Adeline Virginia Woolf was born on the 25th January 1882 in South Kensington in London.
Although lauded as a founder of modernist writing with such classics as `Orlando', `Mrs Dalloway' and `To the Lighthouse' and, of course, many classic short stories, her background is filled with elements of tragedy that she somehow overcame to become such a revered writer. Her mother died when she was 13, her half-sister Stella two years later and with it her first of several nervous breakdowns. Appallingly it was later found that three of her half-brothers had sexually abused her so darkness must have seemed ever present.
She began writing professionally at age 20 but her father's death two years later brought a complete mental collapse, and she was briefly institutionalised. Somehow, she found within herself a literary career and with it great innovations in writing; she was a pioneer of “stream of consciousness”.
Her tight circle of friends were the founders of the Bloomsbury Group, a movement whose legacy still influences across the arts and society in many ways to this day.
Whilst the dark periods continued to interrupt her emotional state her rate of work never ceased. Until on 28th March 1941, Woolf put on her overcoat, filled up its pockets with stones, and walked into the River Ouse, in Lewes, East Sussex and drowned herself. Her body was not recovered until the 18th April. She was 59.
She left behind a note which read in part:-“Dearest, I feel certain that I am going mad again. I feel we can't go through another of those terrible times. And I shan't recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can't concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do”.
1 - Virginia Woolf - A Short Story Collection Volume 2 - An Introduction
2 - The Legacy by Virginia Woolf
3 - Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
4 - The Mark on the Wall by Virginia Woolf
5 - An Unwritten Novel by Virginia Woolf
6 - The Lady in the Looking Glass by Virginia Woolf
