several breakdowns over the
next two years; Virginia attempted suicide on 9 September 1913 with an
overdose of Veronal, being saved with the help of surgeon Geoffrey
Keynes. Virginia's illness led to Duckworth delaying the publication
of 'The Voyage Out' until 26 March 1915.
In the autumn of 1914 the couple moved to a house on Richmond Green.
In late March 1915 they moved to Hogarth House, after which they named
their publishing house in 1917. The decision to move to London's
suburbs was made for the sake of Virginia's health. Many of Virginia's
friends were against the war, and Virginia herself opposed it from a
standpoint of pacifism and anti-censorship. Leonard was exempted from
the introduction of conscription in 1916 on medical grounds. The
Woolfs employed two servants at the recommendation of Roger Fry in
1916; Lottie Hope worked for some other Bloomsbury Group members, and
Nellie Boxall would stay with them until 1934.
The Woolfs spent parts of the World War I era in Asham but were
obliged by the owner to leave in 1919. "In despair" they purchased the
Round House in Lewes. No sooner had they bought the Round House, than
Monk's House in nearby Rodmell came up for auction, a weatherboarded
house with oak-beamed rooms, said to date from the 15th or 16th
century. The Woolfs sold the Round House and purchased Monk's House
for £700. Monk's House also lacked running water but came with an acre
of garden, and had a view across the Ouse towards the hills of the
South Downs. Leonard Woolf describes this view as being unchanged
since the days of Chaucer. The Woolfs would retain Monk's House until
the end of Virginia's life; it became their permanent home after their
London home was bombed, and it was where she completed 'Between the
Acts' in early 1941, which was followed by her final breakdown and
suicide in the nearby River Ouse on 28 March.
Memoir Club
=============
1920 saw a postwar reconstitution of the Bloomsbury Group, under the
title of the Memoir Club, which as the name suggests focussed on
self-writing, in the manner of Proust's 'A La Recherche', and inspired
some of the more influential books of the 20th century. The Group,
which had been scattered by the war, was reconvened by Mary ('Molly')
MacCarthy who called them "Bloomsberries", and operated under rules
derived from the Cambridge Apostles, an elite university debating
society of which some of them had been members. These rules emphasised
candour and openness. Among the 125 memoirs presented, Virginia
contributed three that were published posthumously in 1976, in the
autobiographical anthology 'Moments of Being'. These were '22 Hyde
Park Gate' (1921), 'Old Bloomsbury' (1922) and 'Am I a Snob?' (1936).
Vita Sackville-West
=====================
On 14 December 1922 Woolf met the writer and gardener Vita
Sackville-West, wife of Harold Nicolson. This period was to prove
fruitful for both authors, Woolf producing three novels, 'To the
Lighthouse' (1927), 'Orlando' (1928), and 'The Waves' (1931) as well
as a number of essays, including "Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown" (1924)
and "A Letter to a Young Poet" (1932). The two women remained friends
until Woolf's death in 1941.
Virginia Woolf also remained close to her surviving siblings, Adrian
and Vanessa.
Further novels and non-fiction
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Between 1924 and 1940 the Woolfs returned to Bloomsbury, taking out a
ten-year lease at 52 Tavistock Square, from where they ran the Hogarth
Press from the basement, where Virginia also had her writing room.
1925 saw the publication of 'Mrs Dalloway' in May followed by her
collapse while at Charleston in August. In 1927, her next novel, 'To
the Lighthouse', was published, and the following year she lectured on
'Women & Fiction' at Cambridge University and published 'Orlando'
in October.
Her two Cambridge lectures then became the basis for her major essay
'A Room of One's Own' in 1929. Virginia wrote only one drama,
'Freshwater', based on her great-aunt Julia Margaret Cameron, and
produced at her sister's studio on Fitzroy Street in 1935. 1936 saw
the publication of 'The Years', which had its origin in a lecture
Woolf gave to the National Society for Women's Service in 1931, an
edited version of which would later be published as "Professions for
Women". Another collapse of her health followed the novel's completion
'The Years'.
The Woolfs' final residence in London was at 37 Mecklenburgh Square
(1939-1940), destroyed during the Blitz in September 1940; a month
later their previous home on Tavistock Square was also destroyed.
After that, they made Sussex their permanent home.
Death
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After completing the manuscript of her last novel (posthumously
published), 'Between the Acts' (1941), Woolf fell into a depression
similar to one that she had earlier experienced. The onset of the
Second World War, the destruction of her London home during the Blitz,
and the cold reception given to her biography of her late friend Roger
Fry all worsened her condition until she was unable to work. When
Leonard enlisted in the Home Guard, Virginia disapproved. She held
fast to her pacifism and criticised her husband for wearing what she
considered to be "the silly uniform of the Home Guard".
After the Second World War began, Woolf's diary indicates that she was
obsessed with death, which figured more and more as her mood darkened.
On 28 March 1941, Woolf drowned herself by walking into the
fast-flowing River Ouse near her home, after placing a large stone in
her pocket. Her body was not found until 18 April. Her husband buried
her cremated remains beneath an elm tree in the garden of Monk's
House, their home in Rodmell, Sussex.
In her suicide note, addressed to her husband, she wrote:
Mental health
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Much examination has been made of Woolf's mental health. From the age
of 13, following the death of her mother, Woolf suffered periodic mood
swings. However, Hermione Lee asserts that Woolf was not "mad"; she
was merely a woman who suffered from and struggled with illness for
much of her life, a woman of "exceptional courage, intelligence and
stoicism", who made the best use, and achieved the best understanding
she could, of that illness. Writer and social anthropologist Camille
Caprioglio suggests that Woolf may have been autistic, a possible
contributing factor to her mental health struggles.
Her mother's death in 1895, "the greatest disaster that could happen",
precipitated a crisis for which their family doctor, Dr. Seton,
prescribed rest, stopping lessons and writing, and regular walks
supervised by Stella. Yet just two years later, Stella too was dead,
bringing on Virginia's first expressed wish for death at the age of
15. This was a scenario she would later recreate in "Time Passes" ('To
the Lighthouse', 1927).
The death of her father in 1904 provoked her most alarming collapse,
on 10 May, when she threw herself out of a window and she was briefly
institutionalised under the care of her father's friend, the eminent
psychiatrist George Savage. She spent time recovering at the house of
Stella's friend Violet Dickinson, and at her aunt Caroline Stephen's
house in Cambridge, and by January 1905, Savage considered her cured.
Her brother Thoby's death in 1906 marked a "decade of deaths" that
ended her childhood and adolescence.
On Savage's recommendation, Virginia spent three short periods in
1910, 1912, and 1913 at Burley House at 15 Cambridge Park, Twickenham,
described as "a private nursing home for women with nervous disorder"
run by Miss Jean Thomas. By the end of February 1910, she was becoming
increasingly restless, and Savage suggested being away from London.
Vanessa rented Moat House, outside Canterbury, in June, but there was
no improvement, so Savage sent her to Burley for a "rest cure". This
involved partial isolation, deprivation of literature, and
force-feeding, and after six weeks she was able to convalesce in
Cornwall and Dorset during the autumn.
She loathed the experience; writing to her sister on 28 July, she
described how she found the religious atmosphere stifling and the
institution ugly, and informed Vanessa that to escape "I shall soon
have to jump out of a window". The threat of being sent back would
later lead to her contemplating suicide. Despite her protests, Savage
would refer her back in 1912 for insomnia and in 1913 for depression.
On emerging from Burley House in September 1913, she sought further
opinions from two other physicians on the 13th: Maurice Wright, and
Henry Head, who had been Henry James's physician. Both recommended she
return to Burley House. Distraught, she returned home and attempted
suicide by taking an overdose of 100 grains of veronal (a barbiturate)
and nearly dying.
On recovery, she went to Dalingridge Hall, George Duckworth's home in
East Grinstead, Sussex, to convalesce on 30 September, returning to
'Asham' on 18 November. She remained unstable over the next two years,
with another incident involving veronal that she claimed was an
'accident', and consulted another psychiatrist in April 1914, Maurice
Craig, who explained that she was not sufficiently psychotic to be
certified or committed to an institution.
The rest of the summer of 1914 went better for her, and they moved to
Richmond, but in February 1915, just as 'The Voyage Out' was due to be
published, she relapsed once more, and remained in poor health for
most of that year. Then she began to recover, following 20 years of
ill health. Nevertheless, there was a feeling among those around her
that she was now permanently changed, and not for the better.
Over the rest of her life, she suffered recurrent bouts of depression.
In 1940, a number of factors appeared to overwhelm her. Her biography
of Roger Fry had been published in July, and she had been disappointed
in its reception. The horrors of war depressed her, and their London
homes had been destroyed in the Blitz in September and October. Woolf
had completed 'Between the Acts' (published posthumously in 1941) in
November, and completing a novel was frequently accompanied by
exhaustion. Her health became increasingly a matter of concern,
culminating in her decision to end her life on 28 March 1941.
She also suffered many physical ailments such as headaches, backache,
fevers and faints, which related closely to her psychological stress.
These often lasted for weeks or even months, and impeded her work:
"What a gap! ... for 60 days; & those days spent in wearisome
headache, jumping pulse, aching back, frets, fidgets, lying awake,
sleeping draughts, sedatives, digitalis, going for a little walk,
& plunging back into bed again."
Though this instability would frequently affect her social life, she
was able to continue her literary productivity with few interruptions
throughout her life. Woolf herself provides not only a vivid picture
of her symptoms in her diaries and letters but also her response to
the demons that haunted her and at times made her long for death: "But
it is always a question whether I wish to avoid these glooms... These
9 weeks give one a plunge into deep waters... One goes down into the
well & nothing protects one from the assault of truth."
Psychiatry had little to offer Woolf, but she recognised that writing
was one of the behaviours that enabled her to cope with her illness:
"The only way I keep afloat... is by working... Directly I stop
working I feel that I am sinking down, down. And as usual, I feel that
if I sink further I shall reach the truth." Sinking underwater was
Woolf's metaphor for both the effects of depression and psychosis--
but also for finding the truth, and ultimately was her choice of
death.
Throughout her life, Woolf struggled, without success, to find meaning
in her illness: on the one hand, an impediment, on the other,
something she visualised as an essential part of who she was, and a
necessary condition of her art. Her experiences informed her work,
such as the character of Septimus Warren Smith in 'Mrs Dalloway'
(1925), who, like Woolf, was haunted by the dead, and ultimately takes
his own life rather than be admitted to a sanatorium.
Leonard Woolf relates how during the 30 years they were married, they
consulted many doctors in the Harley Street area, and although they
were given a diagnosis of neurasthenia, he felt they had little
understanding of the causes or nature. The proposed solution was
simple--as long as she lived a quiet life without any physical or
mental exertion, she was well. In contrast, any mental, emotional, or
physical strain resulted in a reappearance of her symptoms, beginning
with a headache, followed by insomnia and thoughts that started to
race. Her remedy was simple: to retire to bed in a darkened room,
following which the symptoms slowly subsided.
Modern scholars, including her nephew and biographer, Quentin Bell,
have suggested her breakdowns and subsequent recurring depressive
periods were influenced by the sexual abuse to which she and her
sister Vanessa were subjected by their half-brothers George and Gerald
Duckworth (which Woolf recalls in her autobiographical essays "A
Sketch of the Past" and "22 Hyde Park Gate"). Biographers point out
that when Stella died in 1897, there was no counterbalance to control
George's predation, and his nighttime prowling. "22 Hyde Park Gate"
ends with the sentence "The old ladies of Kensington and Belgravia
never knew that George Duckworth was not only father and mother,
brother and sister to those poor Stephen girls; he was their lover
also."
It is likely that other factors also played a part. It has been
suggested that they include genetic predisposition. Virginia's father,
Leslie Stephen, suffered from depression, and her half-sister Laura
was institutionalised. Many of Virginia's symptoms, including
persistent headache, insomnia, irritability, and anxiety, resembled
those of her father's. Another factor is the pressure she placed upon
herself in her work; for instance, her breakdown of 1913 was at least
partly triggered by the need to finish 'The Voyage Out'.
Virginia herself hinted that her illness was related to how she saw
the repressed position of women in society when she wrote 'A Room of
One's Own'. in a 1930 letter to Ethel Smyth:
Thomas Caramagno and others, in discussing her illness, oppose the
"neurotic-genius" way of looking at mental illness, where creativity
and mental illness are conceptualised as linked rather than
antithetical. Stephen Trombley describes Woolf as having a
confrontational relationship with her doctors, and possibly being a
woman who is a "victim of male medicine", referring to the lack of
understanding, particularly at the time, about mental illness.
* (summary)
* see also 'Touched with Fire'
*
*
*
*
Sexuality
======================================================================
The Bloomsbury Group held very progressive views of sexuality and
rejected the austere strictness of Victorian society. The majority of
its members were homosexual or bisexual.
Woolf had several affairs with women, the most notable being with Vita
Sackville-West. The two women developed a deep connection; Vita was
arguably one of the few people in Virginia's adult life that she was
truly close to.
During their relationship, both women saw the peak of their literary
careers, with the titular protagonist of Woolf's acclaimed 'Orlando: A
Biography' being inspired by Sackville-West. The pair remained lovers
for a decade and stayed close friends for the rest of Woolf's life.
Woolf had said to Sackville-West she disliked masculinity.
Among her other notable affairs were those with Sibyl Colefax, Lady
Ottoline Morrell, and Mary Hutchinson. Some surmise that she fell in
love with Madge Symonds, the wife of one of her uncles. Madge Symonds
was described as one of Woolf's early loves in Sackville-West's diary.
She also fell in love with Violet Dickinson, although there is some
confusion as to whether the two consummated their relationship.
Virginia initially declined marriage proposals from her future
husband, Leonard. She even went so far as to tell him that she was not
physically attracted to him, but later declared that she did love him,
and eventually agreed to marriage. Woolf preferred female lovers to
male lovers and did not seem to be sexually attracted to men.
Leonard became the love of her life. Although their sexual
relationship was questionable, they loved each other deeply and formed
a strong and supportive marriage that led to the formation of their
publishing house as well as several of her writings. Though Virginia
had affairs with and attractions to women during their marriage, she
and Leonard maintained a mutual love and respect.
Work
======================================================================
Woolf is considered to be one of the most important 20th-century
novelists. A modernist, she was one of the pioneers of using stream of
consciousness as a narrative device, alongside contemporaries such as
Marcel Proust, Dorothy Richardson and James Joyce. Woolf's reputation
was at its greatest during the 1930s, but declined considerably
following the Second World War. The growth of feminist criticism in
the 1970s helped re-establish her reputation.
Virginia submitted her first article in 1890, to a competition in
'Tit-Bits'. Although it was rejected, this shipboard romance by the
eight-year-old would presage her first novel 25 years later, as would
contributions to the 'Hyde Park News', such as the model letter "to
show young people the right way to express what is in their hearts", a
subtle commentary on her mother's legendary matchmaking. She
transitioned from juvenilia to professional journalism in 1904 at the
age of 22. Violet Dickinson introduced her to Kathleen Lyttelton, the
editor of the 'Women's Supplement' of 'The Guardian', a Church of
England newspaper. Invited to submit a 1,500-word article, Virginia
sent Lyttelton a review of William Dean Howells' 'The Son of Royal
Langbirth' and an essay about her visit to Haworth that year,
'Haworth, November 1904'. The review was published anonymously on 4
December, and the essay on the 21st. In 1905, Woolf began writing for
'The Times Literary Supplement' (TLS); in 2019, the 'TLS' would
publish a collection of her essays entitled 'Genius and Ink: Virginia
Woolf on How to Read', which originally appeared anonymously, as did
all their reviews.
Woolf went on to publish novels and essays as a public intellectual to
both critical and popular acclaim. Much of her work was self-published
through the Hogarth Press. "Virginia Woolf's peculiarities as a
fiction writer have tended to obscure her central strength: she is
arguably the major lyrical novelist in the English language. Her
novels are highly experimental: a narrative, frequently uneventful and
commonplace, is refracted--and sometimes almost dissolved--in the
characters' receptive consciousness. Intense lyricism and stylistic
virtuosity fuse to create a world overabundant with auditory and
visual impressions." "The intensity of Virginia Woolf's poetic vision
elevates the ordinary, sometimes banal settings"--often wartime
environments--"of most of her novels."
Though at least one biography of Virginia Woolf appeared in her
lifetime, the first authoritative study of her life was published in
1972 by her nephew Quentin Bell. Hermione Lee's 1996 biography
'Virginia Woolf' provides a thorough and authoritative examination of
Woolf's life and work, which she discussed in an interview in 1997. In
2001, Louise DeSalvo and Mitchell A. Leaska edited 'The Letters of
Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf'. Julia Briggs's 'Virginia
Woolf: An Inner Life' (2005) focuses on Woolf's writing, including her
novels and her commentary on the creative process, to illuminate her
life. The sociologist Pierre Bourdieu also uses Woolf's literature to
understand and analyse gender domination. Woolf biographer Gillian
Gill notes that Woolf's traumatic experience of sexual abuse by her
half-brothers during her childhood influenced her advocacy for the
protection of vulnerable children from similar experiences. Biljana
Dojčinović has discussed the issues surrounding translations of Woolf
to Serbian as a "border-crossing".
Themes
========
Woolf's fiction has been studied for its insight into many themes
including war, shell shock, witchcraft, and the role of social class
in contemporary modern British society. In the postwar 'Mrs Dalloway'
(1925), Woolf addresses the moral dilemma of war and its effects and
provides an authentic voice for soldiers returning from the First
World War, suffering from shell shock, in the person of Septimus
Smith. In 'A Room of One's Own' (1929) Woolf equates historical
accusations of witchcraft with creativity and genius among women
"When, however, one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman
possessed by devils...then I think we are on the track of a lost
novelist, a suppressed poet, of some mute and inglorious Jane Austen".
Throughout her work Woolf tried to evaluate the degree to which her
privileged background framed the lens through which she viewed class.
She examined her own position as someone who would be considered an
elitist snob but attacked the class structure of Britain as she found
it. In her 1936 essay 'Am I a Snob?' she examined her values and those
of the privileged circle she existed in. She concluded she was, and
subsequent critics and supporters have tried to deal with the dilemma
of being both elite and a social critic.
The sea is a recurring motif in Woolf's work. Noting Woolf's early
memory of listening to waves break in Cornwall, Katharine Smyth writes
in 'The Paris Review' that "the radiance [of] cresting water would be
consecrated again and again in her writing, saturating not only
essays, diaries, and letters but also 'Jacob's Room', 'The Waves', and
'To the Lighthouse'." Patrizia A. Muscogiuri explains that "seascapes,
sailing, diving and the sea itself are aspects of nature and of human
beings' relationship with it which frequently inspired Virginia
Woolf's writing." This trope is deeply embedded in her texts'
structure and grammar; James Antoniou notes in 'Sydney Morning Herald'
how "Woolf made a virtue of the semicolon, the shape and function of
which resembles the wave, her most famous motif."
Despite the considerable conceptual difficulties, given Woolf's
idiosyncratic use of language, her works have been translated into
over 50 languages. Some writers, such as the Belgian Marguerite
Yourcenar, had rather tense encounters with her, while others, such as
the Argentinian Jorge Luis Borges, produced versions that were highly
controversial.
Drama
=======
Virginia Woolf researched the life of her great-aunt, the photographer
Julia Margaret Cameron, publishing her findings in an essay titled
"Pattledom" (1925), and later in her introduction to her 1926 edition
of Cameron's photographs. She had begun work on a play based on an
episode in Cameron's life in 1923 but abandoned it. Finally, it was
performed on 18 January 1935 at the studio of her sister, Vanessa Bell
on Fitzroy Street in 1935. Woolf directed it herself, and the cast
were mainly members of the Bloomsbury Group, including herself.
'Freshwater' is a short three act comedy satirising the Victorian era,
only performed once in Woolf's lifetime. Beneath the comedic elements,
there is an exploration of both generational change and artistic
freedom. Both Cameron and Woolf fought against the class and gender
dynamics of Victorianism and the play shows links to both 'To the
Lighthouse' and 'A Room of One's Own' that would follow.
Non-fiction
=============
Woolf wrote a body of autobiographical work and more than 500 essays
and reviews, some of which, like 'A Room of One's Own' (1929) were of
book-length. Not all were published in her lifetime. Shortly after her
death, Leonard Woolf produced an edited edition of unpublished essays
titled 'The Moment and other Essays', published by the Hogarth Press
in 1947. Many of these were originally lectures that she gave, and
several more volumes of essays followed, such as 'The Captain's Death
Bed: and other essays' (1950).
''A Room of One's Own''
=========================
Among Woolf's non-fiction works, one of the best known is 'A Room of
One's Own' (1929), a book-length essay divided into six chapters.
Considered a key work of feminist literary criticism, it was written
following two lectures she delivered on "Women and Fiction" at
Cambridge University the previous year. In it, she examines the
historical disempowerment women have faced in many spheres, including
social, educational and financial. One of her more famous dicta is
contained within the book "A woman must have money and a room of her
own if she is to write fiction". Much of her argument ("to show you
how I arrived at this opinion about the room and the money") is
developed through the "unsolved problems" of women and fiction writing
to arrive at her conclusion, although she claimed that was only "an
opinion upon one minor point". In doing so, she states a good deal
about the nature of women and fiction, employing a quasi-fictional
style as she examines where women writers failed because of lack of
resources and opportunities, examining along the way the experiences
of the Brontës, George Eliot and George Sand, as well as the fictional
character of Shakespeare's sister, equipped with the same genius but
not position. She contrasts these women who accepted a deferential
status with Jane Austen, who wrote entirely as a woman.
Hogarth Press
===============
Virginia had taken up book-binding as a pastime in October 1901, at
the age of 19. The Woolfs had been discussing setting up a publishing
house for some timeLeonard intended for it to give Virginia a rest
from the strain of writing, and thereby help her fragile mental
health. Additionally, publishing her works under their own outfit
would save her from the stress of submitting her work to an external
company, which contributed to her breakdown during the process of
publishing her first novel 'The Voyage Out'. The Woolfs obtained their
own hand-printing press in April 1917 and set it up on their dining
room table at Hogarth House, thus beginning the Hogarth Press.
The first publication was 'Two Stories' in July 1917, consisting of
"The Mark on the Wall" by Virginia Woolf (which has been described as
"Woolf's first foray into modernism") and "Three Jews" by Leonard
Woolf. The accompanying illustrations by Dora Carrington were a
success, leading Virginia to remark that the press was "specially good
at printing pictures, and we see that we must make a practice of
always having pictures." The process took two and a half months with a
production run of 150 copies. Other short stories followed, including
'Kew Gardens' (1919) with a woodblock by Vanessa Bell as frontispiece.
Subsequently, Bell added further illustrations, adorning each page of
the text.
Unlike its contemporary small printers, who specialised in expensive
artisanal reprints, the Woolfs concentrated on living avant-garde
authors, and over the subsequent five years printed works by authors
including Katherine Mansfield, T.S. Eliot, E. M. Forster, Clive Bell
and Roger Fry. They also produced translations of Russian works with
S. S. Koteliansky, and the first translation of the complete works of
Sigmund Freud. They acquired a larger press in 1921 and began to sell
directly to booksellers. In 1938 Virginia sold her share of the
company to John Lehmann, who had started working for Hogarth Press
seven years previously. The Press eventually became Leonard's only
source of income, but his association with it ended in 1946, after
publishing 527 titles, and Hogarth is now an imprint of Penguin Random
House.
The Press also produced explicitly political works. Pamphlets had
fallen out of fashion due to the high production costs and low
revenue, but the Hogarth Press produced several series on contemporary
issues of international politics, challenging colonialism and
critiquing Soviet Russia and Italian fascism. The Woolfs also
published political fiction, including 'Turbott Wolfe' (1926) by
William Plomer and 'In a Province' (1934) by Laurens van der Post,
which concern South African racial policies and revolutionary
movements respectively. Virginia Woolf saw a link between
international politics and feminism, publishing a biography of Indian
feminist activist Saroj Nalini Dutt and the memoirs of suffragette
Elizabeth Robins. Scholar Ursula McTaggart argues that the Hogarth
Press shaped and represented Woolf's later concept of an "Outsiders'
Society", a non-organised group of women who would resist "the
patriarchal fascism of war and nationalism" by exerting influence
through private actions, as described in 'Three Guineas'. In this
view, the readers and authors form a loose network, with the Press
providing the means to exchange ideas.
Influences
============
Sybil Oldfield examines Woolf's convinced pacifism, its sources and
its expression in her life and works.
Michel Lackey argues that a major influence on Woolf, from 1912
onward, was Russian literature and Woolf adopted many of its aesthetic
conventions. The style of Fyodor Dostoyevsky with his depiction of a
fluid mind in operation helped to influence Woolf's writings about a
"discontinuous writing process", though Woolf objected to
Dostoyevsky's obsession with "psychological extremity" and the
"tumultuous flux of emotions" in his characters together with his
right-wing, monarchist politics as Dostoyevsky was an ardent supporter
of the autocracy of the Russian Empire. In contrast to her objections
to Dostoyevsky's "exaggerated emotional pitch", Woolf found much to
admire in the work of Anton Chekhov and Leo Tolstoy. Woolf admired
Chekhov for his stories of ordinary people living their lives, doing
banal things and plots that had no neat endings. From Tolstoy, Woolf
drew lessons about how a novelist should depict a character's
psychological state and the interior tension within. Lackey notes
that, from Ivan Turgenev, Woolf drew the lessons that there are
multiple "I's" when writing a novel, and the novelist needed to
balance those multiple versions of him- or herself to balance the
"mundane facts" of a story vs. the writer's overarching vision, which
required a "total passion" for art.
The American writer Henry David Thoreau also influenced Woolf. In a
1917 essay, she praised Thoreau for his statement "The millions are
awake enough for physical labor, but only one in hundreds of millions
is awake enough to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be
alive." They both aimed to capture 'the moment'--as Walter Pater says,
"to burn always with this hard, gem-like flame." Woolf praised Thoreau
for his "simplicity" in finding "a way for setting free the delicate
and complicated machinery of the soul". Like Thoreau, Woolf believed
that it was silence that set the mind free to really contemplate and
understand the world. Both authors believed in a certain
transcendental, mystical approach to life and writing, where even
banal things could be capable of generating deep emotions if one had
enough silence and the presence of mind to appreciate them. Woolf and
Thoreau were both concerned with the difficulty of human relationships
in the modern age.
Woolf's preface to 'Orlando' credits Daniel Defoe, Sir Thomas Browne,
Laurence Sterne, Sir Walter Scott, Lord Macaulay, Emily Brontë, Thomas
de Quincey, and Walter Pater as influences. Among her contemporaries,
Woolf was influenced by Marcel Proust, writing to Roger Fry, "Oh if I
could write like that!"
Virginia Woolf and her mother
===============================
The intense scrutiny of Virginia Woolf's literary output has led to
speculation as to her mother's influence, including psychoanalytic
studies of mother and daughter. Her memories of her mother are
memories of an obsession, starting with her first major breakdown on
her mother's death in 1895, the loss having a profound lifelong
effect. In many ways, her mother's profound influence on Virginia
Woolf is conveyed in the latter's recollections, "there she is;
beautiful, emphatic ... closer than any of the living are, lighting
our random lives as with a burning torch, infinitely noble and
delightful to her children".
Woolf's understanding of her mother and family evolved considerably
between 1907 and 1940, in which the somewhat distant, yet revered
figure, becomes more nuanced and complete. She described her mother as
an "invisible presence" in her life, and Ellen Rosenman argues that
the mother-daughter relationship is a constant in Woolf's writing. She
describes how Woolf's modernism needs to be viewed in relationship to
her ambivalence towards her Victorian mother, the centre of the
former's female identity, and her voyage to her own sense of autonomy.
To Woolf, "Saint Julia" was both a martyr whose perfectionism was
intimidating and a source of deprivation, by her absences real and
virtual and premature death. Julia's influence and memory pervade
Woolf's life and work. "She has haunted me", she wrote.
Historical feminism
=====================
According to the 2007 book 'Feminism: From Mary Wollstonecraft to
Betty Friedan' by Bhaskar A. Shukla, "Recently, studies of Virginia
Woolf have focused on feminist and lesbian themes in her work, such as
in the 1997 collection of critical essays, 'Virginia Woolf: Lesbian
Readings', edited by Eileen Barrett and Patricia Cramer." In 1928,
Woolf took a grassroots approach to informing and inspiring feminism.
She addressed undergraduate women at the ODTAA Society at Girton
College, Cambridge, and the Arts Society at Newnham College, with two
papers that eventually became 'A Room of One's Own' (1929).
Woolf's best-known nonfiction works, 'A Room of One's Own' (1929) and
'Three Guineas' (1938), examine the difficulties that female writers
and intellectuals faced because men held disproportionate legal and
economic power, as well as the future of women in education and
society. In 'The Second Sex' (1949), Simone de Beauvoir counts, of all
women who ever lived, only three female writers--Emily Brontë, Woolf
and "sometimes" Katherine Mansfield--who have explored "the given".
Views
======================================================================
In her lifetime, Woolf was outspoken on many topics that were
considered controversial, some of which are now considered
progressive, others regressive. She was an ardent feminist at a time
when women's rights were barely recognised, and anti-colonialist,
anti-imperialist, anti-militarist and a pacifist when chauvinism was
popular. On the other hand, she has been criticised for her views on
class and race in her private writings and published works. Like many
of her contemporaries, some of her writing is now considered
offensive. As a result, she is considered polarising, a revolutionary
feminist and socialist hero or a purveyor of hate speech.
Works such as 'A Room of One's Own' (1929) and 'Three Guineas' (1938)
are frequently taught as icons of feminist literature in courses that
would be very critical of some of her views expressed elsewhere. She
has also been the recipient of considerable homophobic and misogynist
criticism.
Humanist views
================
Virginia Woolf was born into a non-religious family and is regarded,
along with fellow members of the Bloomsbury group E. M. Forster and G.
E. Moore, as a humanist. Both her parents were prominent agnostic
atheists although a significant influence was her aunt Caroline
Stephen. Caroline Stephen was a convert to Quakerism, the Religious
Society of Friends, and was a strong English exponent for its peace
testimony in 1890. Her father, Leslie Stephen, had become famous in
polite society for his writings which expressed and publicised reasons
to doubt the veracity of religion and abhorred military service.
Stephen was also President of the West London Ethical Society, an
early humanist organisation, and helped to found the Union of Ethical
Societies in 1896. Woolf's mother, Julia Stephen, wrote the book
'Agnostic Women' (1880), which argued that agnosticism (defined here
as something more like atheism) could be a highly moral approach to
life.
Woolf was a critic of Christianity. In a letter to Ethel Smyth, she
gave a scathing denunciation of the religion, seeing it as
self-righteous "egotism" and stating "my Jew [Leonard] has more
religion in one toenail--more human love, in one hair". Woolf stated
in her private letters that she thought of herself as an atheist.
Controversies
===============
Hermione Lee cites a number of extracts from Woolf's writings that
many, including Lee, would consider offensive, and these criticisms
can be traced back as far as those of Wyndham Lewis and Q. D. Leavis
in the 1920s and 1930s. Other authors provide more nuanced contextual
interpretations and stress the complexity of her character and the
apparent inherent contradictions in analysing her apparent flaws. She
could certainly be off-hand, rude and even cruel in her dealings with
other authors, translators and biographers, such as her treatment of
Ruth Gruber. Some authors, including David Daiches, Brenda Silver,
Alison Light and other postcolonial feminists, dismiss her (and
modernist authors in general) as privileged, elitist, classist,
racist, and antisemitic.
Woolf's tendentious expressions, including prejudicial feelings
against disabled people, have often been the topic of academic
criticism:
Antisemitism
==============
Woolf has often been accused of antisemitism. Despite being happily
married to an irreligious Jewish man (Leonard Woolf) who had no
connection with or knowledge of his people, she generally
characterised Jewish characters with negative stereotypes. For
instance, she described some of the Jewish characters in her work in
terms that suggested they were physically repulsive or dirty. She also
expressed derogatory views in private, writing in a 1930 letter to
friend Ethyl Smith, "How I hated marrying a Jew -- how I hated their
nasal voices and their oriental jewellery, and their noses and their
wattles -- what a snob I was: for they have immense vitality, and I
think I like that quality best of all" (Letter to Ethel Smyth, 1930).
While travelling on a cruise to Portugal, she protested at finding "a
great many Portuguese Jews on board, and other repulsive objects, but
we keep clear of them". Furthermore, she wrote in her diary: "I do not
like the Jewish voice; I do not like the Jewish laugh." Her 1938 short
story, written during Hitler's rule, "The Duchess and the Jeweller"
(originally titled "The Duchess and the Jew") has been considered
antisemitic.
Some believe that Woolf and her husband Leonard came to despise and
fear the 1930s' fascism and antisemitism. Her 1938 book 'Three
Guineas' was an indictment of fascism and what Woolf described as a
recurring propensity among patriarchal societies to enforce repressive
societal mores by violence. And yet, her 1938 story "The Duchess and
the Jeweller" was so deeply hateful in its depiction of Jews that
'Harper's Bazaar' asked her to modify it before publication; she
reluctantly complied.
{{anchor|Legacy}}Legacy
======================================================================
Virginia Woolf is known for her contributions to 20th-century
literature and her essays, as well as the influence she has had on
literary, particularly feminist criticism. A number of authors have
stated that their work was influenced by her, including Margaret
Atwood, Michael Cunningham, Gabriel García Márquez, and Toni Morrison.
Her iconic image is instantly recognisable from the portrait of her
aged 20 by George Charles Beresford (at the top of this page) to the
Beck and Macgregor portrait in her mother's dress in 'Vogue' at 44
(see ) or Man Ray's cover of 'Time' magazine (see ) at 55. More
postcards of Woolf are sold by London's National Portrait Gallery than
of any other person. Her image is ubiquitous and can be found on
products ranging from tea towels to T-shirts.
Virginia Woolf is studied around the world, with organisations devoted
to her, such as the Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain, and The
Virginia Woolf Society of Japan. In addition, trusts--such as the
Asham Trust--encouraged writers in her honour.
In 2019 'Time' created 89 new covers to celebrate women of the year
starting from 1920; it chose Woolf for 1929.
In January 2025 Sophie Oliver, a lecturer of modernism at the
University of Liverpool, discovered two previously unknown poems by
Woolf, at the Harry Ransom Center, at the University of Texas at
Austin. Oliver estimated the date of the poems, which reveal "a
different shade" to Woolf, as sometime after March 1927.
Monuments and memorials
=========================
In 2013, Woolf was honoured by her alma mater King's College London
with the opening of the Virginia Woolf Building on Kingsway, together
with an exhibit depicting her accompanied by the quotation "London
itself perpetually attracts, stimulates, gives me a play & a story
& a poem" from her 1926 diary. The University of Kent also named a
college after her--Woolf College, which was built in 2008.
Busts of Virginia Woolf have been erected at her home in Rodmell,
Sussex, and at Tavistock Square, London, where she lived between 1924
and 1939. She is also honoured at Tavistock Square by the Woolf &
Whistle, a bar that is located near where her house once stood.
In 2014, she was one of the inaugural honorees in the Rainbow Honor
Walk, a walk of fame in San Francisco's Castro neighbourhood noting
LGBTQ people who have "made significant contributions in their
fields".
A campaign was launched in 2018 to erect a statue of Woolf in
Richmond-upon-Thames, where she lived for 10 years. In November 2022
the statue, created by sculptor Laury Dizengremel, was unveiled. It
depicts Woolf on a bench overlooking the River Thames and is the first
full-size statue of Woolf.
Portrayals
============
* Michael Cunningham's 1998 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel 'The Hours'
focused on three generations of women affected by Woolf's novel 'Mrs
Dalloway'. In 2002, a film version of the novel was released, starring
Nicole Kidman as Woolf. Kidman won the Academy Award for Best Actress
for her performance.
* Susan Sellers's novel 'Vanessa and Virginia' (2008) explores the
close sibling relationship between Woolf and her sister, Vanessa Bell.
It was adapted for the stage by Elizabeth Wright in 2010 and first
performed by Moving Stories Theatre Company.
* Priya Parmar's 2014 novel 'Vanessa and Her Sister' also examined the
Stephen sisters' relationship during the early years of their
association with what became known as the Bloomsbury Group.
* In the 2014 novel 'The House at the End of Hope Street', Woolf is
featured as one of the women who has lived in the titular house.
* Virginia is portrayed by both Lydia Leonard and Catherine McCormack
in the BBC's three-part drama series 'Life in Squares' (2015).
* The 2018 film 'Vita and Virginia' depicts the relationship between
Vita Sackville-West and Woolf, portrayed by Gemma Arterton and
Elizabeth Debicki respectively.
* In 2022, an opera of 'The Hours' by composer Kevin Puts and
librettist Greg Pierce premiered at the Metropolitan Opera to acclaim.
Adaptations
=============
* Sally Potter adapted 'Orlando' (1928) for the screen in 1992, as a
film also called 'Orlando', starring Tilda Swinton.
* Woolf's play 'Freshwater' (1935) is the basis for a 1994 chamber
opera, 'Freshwater', by Andy Vores.
* 'Septimus and Clarissa', a stage adaptation of 'Mrs Dalloway', was
created and produced by the New York-based ensemble Ripe Time in 2011.
It was adapted by Ellen McLaughlin.
* In 2014, artist Kabe Wilson produced a novella and artwork entitled
'Of One Woman Or So', created over five years by rearranging the words
of Woolf's 1929 essay 'A Room of One's Own'.
* 'Woolf Works', a contemporary ballet inspired by Woolf's novels,
letters, essays and diaries, choreographed by Wayne McGregor,
premiered in May 2015.
* The final segment of the 2018 anthology film 'London Unplugged' is
adapted from Woolf's short story "Kew Gardens".
Selected works
======================================================================
Woolf's most notable works include the following.
Novels
========
* 'The Voyage Out' (1915)
* 'Night and Day' (1919)
* 'Jacob's Room' (1922)
* 'Mrs Dalloway' (1925)
* 'To the Lighthouse' (1927)
* 'Orlando: A Biography' (1928)
* 'The Waves' (1931)
* 'The Years' (1937)
* 'Between the Acts' (1941)
* see also 'Mrs Dalloway' &
[
https://web.archive.org/web/20100905042908/http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/w/woolf/virginia/w91md/complete.html
Complete text]
* see also 'Orlando: A Biography' &
[
https://web.archive.org/web/20110222111144/http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/w/woolf/virginia/w91o/complete.html
Complete text]
Essays and essay collections
==============================
* "Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown" (1924)
* "Modern Fiction" (1925)
* 'The Common Reader' (1925)
* "The Art of Fiction" (1927)
* "The New Biography" (1927)
* 'A Room of One's Own' (1929)
* 'The Common Reader: Second Series' (1932)
* 'Three Guineas' (1938)
Other
=======
* "Kew Gardens" (1919), short story
* 'Flush: A Biography' (1933)
* 'Freshwater' (1935)
Books and theses
==================
*
* see also 'The Second Sex'
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Literary commentary
=====================
*
*
*
* (additional excerpts)
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
[
http://dspace.uevora.pt/rdpc/bitstream/10174/21533/1/Moments%20of%20Being.pdf
additional excerpt]
Bloomsbury
============
* (additional excerpts)
*
*
Chapters and contributions
============================
* , in
* , in
* , in
* , in
* , in
* , in
* , in
* , in
* , in
* , in
Newspapers and magazines
==========================
*
*
*
*
*
[
https://web.archive.org/web/20070228055659/http://www.commentarymagazine.com/cm/main/viewArticle.aip?id=10801&page=2
'archived version']
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Websites and documents
========================
*
*
*
*
*
* (includes invitation to first performance in 1935 and Lucio
Ruotolo's introduction to the 1976 Hogarth Press edition)
*
*
*
*
*
*
Audiovisual media
===================
* see also 'Life in Squares'
*
*
[
https://www.college.columbia.edu/core/content/mind-and-times-virginia-woolf-directed-eric-neal-young-2002
excerpt]
*
Short stories
===============
* see also 'A Haunted House and Other Short Stories' &
[
https://web.archive.org/web/20071017215237/http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/w/woolf/virginia/
Complete text]
Essays
========
* see also 'A Room of One's Own '&
[
https://web.archive.org/web/20080304121949/http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/w/woolf/virginia/w91r/complete.html
Complete text]
Essay collections
===================
*
* & [
https://books.google.com/books?id=Mc0pDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT831
also here]
* -- (1934). [
https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks12/1203801h.html "Walter
Sickert: A Conversation"]
Contributions
===============
* (Digital edition)
Autobiographical writing
==========================
*
** , in
**
**
**
Archival material
===================
*
*
*
* [
https://findingaids.smith.edu/repositories/3/resources/405 Virginia
Woolf Papers] at the Mortimer Rare Book Collection, Smith College
Special Collections
* [
https://www.woolfnotes.com/ Woolfnotes]
License
=========
All content on Gopherpedia comes from Wikipedia, and is licensed under CC-BY-SA
License URL:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
Original Article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Woolf
