Dictionary of national biography virginia woolf
In Virginia Woolf contributed an introduction to Victorian Photographs of Famous Men & Fair Women by Julia Margaret Cameron.
Current biography: Subscribe Access to the full content requires a subscription. Even so, the daughter, like the father, did exercise the selectiveness that Virginia Woolf advocates in 'The Art of Biography': 'almost every biographer, if he respects facts, can give us much more than another fact to add to our collection. Once you begin to take yourself seriously as a leader or as a follower, as a modern or as a conservative, then you become a self-conscious, biting, and scratching little animal whose work is not of the slightest value or importance to anybody. In the course of writing this book she groaned under the burden of fact, much as her father had done in the s, locked by his own rulings to the 'drudgery' of 'Dryasdust'.
This publication may be seen as a springboard from which to approach Woolf’s life: Virginia saw herself as descending from a distinctive male and female inheritance; Cameron was the famous Victorian photographer and Woolf’s great-aunt; Woolf’s friend Roger Fry also contributed an introduction and leads us to the Bloomsbury Group; and the book was published by the Hogarth Press which Virginia had started with her husband Leonard in
Adeline Virginia Stephen was born on 25 January in London.
Her father, Leslie Stephen (–), was a man of letters (and first editor of the Dictionary of National Biography) who came from a family distinguished for public service (part of the ‘intellectual aristocracy&#; of Victorian England). Her mother, Julia (–95), from whom Virginia inherited her looks, was the daughter of one and niece of the other five beautiful Pattle sisters (Julia Margaret Cameron was the seventh: not beautiful but the only one remembered today).
Both parents had been married before: her father to the daughter of the novelist, Thackeray, by whom he had a daughter Laura (–) who was intellectually backward; and her mother to a barrister, Herbert Duckworth (–70), by whom she had three children, George (–), Stella (–97), and Gerald (–).
Julia and Leslie Stephen had four children: Vanessa (–), Thoby (–), Virginia (–), and Adrian (–). All eight children lived with the parents and a number of servants at 22 Hyde Park Gate, Kensington.
Long summer holidays were spent at Talland House in St Ives, Cornwall, and St Ives played a large part in Virginia’s imagination.
It was the setting for her novel To the Lighthouse, despite its ostensibly being placed on the Isle of Skye. London and/or St Ives provided the principal settings of most of her novels.
In her mother died unexpectedly, and Virginia suffered her first mental breakdown. Her half-sister Stella took over the running of the household as well as coping with Leslie’s demands for sympathy and emotional support.
Stella married Jack Hills in , but she too died suddenly on her return from her honeymoon.
Dictionary of national biography virginia woolf summary Is not anyone who has lived a life, and left a record of that life, worthy of biography - the failures as well as the successes, the humble as well as the illustrious? The extraordinary woman depends on the ordinary woman. Your current browser may not support copying via this button. Have you any notion how many are written by men?The household burden then fell upon Vanessa.
Virginia was allowed uncensored access to her father’s extensive library, and from an early age determined to be a writer. Her education was sketchy and she never went to school. Vanessa trained to become a painter. Their two brothers were sent to preparatory and public schools, and then to Cambridge.
There Thoby made friends with Leonard Woolf, Clive Bell, Saxon Sydney-Turner, Lytton Strachey and Maynard Keynes. This was the nucleus of the Bloomsbury Group.
Leslie Stephen died in , and Virginia had a second breakdown. While she was sick, Vanessa arranged for the four siblings to move from 22 Hyde Park Gate to 46 Gordon Square, Bloomsbury. At the end of the year Virginia started reviewing with a clerical paper called the Guardian; in she started reviewing in the Times Literary Supplement and continued writing for that journal for many years.
Following a trip to Greece in , Thoby died of typhoid and in Vanessa married Clive Bell. Thoby had started ‘Thursday evenings&#; for his friends to visit, and this kind of arrangement was continued after his death by Vanessa and then by Virginia and Adrian when they moved to 29 Fitzroy Square.
In Virginia moved to 38 Brunswick Square. Leonard Woolf had joined the Ceylon Civil Service in and returned in on leave. He soon decided that he wanted to marry Virginia, and she eventually agreed. They were married in St Pancras Registry Office on 10 August They decided to earn money by writing and journalism.
Since about Virginia had been writing her first novel The Voyage Out (originally to be called Melymbrosia).
Dictionary of national biography virginia woolf You do not currently have access to this article. We shall not always give out a sound like a beaten gong as one sensation strikes and then another. Sign in to annotate. Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.It was finished by but, owing to another severe mental breakdown after her marriage, it was not published until by Duckworth & Co. (Gerald’s publishing house). The novel was fairly conventional in form. She then began writing her second novel Night and Day – if anything even more conventional – which was published in , also by Duckworth.
From Virginia had rented small houses near Lewes in Sussex, most notably Asheham House.
Her sister Vanessa rented Charleston Farmhouse nearby from onwards. In the Woolfs bought Monks House in the village of Rodmell. This was a small weather-boarded house (now owned by the National Trust) which they used principally for summer holidays until they were bombed out of their flat in Mecklenburgh Square in when it became their home.
In 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&#;.
Dictionary of literary biography Virginia was educated at her Kensington home by her parents with her step-brothers and stepsisters. Here on this ring of grass we have sat together, bound by the tremendous power of some inner compulsion. Published in print: 23 September Published online: 23 September Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a single article for personal use for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice.The Woolfs continued handprinting until , but in the meantime they increasingly became publishers rather than printers. By about the Hogarth Press had become a business. From Virginia always published with the Press, except for a few limited editions.
saw Virginia’s first collection of short stories Monday or Tuesday, most of which were experimental in nature.
In her first experimental novel, Jacob’s Room, appeared. In the Woolfs moved back to London, to 52 Tavistock Square. In Mrs.
Dictionary of national biography virginia woolf pdf Over people who died between and have also been included for the first time. A further 13, lives of new subjects broadens the coverage of previously neglected areas in all periods. The question now inevitably asks itself, whether the lives of great men only should be recorded. Virginia and Leonard Woolf,Dalloway was published, followed by To the Lighthouse in , and The Waves in These three novels are generally considered to be her greatest claim to fame as a modernist writer. Her involvement with the aristocratic novelist and poet Vita Sackville-West led to Orlando (), a roman à clef inspired by Vita’s life and ancestors at Knole in Kent.
Two talks to women’s colleges at Cambridge in led to A Room of One’s Own (), a discussion of women’s writing and its historical economic and social underpinning.
Notes
See also: Virginia Woolf’s Holiday Homes in the Country
For a more detailed discussion of Virginia Woolf’s breakdowns, see:
Virginia Woolf: Writing the Suicide by Malcolm Ingram
Text © S.
N. Clarke & VWSGB
Photos
• Sea view from the window of Talland House, St Ives ()
• Front view of Talland House ()
• Asheham House, Sussex ()
• Wooden gate of Monks House entrance, Rodmell, Sussex ()
• Looking out of the Woolfs&#; sitting room, Monks House ()
• Church view from balcony outside Leonard&#;s study, Monks House ()
• Garden view from balcony outside Leonard&#;s study, Monks House ()
• Entrance of Monk&#;s House ()
• Virginia&#;s writing lodge, Monk&#;s House ()
Photos © S.
N. Clarke & H. Fukushima
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