Woolf, Virginia
ACHIEVEMENTS: Poetry, novels
DATE/PLACE OF BIRTH: 25thJanuary 1882, in London, England.
DATE/PLACE/AGE AT DEATH: 28thMarch 1941, near Rodmell, Sussex, England. Aged 59.
DISCIPLINE: Writer.
FIELD: Literature.
LANGUAGE: English.
PARENTS: Leslie Stephen and Julia Duckworth (born Julia Jackson).
SIBLINGS: Thoby, Adrian and Vanessa.
SPOUSE: Leonard Woolf.
CHILDREN: None.
EDUCATION: Privately at home.
MAJOR WORK:
‘Mrs Dalloway’ (1925)
‘To the Lighthouse’ (1927)
‘The Waves’ (1931)
‘Between the Acts’ (1941)
Criticism:
‘The Common Reader’ (1925)
‘The Death of the Moth’ (1942)
‘Granite and Rainbow’ (1958)
LIFE AND TIMES: Woolf’s father, Sir Leslie Stephen, a scholar and critic, was the first editor of the Dictionary of National Biography and, because his daughter was highly emotional and too delicate for school, he educated her at home.
In 1904, after her father died, Woolf suffered her first serious nervous breakdown, so she and Stella went to live with their brother Adrian in Bloomsbury, London. The house was a meeting place for the brilliant intellects and friends of their elder brother, Thoby, from his time at Cambridge University.
Regular visitors included the artist and critic, Roger Fry and the writers E M Forster* and Keynes*. They were the beginning of what was to become known as the ‘Bloomsbury group’, which centered around the two sisters. The aim of the group was to rebel against the established values of the previous century and they questioned religious, moral and sexual orthodoxies.
In 1906, Thoby died and Virginia's fragile mental state was under threat for the second time, so she immersed herself in writing fiction and reviewing books for ‘The Times’ and other national newspapers and literary journals. She was also busy filling in the gaps in her education, learning Greek and reading works like ‘Principia Ethica’ by G E Moore. This was part of her rebellion against certain subjects being for men only.
In 1910 and 1911, Virginia spent much of her time in Sussex, nursing illness, then in 1912, she married Leonard Woolf. Leonard gave up his career in the colonial service and devoted himself to her for the rest of her life. Within the security of marriage, her health improved for long periods and her most creative period was over the next twenty years.
Her first novel, ‘Voyage Out’, was published in 1915 and, in 1919, ‘Night and Day’ followed. These two novels had, more or less, a traditional structure and content, but Woolf started to explore news ways of writing.
She was already critical of the novels of three of the most popular authors of her time, H G Wells*, Arnold Bennett and Galsworthy*. She found them too materialistic and expressed her feelings in her lecture, ‘Character in Modern Fiction’, at Cambridge in 1924.
Woolf wanted to write about the inner life of her characters and was impressed by a similar attitude in the work of Joyce*. She also wanted to experiment with time but in 1922, her first experimental novel, ‘Jacob's Room’, didn’t quite hit the mark, although ‘Mrs Dalloway’, which was published in 1925, did.
In the same year, ‘The Common Reader’, a collection of her critical and biographical essays was published. When she heard that Thomas Hardy* had read and enjoyed it, at the same time that E M Forster praised ‘Mrs Dalloway’, Woolf grew in strength and confidence.
In 1927, she published ‘To the Lighthouse’, which is regarded by many as her most successful novel. This work was written on a small scale, but she managed to combine human warmth and a poetic sensibility with a real sense of narrative and the book includes clever social observations and memorable characters.
In 1928, she wrote ‘Orlando’, an experimental biography which celebrated her friendship with the writer Vita Sackville-West. The next year, she wrote a feminist classic, ‘A Room of One's Own’ and, in 1931, she published ‘The Waves’ which, in comparison to ‘To the Lighthouse,’ was more consciously poetic and notable for the delicacy and beauty of its prose.
During this period, Woolf continued to write criticism and helped her husband run the Hogarth Press. Then followed another experimental novel, ‘The Years’ which appeared in 1937. Another feminist tract, ‘Three Guineas’, which had been provisionally called ‘Professions for Women’, was successfully published a year later.
When Word War II broke out in 1939, she decided to concentrate on journalism and began writing for ‘The New Statesman’. The Woolf’s eventually left London and, for the first time since 1913, she spent a winter in the country at their home in Suffolk. The house was so cold that when E M Forster was staying there, he burned his trousers trying to warm up by the stove.
In 1940, she published her biography of Roger Fry and tried to work on a new novel but increasingly felt that her work was becoming irrelevant because of the war. The fact that her husband Leonard was a Jew caused her a lot of anxiety, after seeing a photograph of a Jew being dragged out of a Berlin building by storm troopers and she began to talk of suicide.
Woolf watched the air battles over England in late summer 1940 and seeing the RAF shooting down enemy planes seemed to give her new confidence. After a short period of euphoria, her mental health finally broke and she committed suicide, when she forced a heavy stone into her pocket and threw herself into the River Ouse.
Her last novel, ‘Between the Acts’, was published after her death, along with a volume of essays under the title ‘The Death of the Moth’ and a collection of critiques called ‘Granite and Rainbow’.
ASSESSMENT: Woolf made a significant contribution to the development of experimental fiction in her novels.
EXTRA CONNECTIONS: She knew Morrell *, TS Eliot*, Sickert* and poet Stephen Spender*
Her father edited a piece by Robert Louis Stevenson*
Knew reformers the Webb*’s.
Charles II employed playwright Apra Behn as spy, who inspired Woolf
ONELINER: Virginia Woolf, major modern writer
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Bell, Quentin, Virginia Woolf, Vols. 1 and 2, The Hogarth Press, London, 1972.
Rose, Phyllis,Woman of Letters: A life of Virginia Woolf, 1978.
Lee, Hermione, Virginia Woolf,1996.