Virginia Woolf
| Virginia Woolf | |||
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Virginia Woolf in 1902; photograph by George Charles Beresford.
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| Born | Adeline Virginia Stephen 25 January 1882 Kensington, Middlesex, England |
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| Died | 28 March 1941 (aged 59) River Ouse, near Lewes, Sussex, England |
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| Occupation | Novelist, essayist, publisher, critic | ||
| Nationality | British | ||
| Alma mater | King's College London | ||
| Notable works |
To the Lighthouse Mrs Dalloway Orlando: A Biography A Room of One's Own |
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| Spouse |
Leonard Woolf (m. 1912–1941; her death) |
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 Rare recording of Virginia Woolf, 1937, speaking about the craftsmanship of words on BBC Radio
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Adeline Virginia Woolf (née Stephen; 25 January 1882 – 28 March 1941) was an English writer and one of the foremost modernists of the twentieth century.
During the interwar period, Woolf was a significant figure in London literary society and a central figure in the influential Bloomsbury Group of intellectuals. Her best-selling works include the novels Mrs Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927) and Orlando (1928), and the book-length essay A Room of One's Own (1929), with its dictum, "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction."
Woolf suffered from severe bouts of mental illness throughout her life and took her own life by drowning in 1941 at the age of 59.
Virginia Woolf was born Adeline Virginia Stephen at 22 Hyde Park Gate in Kensington, London. Her parents were Sir Leslie Stephen (1832–1904) and Julia Prinsep Duckworth Stephen. Julia Stephen was born in British India to Dr. John and Maria Pattle Jackson. She was the niece of the photographer Julia Margaret Cameron and first cousin of the temperance leader Lady Henry Somerset. Julia moved to England with her mother, where she served as a model for Pre-Raphaelite painters such as Edward Burne-Jones. Julia named her daughter after the Pattle family: Adeline after Lady Henry's sister, Adeline Marie Russell, Duchess of Bedford; and Virginia, the name of yet another sister (who died young) but also of their mother, Julia's aunt.
Woolf was educated by her parents in their literate and well-connected household. Her parents had each been married previously and been widowed, and, consequently, the household contained the children of three marriages. Julia had three children by her first husband, Herbert Duckworth: George, Stella, and Gerald Duckworth. Leslie had first married Harriet Marian (Minny) Thackeray (1840–1875), the daughter of William Thackeray, and they had one daughter: Laura Makepeace Stephen, who was declared mentally disabled and lived with the family until she was institutionalised in 1891. Leslie and Julia had four children together: Vanessa Stephen (later known as Vanessa Bell) (1879), Thoby Stephen (1880), Virginia (1882), and Adrian Stephen (1883).
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