A book I enjoyed to read. Here some facts about Virginia Woolf edited together from
online literature. Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), English author, feminist, essayist, publisher, and critic wrote A Room of One’s Own (1929). Now regarded as a classic feminist work, Woolf based her extended essay A Room on lectures she had given at women’s colleges at Cambridge University. Using such female authors as Jane Austen and Emily and Charlotte Bronte, she examines women and their struggles as artists, their position in literary history and need for independence. She also invents a female counterpart of William Shakespeare, a sister named Judith to at times sarcastically get her point across. Woolf proved to be an innovative and influential 20th Century author. In some of her novels she moves away from the use of plot and structure to employ stream-of-consciousness to emphasise the psychological aspects of her characters. Themes in her works include gender relations, class hierarchy and the consequences of war. Woolf was among the founders of the Modernist movement which also includes T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, and Gertrude Stein.
The effects of bi-polar disorder at times caused Woolf protracted periods of convalescence, withdrawing from her busy social life, distressed that she could not focus long enough to read or write. She spent times in nursing homes for ‘rest cures’; frankly referred to herself as ‘mad’; said she heard voices and had visions. “My own brain is to me the most unaccountable of machinery —always buzzing, humming, soaring roaring diving, and then buried in mud. And why? What’s this passion for?” (from a letter dated 28 Dec. 1932). The subject of suicide enters her stories and essays at times and she disagreed with the perception that it is an act of cowardice and sin. When Virginia was not depressed she worked intensely for long hours at a time. She was vivacious, witty and ebullient company and a member of the Bloomsbury Group or ‘Bloomsbury’ which had been started by her brother Thoby and his friends from Cambridge. It quickly grew to encompass many of London’s literary circle, who gathered to discuss art, literature, and politics. During her life and since her death she has been the subject of much debate and discussion surrounding the sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of her half-brother, her mental health issues and sexual orientation. Also, her pacifist political views in line with Bloomsbury caused controversy. From Three Guineas (1931);
Virginia married left-wing political journalist, author and editor Leonard Woolf (1880-1969) on 10 August 1912. In 1914 when World War I broke out they were living in Richmond and Woolf was working on her first novel The Voyage Out (1915). Leonard and Virginia would themselves get into the publishing business, together founding the Hogarth Press in 1917. Works by T. S. Eliot and Katherine Mansfield would be among their many publications including Virginia’s. Night and Day (1919) was followed by her short story collection Monday or Tuesday (1921) and essays in The Common Reader (1925). Jacob’s Room (1922) was followed by Mrs. Dalloway (1925) which inspired a film “The Hours” in 2002. To The Lighthouse (1927) was followed by Orlando: A Biography (1928). With the outbreak of WWII the Woolfs were living at their country retreat, ‘Monk’s House’ near the village of Rodmell in Lewes, Sussex, which is now preserved by the National Trust. In 1940 they received word that their London home had been destroyed. Fear of a German invasion loomed and Leonard’s Jewish heritage provoked the couple to make a suicide pact if the possibility of falling into German hands arose. Leonard as usual was ever vigilant to the onset of the next major depressive episode in his wife; she would get migraine headaches and lay sleepless at night. However, he and her doctor, who had seen her the day before, would never intuit that her next one was to be her last. Virginia Woolf died on 28 March 1941 when she drowned herself in the River Ouse near their home in Sussex. After her death, Leonard set to the task of editing her vast collection of correspondence, journals, and unpublished works and also wrote an autobiography. Posthumous publications include; The Death of the Moth and Other Essays (1942), A Haunted House and Other Short Stories (1944), and The Moment and Other Essays (1948). Virginia’s nephew, the late Professor Quentin Bell (1910-1996) wrote the award winning Virginia Woolf: A biography (2 vols, London: Hogarth Press, 1972).
