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Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)
Who?
One of the most innovative modernist writers of the 20th century and one of the first to use the 'stream of consciousness'.
Must reads
Mrs Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), Orlando (1928), The Waves (1931) and Between the Acts (1941).
Darkest hour
Bouts of depression, which started when her mother died and led ultimately to her suicide in the River Ouse, near her home at Rodmell, Sussex.
Greatest triumph
In 1917, partly as a form of therapy, she and her husband Leonard Woolf set up the Hogarth Press, which aimed to publish new and experimental fiction.
Essential quotes
'Clarissa Dalloway took it upon herself to buy the flowers for the party that evening.' (Mrs Dalloway)
'So that is marriage, Lily thought, a man and a woman looking at a girl throwing a ball.' (To the Lighthouse)
'I am not trying to tell a story. I am looking at a mind thinking.' (Woolf on her fiction)
Gossip
Her close friendship with Vita Sackville–West, whom she met in 1922, set tongues wagging.
Did u know?
Daughter of Leslie Stephen, Woolf was one of the founders of the Bloomsbury Group, which began meeting in 1905 at 46 Gordon Square, London. The group included art critic Clive Bell, her sister, Vanessa Bell, economist John Maynard Keynes, essayist Lytton Strachey, novelist David Garnett, EM Forster and art critic Roger Fry. The Bloomsbury Group was in revolt against the artistic, social and sexual restrictions of Victorian society.
Peer review
Poet TS Eliot to Woolf: 'You have freed yourself from any compromise between the traditional novel and your original gift.'
What to say
Woolf's novels, which mix lyric intensity with precise if rarified language, are highly regarded by critics. Her tract, A Room of One's Own (1929), is a feminist classic.
Don't say
Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf?
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