Virginia Woolf Page 3

Short biography of Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf (born Adeline Virginia Stephen; 25 January 1882 – 28 March 1941) was an English writer, considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and also a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device.Virginia Woolf was born into an affluent household in Kensington, London, the seventh child in a blended family of eight. Her mother, Julia Duckworth Stephen, was born in British India to English and Scottish parents. Her father, Leslie Stephen, was a notable historian, biographer, critic, and mountaineer. Throughout Virginia Woolf’s childhood, the family moved between the homes of her paternal grandparents in Kensington and her parents’ home in Kensington Gardens Square, where they employed a series of nurses and governesses.

The family frequently traveled abroad.While the family was not wealthy by Victorian standards, it was well-connected and had a number of highly placed friends, including the poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and the scientist and explorer Thomas Huxley. Virginia Woolf was educated by her governesses and her parents. Her governess, Rosa Née Newmarch, from Wales, was highly literate, exposing Woolf to British and continental literature from an early age. Woolf began writing professionally in 1900, initially for newspapers. Between 1904 and 1912 she authored a series of biographies for children, which were well-received.

During the first decade of the 20th century, Woolf became acquainted with several of the Pre-Raphaelite painters, including Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Morris. She also visited the artist and critic Roger Fry’s Omega Workshops, which were promoting the Post-Impressionist artists Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh, and Paul Gauguin. In 1912 she travelled to Florence, Italy with her sister, the painter Vanessa Bell. There she met the novelist Eleanor Flexner.Virginia Woolf’s first novel, The Voyage Out, was published in 1915, and she followed it with Night and Day (1919). In 1918 she married the political economist Leonard Woolf; they founded the Hogarth Press the following year. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Virginia Woolf wrote several novels, including Mrs Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), and Orlando (1928). She also published several collections of essays, including A Room of One’s Own (1929) and Three Guineas (1938).In 1925, Woolf began what was to become her most famous novel, Mrs Dalloway. Set in London on a single day in June, the novel uses a stream-of-consciousness narrative style to explore its characters’ inner lives. Mrs Dalloway was published on 14 May 1925 to mixed reviews, but was later recognized as a modernist classic.

General Essay Structure for this Topic

1. Women in Society: An Introduction
2. Virginia Woolf’s Views on the Role of Women
3. The Importance of Women in Society
4. Women as the Backbone of Society
5. The Importance of Education for Women
6. Women in the Workforce
7. Women and Family
8. Women in Politics
9. Religion and Women

Important information

Spouse: Leonard Woolf (m. 1912–1941)

Short stories: Kew Gardens, The New Dress, The Mark on the Wall, The Duchess and the Jeweller