Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf
Born	Adeline Virginia Stephen January 25, 1882 London, England
Died	March 28, 1941 England
Cause of death	Suicide by drowning
Nationality	British
Other names	Adeline Virginia Woolf
Ethnicity	White
Occupation	Writer
Spouse	Leonard Woolf (m. 1912-1941, her death)

Virginia Woolf (born 25 January 1882 in London) was an English writer, essayist and feminist.

She was born into a famous family. Her father, Leslie Stephen, was a Victorian scholar. Her sister, Vanessa Bell, was a painter. She had two brothers; one of them, Thoby, died in 1906.

Her mother died when she was thirteen and four years later her half-sister Stella died. In these times Virginia started to have her psychological problems. She had manic-depression in the time when no one knew this disease and for most of the people she was just strange.

After the death of her mother, Leslie Stephen was not able to keep good relations in the family. Virginia and her sister Vanessa were sexually abused by their half-brothers George and Gerald. It affected Virginia for the rest of her life.

In the childhood, all the Stephens children were writing their diaries, but only Virginia kept write it for the whole life (and after her death, lots of them were published). It was important for her in the time of sexual abusing, because there was no one with who she could talk about it. In the diary, she could write everything.

After her father's death, Virginia and her brothers and sister moved to the London part called Bloomsbury and there they became members of the famous group of the artists called Bloomsbury Group. Here Virginia met her husband, a writer Leonard Woolf. Together, they moved to Richmond, where they opened a publishing office called Hogarth House Press, which later published all Virginia's novels and essays.

Although she had a husband, she had lesbian tendencies. When she was a teenager, she fell in love with Violet Dickinson and she wrote her lots of love letters. Violet probably never loved her. Later, Virginia had a sexual relationship with Vita Sackville-West, a writer and a poet. Their letters, which have been published, are showing us how deeply they were in love.

Her most famous novels are Mrs Dalloway and To the Lighthouse. Mrs Dalloway she finished in 1925. It is about one day of an English woman called Clarissa Dalloway. Clarissa is making a party and all the day she is preparing it. The story can seem stupid, but it is not so important in the book. More important are the feelings, the colours or the mood of it. It's very charming.

To the Lighthouse was published in 1927 for the first time. It is about a family of Ramsays and its friends. These people are altogether spending a summer in Ramsay's house on an island. The youngest of Ramsays children, James, wants to go to the lighthouse, but they can't go there because of bad weather. In the next part of the book, James is ten years older and his father is taking him to the lighthouse, although he doesn't want to go there anymore.

Virginia Woolf is also an author of these novels: Jacob's Room (1923), Orlando (1928) and The Waves (1931). She was a feminist and she wrote a few essays about women's position in the society, for example The Room of One's Own and Three Guineas.

She died on 28 March 1941. She committed suicide by drowning in the river Ouse.

In 1998, American writer Michael Cunningham wrote about her a novel called The Hours (a winner of the Pulitzer award), which is best known because of the same named movie, in which the role of Virginia played an actress Nicole Kidman. She won the Oscar.

Other websites

• Works by Virginia Woolf