VIRGINIA WOOLF

(1882 - 1941)

Adeline Virginia Stephen was born in London on 25th January 1882, as the daughter of Julia Jackson Duckworth, a member of the Duckworth publishing family, and Leslie Stephen, a literary critic. She was educated at home by her father. Her youth was shadowed by series of emotional shocks - her half-brother Gerald Duckworth sexually abused her and her mother died when she was in her early teens. Leslie Stephen, her father, suffered a slow death from cancer. When her brother Toby died in 1906, she had a prolonged mental breakdown. Following the death of her father in 1904, she moved with her sister Vanessa and two brothers to the house in Bloomsbury, which became central to activities of the Bloomsbury group. Virginia's economic situation improved as she inherited £2,500 from an aunt. In 1912 she married the political theorist Leonard Woolf, who had returned from serving as an administarator in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). During the inter-war period Woolf was at the centre of literary society both in London and at her home in Rodmell, near Lewes, Sussex.The Bloomsbury group was initially based at the Gordon Square residence of Virginia and her sister Vanessa (Bell). The group included among others E.M. Forster, Lytton Strachey, Clive Bell, Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant, and Leonard Woolf. In 1917 the Woolfs had bought a small hand printing-press in order to take up printing as a hobby and as therapy for Virginia. By now they were living in Richmond (Surrey) and the Hogarth Press was named after their house. Virginia wrote, printed and published a couple of experimental short stories, 'The Mark on the Wall' and 'Kew Gardens'. The Woolfs continued handprinting until 1932, but in the meantime they increasingly became publishers rather than printers. By about 1922 the Hogarth Press had become a business. From 1921 Virginia always published with the Press, except for a few limited editions.By the early 1930s, the group ceased to exist in its original form. In the event of a Nazi invasion, Woolf and Leonard had made provisions to kill themselves. After the final attack of mental illness Woolf loaded her pockets with stones and drowned herself in the River Ouse near her Sussex home on March 28th, 1941. On her note to her husband she wrote: "I have a feeling I shall go mad. I cannot go on longer in these terrible times. I hear voices and cannot concentrate on my work. I have fought against it but cannot fight any longer. I owe all my happiness to you but cannot go on and spoil your life." Her suicide has coloured interpretations of her works, which have been read perhaps too straightly as explorations of her own traumas.