Virginia Woolf

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Adeline Woolf (née Stephen), 25 January 1882 – March 1941), an English writer who was considered one of the most influential twentieth-century writers and also a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device. Woolf was born in a wealthy family in South Kensington, London, as the seventh child in a blended family of eight children.

Julia Prinsep Jackson, the artist's model, had three children from her first marriage, while Woolf's father, Leslie Stephen, a well-known man of letters, had one previous child.

Vanessa Bell, a modernist painter, was one of the Stephens' four children.

Although the boys in the family received college education, the girls were home-schooled in English classics and Victorian literature.

The summer home the family used in St Ives, Cornwall, where she first encountered the Godrevy Lighthouse (1927), was an important influence in Virginia Woolf's childhood. Woolf's childhood came to an end in 1895 with the death of her mother and her first mental breakdown, followed two years later by the death of her stepsister and a mother figure, Stella Duckworth.

She studied classics and history and came into contact with early feminist reformers of women's higher education and the women's rights movement from 1897 to 1901.

Life

Virginia Woolf was born Adeline Stephen Stephen, 1882-1985, to Julia (née Jackson) (1846-1904), a writer, scholar, biographer, and climber, to Leslie Stephen (1832-1904). Julia Jackson was born in Calcutta, British India, to John Jackson and Maria "Mia" Theodosia Pattle, who came from two Anglo-Indian families. John Jackson FRCS was the third son of George Jackson and Mary Howard of Bengal, a surgeon who worked with Bengal Medical Service and East India Company for 25 years as well as a professor at the fledgling Calcutta Medical College. Though John Jackson was almost invisible, the Pattle family, the Patons, were known beauties and moved in Bengali society's upper circles. The seven Pattle sisters married into wealthy families. Julia Margaret Cameron was a celebrated photographer, while Virginia married Earl Somers and Julia Jackson's niece, Lady Henry Somerset, the temperance king. Julia and her mother moved to England at the age of two and spent significant portions of her childhood with Sarah Monckton Pattle, another of her mother's siblings. Sarah and her partner Henry Thoby Prinsep held an artistic and literary salon in Little Holland House, where she first became acquainted with a number of Pre-Raphaelite painters, including Edward Burne-Jones, for whom she modelled.

Julia was the youngest of three sisters, and Adeline Virginia was named after her mother's eldest sister Adeline Maria Jackson (1837–1881) and her mother's aunt Virginia Pattle (see Pattle family tree). The family never used Virginia's first name because of the tragedy surrounding her aunt Adeline's death in the previous year. The Jacksons were a well-educated, literary, and cultural proconsular middle-class family. Julia Jackson married Herbert Duckworth, a barrister in 1867, but she was left a widow with three children within three years. She was devastated and went through a long period of grief, abandoning her faith and shifting to nursing and philanthropy. Julia and Herbert Duckworth had three children:

Leslie Stephen was born in 1832 in South Kensington to Sir James and Lady Jane Stephen (née Venn), the daughter of John Venn, the rector of Clapham. The Venns were at the forefront of the evangelical Clapham Sect. Sir James Stephen was the under secretary at the Colonial Office, and William Wilberforce, a Clapham resident, was responsible for the passage of the Slavery Abolition Bill in 1833. He was named Regius Professor of Modern History at the University of Cambridge in 1849. The Stephens portrayed the intellectual aristocracy as a family of educators, attorneys, and writers. Although his family was distinguished and intellectual, they were less vibrant and aristocratic than Julia Jackson's. He renounced his faith and position to move to London, where he became a popular man of letters. In addition, he was a rambler and climber with a "raging red brown beard" — a regal man with a long nose, a wide forehead, steely-blue eyes, and a long pointed nose." Harriet Marian (Minny) Thackeray (1840–1875), William Makepeace Thackeray's youngest daughter, Laura (1870-1945), died in childbirth in 1875, but not in 1875. Laura was born disabled and then institutionalized, becoming more educated.

Julia Duckworth, the widowed, knew Leslie Stephen through her friendship with Minny's elder sister Anne (Anny) Ritchie and had an interest in his agnostic writings. Minny died the night Minny died, and then she tended to Leslie Stephen and helped him move next door to her on Hyde Park Gate so Laura might have some companionship with her own children. Both were preoccupied with mourning, and although they developed a close friendship and intense correspondence, they decided that no further action would be made. Leslie Stephen proposed to her in 1877, but Anny accepted him later that year, and they were married on March 26. He and Laura then moved next door into Julia's house, where they lived until his death in 1904. Julia was 32 and Leslie was 46.

Vanessa, their first child, was born on May 30th, 1879. Julia, having offered her husband with a child and now having five children to care for, decided to limit her family's growth. However, despite the fact that the couple took "precautions," "contraception was a very imperfect art in the nineteenth century": "contraception resulted in the birth of three more children in the span of four years.

In her autobiographical essays, including Reminiscences (1908), 22 Hyde Park Gate (1921), and A Sketch of the Past (1940), Virginia Woolf gives a glimpse into her childhood. Leslie Stephen (1932), 1982), and other essays that provide insight into the period include Leslie Stephen (1932). In her fictional fiction, she also refers to her childhood. Sheil's depiction of the Ramsays in the Hebrides in To the Lighthouse (1927) is only a thinly disguised account of the Stephens in Cornwall and the Godrevy Lighthouse, which she will visit there. Woolf's knowledge of her mother and family changed significantly between 1907 and 1940, in which the somewhat distant yet revered figure of her mother becomes more nuanced and filled in.

Vanessa Woolf and her sister Vanessa, Woolf founded the Hyde Park Gate News, chronicling life and events within the Stephen family, and modelled on the popular magazine Tit-Bits. Initially, this was mainly Vanessa and Thoby's posts, but Virginia soon became the main contributor, with Vanessa as editor. "I think that's very clever," their mother's reaction when it first appeared was "Rather clever." The Hyde Park Gate News would be published in Virginia until 1895, the time of her mother's death. The Stephen sisters and Stella Duckworth followed photography to enhance their knowledge over the next year. In Leslie Stephen's memoir, Vanessa Bell's 1892 portrait of her sister and parents in the Library at Talland House was one of the family's favorites, and it was written about lovingly in Leslie Stephen's book. Virginia started her first diary in 1897 ("the first truly lived year of my life") and a notebook in 1909.

Virginia was born into a huge family, not of wealthy parents, but of well-to-do parents, who were born into a democratic, literate, letter writing, and a vibrant late nineteenth century world." It was a close family with six children, two half brothers and a half sister (the Duckworths, from her mother's first marriage), Laura (from her father's first marriage), and brother Thoby. Adrian followed his older brother Adrian the next year. Laura Stephen, who was infirmary in 1891, lived with the family until she was institutionalized. Julia and Leslie had four children together:

Virginia was born at 22 Hyde Park Gate and lived there until her father's death in 1904. The number 22 Hyde Park Gate, a narrow cul-de-sac running south of Kensington Road, just west of the Royal Albert Hall, and opposite Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park, where the family used to walk (see Map; Street plan). Henry Payne of Hammersmith, 1846, was the first of a row of single-family townhouses for the upper middle class, but it became too small for their growing family. It consisted of a basement, two stores, and an attic at the time of their marriage. Leslie Stephen, an architect, retained J. W. Penfold, an architect, to provide additional living space above and behind the existing building in July 1886. The substantial renovations included a new top floor, three bedrooms, and a study for himself, as well as the first bathroom. It was a tall but narrow townhouse that had no running water at the time. Virginia will later describe it as "a very tall house on the left-hand side of the bottom, which begins by being stucco and ends by being red brick; as a result, we now have sold it, but it seems that a lot of wind will topple it over."

In the basement, the servants worked "downstairs." The ground floor had a drawing room, separated by a curtain from the servant's pantry and a library. Julia and Leslie's bedrooms were visible above this on the first floor. The Duckworth children's rooms were on the second floor, and the Stephen children's day and night nurseries were located two floors below. The servants' bedrooms were finally located in the attic, under the eaves, and could be accessed by a back staircase. The life at 22 Hyde Park Gates was also divided symbolically; as Virginia put it, "the break in our lives was curious." There was no more pure wisdom in downstairs: pure intelligence. "There was no connection between them," George Duckworth and Leslie Stephen said about the worlds. According to reports, their mother was the only one who could have survived this divide. Furniture and paintings were also included in the house, which was described as dimly lit and packed with furniture and paintings. The younger Stephens developed a close-knit clique within. Despite this, the children's cries remained. Virginia admired Adrian for being their mother's favorite. At times, Virginia and Vanessa's careers as writers (both writing and art) caused a rivalry between them. Summers in London differed drastically from those in Cornwall, with their outdoor pursuits largely consisting of walks in nearby Kensington Gardens, where they could play hide-and-seek and sail their boats on the Round Pond, while indoors, it revolved around their lessons.

Leslie Stephen's eminence as an editor, critic, and biographer, as well as his connection to William Thackeray, meant that his children were raised in an environment full of Victorian literary influences. Among the visitors to the house were Henry James, George Henry Lewes, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Thomas Burne-Jones, Edward Burne-Jones, and Virginia's honorary godfather, James Russell Lowell. Julia Stephen was similarly connected. Julia Margaret Cameron, a pioneering early photographer who was also a visitor to the Stephen household, was her aunt. Vanessa and Virginia, the two Stephen sisters, were almost three years old at the time, when they were released. Virginia christened her older sister "the saint" and was much more able to display her intelligence than her more reserved sister. Virginia resented the Victorian tradition of domesticity, which placed them much more pressure on them than her sister. They also competed for Thoby's affections. Virginia would later confess to her indignation over Duncan Grant's 1917 rivalry: "indeed one of the few worms of my life," says the sister; and to feed this I have created such a myth about her that I don't know one from another."

Virginia demonstrated an early affinity for writing. Although both parents opposed formal education for females, writing was still considered a respectable occupation for women, and her father helped her in this regard. Later, she'll talk about it as "ever since I was a little creature," Hawthorne wrote on the green plush sofa in the drawing room at St. Ives, as the grown-ups dined. By the age of five, she was writing letters and telling her father a tale every night. Later in life, Vanessa and Adrian will continue to invent a serial about their next-door neighbors, or in the case of St. Ives, of spirits that lived in the garden. It was her obsession with books that created the strongest bond between her and her father. She received an ink-stand, a blotter, drawing book, and a box of writing accessories for her tenth birthday.

Leslie Stephen was used to hiking in Cornwall in the spring of 1881, and he discovered a large white house in St Ives, Cornwall, where he took out a lease on it in the autumn. Although the center of the To the Lighthouse (1927), the view overlooking Porthminster Bay to the Godrevy Lighthouse was the main attraction. It was a large square house with a terraced garden separated by hedges, sloping down toward the sea. Every year from mid-July to mid-September, the Stephen family rented Talland House as a summer residence. "The pleasantest of my memories," Leslie Stephen, who referred to it as "a pocket-paradise," said of our summers, many of which were passed in Cornwall, especially to the thirteen summers (1882-1904 at St Ives. We bought the lease at Talland House, a small but spacious house with a garden of an acre or two all up and downhill, with quaint little terraces divided by hedges of escallonia, a grape-house, and a kitchen-garden, and a so-called "orchard" beyond. It was, in Leslie's words, a place of "intense domestic happiness." Virginia herself referred to the house in such detail: it was described in a large way:

Julia was always entertaining, was infamous for her manipulation of her guests' lives, on a regular basis matchmaking in the belief that everyone should marry, and the equivalence of her philanthropy. "My Julia was of course, but with all due reserve, a smidgeon of a matchmaker," her husband explained. The Brookes, whose children, including Rupert Brooke, enjoyed the Stephen children, were among their guests in 1893. In the years prior to the First World War, Rupert and his group of Cambridge Neopagans would play an important role in their lives. Julia Stephen soon embedded herself in the care of the sick and elderly in Cornwall, as well as London. Both at Hyde Park Gate and Talland House mingled with much of the country's literary and artistic circles. Frequent guests included literary figures such as Henry James and George Meredith, as well as James Russell Lowell, and the children were exposed to much more intellectual discourse than at their mother's Little Holland House. The family did not return after Julia Stephen's death in May 1895.

For the children, it was the year's highlight of the year, and Virginia's most vivid childhood memories were not of London but of Cornwall. She recalled feeling so connected to Talland House in a diary entry from 22 March 1921, harking back to a summer day in August 1890. "Why am I so passionate and romantic about Cornwall?" I suppose one's history goes back; I see children playing in the garden... The sound of the sea at night... almost forty years of life, all built on that: so much I could never explain." Cornwall influenced aspects of her art, particularly "St Ives Trilogy" of Jacob's Room (1922), To the Lighthouse (1927), and The Waves (1931).

Julia Stephen fell sick with influenza in February 1895 and never fully recovered, dying on May 5th, when Virginia was 13. It was a pivotal moment in her life and the beginning of her struggles with mental illness. In essence, her life had fallen apart. Stella returned immediately to take over and assume her role as the Duckworths were traveling internationally at the time of their mother's death. The Stephens family travelled to Freshwater, Isle of Wight, where some of their mother's relatives lived, rather than returning to the memories of St Ives. It was there that Virginia suffered the first of her many nervous breakdowns, and Vanessa was coerced to assume some of her mother's duties in caring for Virginia's mental health. Stella married Jack Hills the following year, making Virginia even more dependent on her older sister.

George Duckworth took on the responsibility of bringing them out of society. In both cases, Vanessa and Virginia were devastated because it was not a rite of passage that aligned with either girl or triggered a scathing critique of teenage upper-class women. "Society in those days was a perfectly correct, beautifully complacent, ruthless machine," she wrote. A girl had no fear of being sued because of its fangs. No other aspirations, such as painting or writing, could be taken seriously." Rather, she wanted to transition from the Victorian commons to a "room of one's own" in order to pursue her writing aspirations. Mrs. Ramsay's portrayal of a Victorian mother in To the Lighthouse "an unmarried woman has missed the best of life" says the author.

Stella Duckworth's death on July 19th, following a long illness, was a blow to Virginia's self-confidence and family relationships. Woolf referred to "the seven miserable years" after her mother and Stella's death, referring to "the lash of a random unheeding flail that hurlically and brutally killed the two people who should not necessarily be sad, but rather normal and natural." Their father became ill in April 1902 in April 1902, and although he underwent surgery later this year, he never fully recovered, dying on February 22, 1904. A father in Virginia suffered a new death as a result of his death. Later, Virginia will recall this period as one in which she was dealt with successive blows as a "broken chrysalis" with wings still creased. Chrysalis appears in Woolf's writing numerous times, but the "broken chrysalis" was a symbol for those researching Woolf's mourning process. Leslie Stephen's net worth at his death was £15,715 6s. 6th.

(probate 23 March 1904)

Education in the late nineteenth century was starkly divided along gender lines, a trend that Virginia will explore and condemn in her writing. Boys were sent to school, and in upper-middle-class families such as the Stephens, it involved private boys schools, often boarding schools, and university. Girls, if they were afforded the luxury of education, were given it by their parents, governoresses, and tutors. Virginia was educated by her parents who shared the responsibility. Off the back of the drawing room, there was a small classroom with its numerous windows, which they loved for quiet writing and painting. Julia taught the children Latin, French, and history, while Leslie taught them mathematics. They also took piano lessons. The children's unrestricted access to Leslie Stephen's vast library, opening them to a significant body of reading, resulting in a greater depth of reading than any of their Cambridge peers, resulting in a greater depth of reading than any of their Cambridge counterparts, as shown by Virginia's "greedy."

Later, she would recall

The boys in the family's household attended the University of Cambridge after public school. Since the boys introduced them to their families, the girls derived some indirect benefit from this. Another occurrence was their father's relatives' conversation, to whom they were told. Leslie Stephen described his circle as "most of the literary people of note," despite the fact that most young writers and barristers, primarily of the radical persuasion, gather on Wednesday and Sunday evenings to smoke, drink, and discuss the universe and the reform movement.

Virginia was able to continue higher education between the ages of 15 and 19. She took courses of study, some at a degree level, in Ancient Greek, intermediate Latin, and German, as well as continental and English history at King's College London near 13 Kensington Square between 1897 and 1901. She studied Greek under the mentorship of Classical Literature at King's, George Winter Warr. In addition, she had private tutoring in German, Greek, and Latin. Clara Pater (1899–1900), one of her Greek tutors, worked at King's. Janet Case, who participated in the women's rights movement and whose obituary Virginia would later write in 1937, was another. "On Not Knowing Greek" was born of her experience in 1925. In comparison to Pater, her time at King's brought her into contact with some of the first reformers of women's higher education, including Lilian Faithfull, the head of the Ladies' Department. Vanessa's sister Vanessa was also enrolled in the Ladies' Department (1899–1901). Despite the fact that the Stephen girls were unable to attend Cambridge, they were to be greatly influenced by their brothers' experiences there. When Thoby came to Trinity in 1899, he befriended a circle of young men, including Clive Bell, Lytton Strachey, Leonard Woolf (whom Virginia would marry), and Saxon Sydney-Turner, who would soon meet his sisters at the Trinity May Ball in 1900. These men formed the Midnight Society, a reading group.

Although Virginia maintained that her father was her favorite parent, and that although she had only been thirteen years old when her mother died, she was heavily influenced by her mother throughout her life. It was Virginia who famously said, "We think back through our mothers if we are women," and referenced her mother's image in her diaries, letters, and a few of her autobiographical essays, including Reminiscences (1908), 22 Hyde Park Gate (1921) and A Sketch of the Past (1940), often eliciting her memories with the phrase "I see her." In her fictional fiction, she also refers to her childhood. Lily Briscoe, a British artist who was based on Julia Stephen's Julia Stephen, paints Mrs. Ramsay, a complicated character based on Julia Stephen, and she has often expressed surprise at her description as "astonishingly beautiful." Her portrayal of the Ramsays in the Hebrides is merely a thinly disguised account of the Stephens in Cornwall and the Godrevy Lighthouse, which they will visit there. Woolf's knowledge of her mother and family changed significantly between 1907 and 1940, in which the somewhat distant, yet revered figure's largely accurate figure becomes more nuanced and complete.

Woolf drew a stark distinction between her mother's career and "the mischievous philanthropy which other women practice so complacently and often with such tragic results," although her father portrayed Julia Stephen's work in terms of venence. She describes her degree of empathy, participation, analysis, and decision, as well as her ability to recognize both humor and absurdity. With the head held at a certain distance, she recalls trying to resurrect "the clear round voice, or the sight of the beautiful figure, so straight and clear in its long shabby cloak, with the head held at a certain angle so that the eye stood straight out at you." Julia Stephen dealt with her husband's depressions and his desire for attention, which resulted in resentment in her children, boosted her self-confidence, nursed her parents in their final illness, and had many commitments outside the house that would eventually bring her down. Her frequent absences and husband's requests instilled a sense of anxiety in her children that had a long-term effect on her children. Woolf referred to her father as "fifteen years her elder, difficult, exacting, dependent on her," and that it was at the expense of the amount of attention she could spare her young children: "a general presence rather than a specific individual to a child." "Someone was always interrupting," she said of her mother's briefing period. Woolf was ambivalent about it, but she was determined to separate herself from this model of complete selflessness. "Boosting of her ability to surround and shield, there was barely a shell of herself left for her to discover by," she says in To the Lighthouse. At the same time, she admired the strengths of her mother's feminine ideals. Given Julia's frequent absences and commitments, the young Stephen children became increasingly dependent on Stella Duckworth, who imitated her mother's selflessness; "Stella was always the glamorous attendant handmaid, making it the central duty of her life," Woolf wrote.

Julia Stephen adored her husband's intelligence. "She never belittled her own works," Woolf said, "though not insignificant, but other" importance to her husband's. She felt confident in her role as the head of her company and the one who held it all together, with a clear sense of what was important and valued devotion. Julia's "nervous energy ruled the family" among the two parents. Although Virginia seemed to be closest to her father, Vanessa said that her mother was her favorite child. Angelica Garnett recalls how Virginia asked Vanessa which parent she preferred, although Vanessa said it was "one ought not to ask," but "one should not ask" is a question that "one ought not to ask," but "mother is definite." Virginia found that her half-sister, Stella, the oldest daughter, lived a life of complete subservience to her mother, incorporating her ideals of love and service. Virginia quickly discovered that being sick was the only way to attract her mother's attention, who insisted on her sickroom care.

Leslie Stephen's temper was another topic for the children to deal with, with Woolf referring him as "the tyrant father." She became increasingly ambivalent about him over time. She had received his ring on her eighteenth birthday and she had a deep emotional attachment as his literary heir, and she had written about her "great love for him." Nevertheless, she saw him as both a perpetrator and tyrant, as Vanessa did. She had a constant ambival toward him throughout her life, but not in a way that changed. "I am dipping into old letters and father's memoirs" as she grew older, she realized how much of her son was in her: "I have been digging into old letters and father's memoirs...........................................and she had such a quickidious, educated, and transparent," she wrote 22 December 1940. "She [her mother] has haunted me," Leslie Stephen's father was both intrigued and sarcastic, but then, so did the old wretch my father. . ... . I was more like him than her; therefore, more important: but he was an adorable guy, and yet, "weird."

Woolf said she first remembers being molested by Gerald Duckworth when she was six years old. According to reports, this led to a lifetime of sexual apprehension and resistance to masculinity. This was a dysfunctional family against a background of overcommitted and distant parents. Evidence of sexual assault of the Stephen girls by their older Duckworth half-brothers, as well as James Kenneth Stephen (1859–1892) at least of Stella Duckworth. Laura is also accused of violence. Louise DeSalvo's most readable book is on display, but other writers and reviewers have been more cautious. Some commentators have cited Virginia's allegations of being sexually assaulted during the time she lived at 22 Hyde Park Gate as a possible explanation for her mental instability, but a variety of contributing factors are likely to exist. "The evidence is solid enough, yet vague enough," Hermione Lee says, "allowing for conflicting psychobiographical interpretations that portray quite different aspects of Virginia Woolf's interior life."

The Stephens' first instinct on their father's death was to flee from the grim house of yet more people mourning, and they did so immediately, accompanied by George, heading to Manorbier on February 27. They lived a month, and Virginia first came to discover that she was destined to be a writer as a writer in her journal from 3 September 1922. They continued their quest for newfound liberty in Italy and France in April, where they caught up with Clive Bell once more. Virginia then suffered her second nervous breakdown and first suicide attempt on May 10th, and convalesced for the next three months.

The Stephens had debated with their father about the need to leave South Kensington in the West End, with its tragic memories and their parents' families. George Duckworth was 35, while his brother Gerald 33 was 33. The Stephen children were between the ages of 24 and 20. Virginia was 22 years old at the time. Vanessa and Adrian decided to sell 22 Hyde Park Gate in a safe South Kensington and move to Bloomsbury. Bohemian Bloomsbury, with its distinctive leafy squares, seemed to be both geographically and socioeconomically far away, and it was a much cheaper neighborhood rentwise. They had not inherited much and were uncertain about their finances. In addition, Bloomsbury was close to the Slade School, which Vanessa was also attending. Though Gerald was content to move forward and establish himself a bachelor business, George, who had always assumed the role of quasi-parents, was determined to accompany them, much to their surprise. Lady Margaret Herbert appeared on the scene and married in September, leaving the Stephens to their own devices.

Vanessa and her husband moved to Bedford Square in Bloomsbury in November, where they were reunited by Virginia now fully recovered. In March 1905, the Stephens began to entertain Thoby's intellectual acquaintances at Gordon Square. The group, which mainly came from the Cambridge Apostles, featured writers (Saxon Sydney-Turner, Lytton Strachey) and writers (Clive Bell, Desmond MacCarthy) with the slogan "At Home" on Thursday evening, a hope of recognising Trinity College ("Cambridge in London). The Bloomsbury Group's intellectual circle was founded by this group. Duncan Grant (1907), Duncan Grant (1908), E.M. Forster (1910), Leonard Woolf (1911), and David Garnett (1914).

Virginia and Adrian traveled to Portugal and Spain in 1905. Clive Bell suggested to Vanessa but was turned down, while Virginia began teaching evening classes at Morley College and Vanessa added another event, this time dedicated to the study and later display of the fine arts. Katherine Laird ("Ka") Cox (1887-1938), who was about to go up to Newnham, welcomed some new people into their circle, including Vanessa Lamb and Gwen Darwin (who became secretary), as well as Vanessa's colleagues from the Royal Academy and Slade. Although Virginia didn't meet Kahn until much later, Kady will play a major role in her life. Ka and others brought the Bloomsbury Group into contact with another, marginally younger group of Cambridge intellectuals to whom the Stephen sisters introduced the term "Neo-pagans." The Friday Club continued until 1913.

Virginia suffered two more losses the following year, 1906. Following a trip to Greece, her cherished brother Thoby, who was only 26 years old, died of typhoid, and Vanessa accepted Clive's third plan right away. Vanessa and Clive were married in February 1907, and as a couple, their interest in avant-garde art would have a major influence on Woolf's future as an author. Virginia and Adrian needed to find a new home after Vanessa's marriage.

In April 1907, Virginia was occupied by 29 Fitzroy Square, a house on the west side of the street that had previously been owned by George Bernard Shaw. It was in Fitzrovia, immediately west of Bloomsbury, but it was still very close to her sister's at Gordon Square. The two sisters continued to travel together in Paris in March. Adrian was to play a larger part of Virginia's life, and the Thursday Club reopened in October at their new home, while Gordon Square became the Play Reading Society's home in December. The group began to investigate progressive perspectives during this period, first in speech and then in conduct, with Vanessa announcing in 1910 that there was a libertarian society with sexual freedom for all.

In the meantime, Virginia began working on her first book, Melymbrosia, which later became The Voyage Out (1915). Julian, Vanessa's first child, was born in February 1908 in February 1908 and the Bells followed them to Italy and France in September. Virginia's rivalry with her sister resurfaced during this period, flirting with Clive, which he praised, and which lasted on and off from 1908 to 1914, when her sister's marriage was broken down. Lytton Strachey offered Virginia on February 1709, which she accepted, but then withdrew the invitation.

It was when she was visiting Fitzroy Square that the issue of Virginia's needing a peaceful country retreat arose, and she needed a six-week rest cure and sought the countryside away from London as much as possible. She and Adrian stayed at Lewes in December and began exploring the town's Sussex countryside. She began to desire a place of her own, like St Ives, but closer to London. She soon found a home in Firle (see below), and she loved it for the remainder of her life.

Several members of the Dreadnought hoax, which Virginia disguised as a male Abyssinian prince, attracted notoriety in 1910. In the memoirs collected in the updated version of The Platform of Time (2008), her complete 1940 talk about the hoax was discovered and is published in the memoirs.

The lease on Fitzroy Square had run out in October 1911, and Virginia and Adrian decided to leave Fitzroy Square in favour of a new living arrangement, moving to a four-story house in Bloomsbury proper in November. Virginia considered it a new possibility: "We're going to try all kinds of experiments," she told Ottoline Morrell. Adrian occupied the second floor, with Maynard Keynes and Duncan Grant sharing the ground floor. This whole thing for a single woman was considered scandalous, and George Duckworth was furious. The house was located next to the Foundling Hospital, much to Virginia's amusement as an unchaperoned single woman. Ka Cox had intended to participate in the arrangements, but Rupert Brooke, who was involved with her and pressured her to abandon the idea, was supposed to disagree. Duncan Grant arranged Adrian Stephen Stephen's rooms at the house (see image).

Leonard Woolf, one of Thoby Stephen's pupils at Trinity College, Cambridge, noticed the Stephen sisters in Thoby's rooms on their visits to the May Ball in 1900 and 1901. Their beauty took one's breath away" in "white dresses and large hats, with parasols in their hands. They were quiet, "formidable, and alarming," to him.

Woolf did not meet Virginia officially until November 17th, 1904, when he dined with the Stephens at Gordon Square to say his goodbye before heading to Ceylon's civil service, although she was aware of him from Thoby's stories. He said she was perfectly silent during the meal and looked sick on that visit. Lytton Strachey suggested to Woolf that he make her an offer of marriage in 1909. He did so but received no response. He returned to London after a one-year absence in June 1911, but not to Ceylon. Leonard Leonard, who lives in England, revived his family and friends. He dined with Vanessa and Clive Bell at Gordon Square on July 3rd, where they were later joined by Virginia and other members of "Bloomsbury" and Leonard dates the group's establishment to that night. Virginia invited Leonard to join her at Firle in Sussex in September for a long weekend. They began seeing each other more often after the weekend.

Leonard stepped into the ménage on Brunswick Square on the fourth floor, occupying a bed and sitting room, and by the end of the month, she had discovered Virginia on a daily basis and by the end of the month, she had decided he was in love with her. He proposed her on 11 January 1912, but she asked for time to consider; he pleaded for a leave extension and resigned on April 25th, effective 20 May. He continued to pursue Virginia, and in a letter sent to 1 May 1912 (which sees), she explained why she did not like marriage rather than seeking a divorce. Virginia, on the 29th of May, told Leonard that she wanted to marry him and they were married on August at the St Pancras Register Office. Leonard first became aware of Virginia's precarious mental health during this period. The Woolfs lived in Brunswick Square until October 1912, when they were forced to a tiny apartment at 13 Clifford's Inn, further to the east (subsequently demolished). Despite Leonard's low physical appearance (Woolf referred to him as a "penniless Jew") during their relationship, the pair maintained a close friendship. Certainly, Woolf wrote in her diary in 1937: "Love-making—after 25 years can't bear to be apart—you see it's a great pleasure to be together... you see it's a huge pleasure to be waiting for: a wife." And our marriage is so happy." However, in 1913, Virginia made a suicide attempt.

Leonard and Virginia Woolf migrated from Bloomsbury and central London to Richmond in October 1914, a home explored by Leonard in his autobiography Beginning Again (1964). The couple then moved to Paradise Road, near Hogarth House, in early March 1915, after which they named their publishing house. In 1915, Virginia's first book, The Voyage Output, was published, followed by another suicide attempt. Leonard was refused admission to conscription in 1916 due to medical reasons.

The Woolfs returned to Bloomsbury between 1924 and 1940, taking out a ten-year lease at 52 Tavistock Square, where Virginia also had her writing room, and where they ran the Hogarth Press from the basement, where Virginia also had her bust of her in the square (see figure). Mrs Dalloway was published in May 1925 and she died in August while at Charleston. To the Lighthouse, her next book, was published in 1927, and she lectured on Women & Fiction at Cambridge University and published Orlando in October. Her two Cambridge lectures became the basis for her big essay, A Room of One's Own, in 1929. Freshwater, based on her great-aunt Julia Cameron, and produced at her sister's studio on Fitzroy Street in 1935, Virginia wrote just one drama, Freshwater, based on her uncle's name Julia Cameron. Following the completion of The Years, 1936 saw another breakdown of her health.

Woolf's last home in London was 37 Mecklenburg Square (1939–1940), which was destroyed during the Blitz in September 1940; a month later, their old home on Tavistock Square was also destroyed. They made Sussex their permanent home after that. See Jean Moorcroft Wilson's book Virginia Woolf's London homes for descriptions and illustrations. Cecil Woolf, 1987.

In October 1901, at the age of 19, Virginia had begun binding books as a pastime, and the Woolfs had been considering starting a publishing house for some time, but plans were not complete until 1916. They discovered that they weren't able to enroll in the St Bride School of Printing, and that they began buying supplies after obtaining tips from the Excelsior Printing Supply Company on Farringdon Road, and the Hogarth Press was born soon.

In July 1917, Two Stories, inscribed Publication No. No. 14, was the first to be published in the UK. "The Mark on the Wall" by Virginia Woolf and Three Jews by Leonard Woolf was one of two short stories on page 1, and consisted of two short stories. Dora Carrington's work consisted of 32 pages, hand bound and sewn, as well as illustrated by woodcuts. The illustrations were a hit, prompting Virginia to state that the press was "particularly good at printing pictures," and that we should make a habit of having pictures." (13 July 1917) With a run of 150 copies, the process took two and a half months. Vanessa Bell's Kew Gardens (1919) with a woodblock as the frontispiece was among the short stories that followed, including Vanessa Bell's Kew Gardens (1919) with a woodblock. Bell continued to illustrate each page of the text with new illustrations.

Virginia's books, as well as T.S.'s work, were later published in the journal. Eliot, Laurens van der Post, and others. Dora Carrington and Vanessa Bell's work were also commissioned by the Press, as well as Dora Carrington and Vanessa Bell's. Woolf said that women writers needed a "room of their own" to develop and often fantasized about an "Outsider's Society" where women writers would have a virtual private space for themselves through their writings to explore a feminist critique of society. Although Woolf never created the "outsider's society," the Hogarth Press was the closest approximation as the Woolfs went on to publish books by writers that took unconventional measures of view in order to establish a reading community. Initially, the press concentrated on small experimental journals, which were of little concern to large commercial publishers. Woolf used to help her husband print the Hogarth books before 1930, when the funds for employees weren't available. Following a third attempted suicide, Virginia regained her interest in 1938. The newspaper was moved to Letchworth for the remainder of the war after being bombed in September 1940. Both the Woolfs were internationalists and pacifists who felt that raising the knowledge of people was the only way to prevent another world war and decided not to publish works by foreign writers whose readers were not aware. Maxim Gorky, the Soviet writer whose book Reminiscences of Leo Nikolaiovich Tolstoy (1920), dealing with his friendship with Count Leo Tolstoy, was the first non-British author to be published.

The Bloomsbury Group's postwar reconstruction of the 1920s, which, as the name implies, centered on self-writing and inspired some of the twentieth century's most influential books. The corporation, which had been dispersed by war, was reconvened by Mary ('Molly') MacCarthy and operated under laws derived from the Cambridge Apostles, an elite university debating society in which a number of them had been members. These rules emphasised candour and transparency. Virginia contributed three of the 125 memoirs that were published posthumously in 1976 in the autobiographical anthology Moments of Being. These were 22 Hyde Park Gate (1921), Old Bloomsbury (1922), Am I a Snob? (1936) Ancestral (1836).

The Bloomsbury group's ethos pushed for a liberal conception of sexuality, and Woolf's Clive Bell met writer and gardener Vita Sackville-West, wife of Harold Nicolson on December 14th. She referred to "the most gifted aristocratic Sackville West" in her diary the next day. Sackville-West became the most popular writer both poet and novelist, commercially and critically, but she wasn't until Woolf's death that she began to write more, was she considered the best writer. They began a sexual relationship after a tentative start, but Sackville-West wrote to her husband on August 17th, 1926, they were only married twice. Woolf's relationship reached its high point between 1925 and 1928, developing into more of a friendship into the 1930s, though Woolf was still keen to discuss her affairs with other women in her immediate circle, such as Sibyl Colefax and Comtesse de Polignac. Both authors, Woolf's three books, To the Lighthouse (1927), Orlando (1928), and The Waves (1931), as well as a number of essays, including "Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown" (1932).

Sackville-West continued to lift Woolf's self-confidence by urging her not to think of herself as a quasi-reclusive disease sufferer who should hide herself away from the world, but rather praised her for her liveliness and wit, her intelligence, and her writing accomplishments. Woolf was reappraise herself, building a more positive self-image, and the feeling that her writings were based on her strengths rather than her weaknesses. Woolf's father and his doctor's diagnosis that reading and writing were deleterious to her nervous system, causing her to experience a complete breakdown, beginning at the age of 15. Woolf spent a considerable time obsessively engaging in such physical labour.

Sackville-West was the first to tell Woolf that she had been misdiagnosed and that it was far safer to engage in reading and writing to calm her nerves—advice that was not taken. Woolf learned to cope with her physical limitations by switching between various kinds of intellectual pursuits, such as reading, writing, and book reviews, rather than investing her time in physical fitness that sapped her energy and aggravated her nerves. Sackville-West selected Hogarth Press as her publisher to support the Woolfs financially. Seducers in Ecuador, the first book by Sackville-West, was not a success, selling only 1500 copies in its first year, but the Sackville-West book, The Edwardians, was a best-seller in the first six months. Sackville-West's books, although not typical of Hogarth Press, saved Hogarth, transforming them from the red to the black, transforming them from the red to black. Woolf, on the other hand, was not aware that it was Sackville-West's books that kept the Hogarth Press alive, and she wrote dismissively in 1933 of her "servant girl" books. Woolf could have more experimental work, such as The Waves, because she was solely dependent on Hogarth for her income.

Woolf published Sackville-West in 1928, a monumental biography in which the eponymous hero's life spans three centuries and both sexes were present. It was published in October, a week after the two women spent a week travelling together in France. That September was published in October. "The impact of Vita on Virginia is all contained in Orlando, the longest and most charming love letter in literature," Nigel Nicolson said, "Setha, who weaves her from one sex to the other, teases her, and falls under a veil of mist." The two women remained friends until Woolf's death in 1941, after their affair came to an end. Virginia Woolf continued to be close to her two younger sisters, Adrian and Vanessa; Thoby died of typhoid fever at the age of 26.

Virginia was looking for a country retreat to escape to, and she found a house for rent in Firle, Sussex, near Lewes on December 24th, 1910 (see Map). After her childhood home in Cornwall, she signed a lease and took possession of the house, naming it 'Little Talland House,' the cottage was remodeled into a new red gabled villa on the main street opposite the village hall. The lease was short, and Asheham's Asheham residents discovered Asham House a few miles to the west in October. A strange enchanting Regency-Gothic house in a remote location was found at the end of a tree-lined road. It was described as "flat, pale, serene, yellow-washed," without electricity or water and apparently haunted. In the New Year, she and Vanessa took out a five-year lease together in the New Year and moved into it in February 1912, where she held a house warming party on the 9th.

The Woolfs spent their wedding night later this year in Asham. She wrote down the happenings of the weekends and holidays she spent in Asham's Asham Diary, part of which was later published as A Writer's Diary in 1953. The Voyage Output was completed, as well as the bulk of Night and Day in terms of creative writing. Woolf provided Woolf with a much-needed break from London life, as well as a place of joy that she described in her diary on May 5th, 1919. "Oh, but how happy we've been at Asheham!" Asham said. It was the most melodious period of history. Everything went so smoothly; but I can't bother to investigate any of my joy's sources. Asham was also the inspiration for A Haunted House (1921-1944), and was painted by Bloomsbury Group artists including Vanessa Bell and Roger Fry. Ka Cox (seen here) began to dedicate herself to Virginia and become extremely useful during those days in Asham.

When Asham Leonard and Virginia discovered a farmhouse in 1916, they were about four miles away, which they felt would be convenient for her sister. Vanessa eventually came down to look at it and moved in in October of that year, making it her summer home for her family. The Charleston Farmhouse was intended to be the Bloomsbury Group's summer gathering spot.

The Woolfs were given a year's notice by the landlord, who wanted the house at the time of the war, who wanted the Woolfs. The Round House in Pipe Passage, Lewes, was "in despair" in mid-1919. It was a converted windmill that had been "in despair" for £300. A weatherboarded house with oak beamed rooms and no sooner had they purchased the Round House than Monk's House in nearby Rodmell, the 15th or the 16th century. The Leonards favoured the latter because of its orchard and garden, and the Round House sold the Round House to purchase Monk's House for £700. Monk's House lacked water and electricity, but it did have an acre of garden, with a view across the Ouse and the South Downs hills. Leonard Woolf describes this view (and the facilities) as unchanged since Chaucer's time. After their London home was bombed, Virginia continued to live there until her death. In the meantime, Vanessa purchased Charleston her permanent home in 1936. Virginia completed Between the Acts in early 1941, followed by a more serious illness that resulted in her suicide on March 28, 1941, the book being published posthumously later this year.

During her stay in Firle, Virginia became more familiar with Rupert Brooke and his social circle, including socialism, vegetarianism, exercising outdoors, and alternative life styles, such as social nudity. They were influenced by Bedales, Fabianism, and Shelley's ethos. The women wore sandals, socks, open neck shirts, and head scarves. Although Woolf had reservations, she had been involved with their activities for a while, fascinated by their bucolic innocence in contrast to Bloomsbury's skeptical intellectualism, which earned her the nickname "The Goat" from her brother Adrian. Although Woolf wanted to make the most of a weekend with Brooke in Grantchester, which included swimming in the pool, it appears that it was primarily a literary assignation. Maurice Craig, the family's name, was also shared by a psychiatrist. She finally met Ka Cox in Oxford in January 1911, was a member of the Friday Club circle and now her friend, and was instrumental in her struggle with her illness. "Bruin" is Virginia's nickname. Ka, Jacques Raverat, and Gwen Darwin were all dragged into a triangular friendship at the same time. She became resentful of the other couple, Jacques and Gwen, who married later in 1911, but not the result that Virginia had predicted or wished for. Both To the Lighthouse and Years will later be referred to. Stella Duckworth's marriage and her triangular involvement with Vanessa and Clive were among her reasons for her exclusion.

The two groups eventually parted. Brooke coerced Ka into withdrawing from Virginia's ménage on Brunswick Square in late 1911, calling it a "bawdy-house," and by the end of 1912, he had vehemently turned against Bloomsbury. She'll write sardonically about Brooke, whose premature death brought him his idealization, and she's going to write about "the Neo-Paganism at that time in my life" later this year. When Ka married William Edward Arnold-Forster in 1918, Virginia was deeply distraught and became more suspicious of her.

Woolf's mental stability has been the subject of a lot of research (e.g., see Mental health bibliography). Woolf suffered with severe sadness to manic elation, including psychotic episodes, which the family referred to as her "madness" from the age of 13. Woolf was not "mad" as Hermione Lee points out; she was simply a woman who suffered from and suffered with illness for a large portion of her short life, a woman of "extraordinary courage, intelligence, and stoicism" who had the highest understanding of the condition and had the highest understanding of it.

Today, psychotherapists maintain that her illness resembles bipolar disorder (manic-depressive disorder). Dr. Seton's death in 1895, "the biggest tragedy that could have occurred," precipitated a crisis of alternating excitement and despair, sparking a crisis of rising excitability and depression, as well as irrational worries, which culminated in a crisis of alternating enthusiasm and despair, stopping lessons and writing, and regular walks supervised by Stella. Stella was still dead two years later, and she had hoped for her death at the age of fifteen in 1897, and she had predicted that death would be shorter and less painful in October. She then stopped keeping a diary for a long time. This was an event she'd later recreate in "Time Passes" (To the Lighthouse, 1927).

On May 10, she threw herself out a window and briefly institutionalized under the custody of her father's acquaintance, the eminent psychiatrist George Savage, who died in 1904. Savage blamed her education—frowned on by many at the time as unsuitable for women—for her illness. Dr. Savage regarded her as "cured" after spending time at the home of Stella Dickinson and at her aunt Caroline's house in Cambridge in January 1905. Violet, seventeen years older than Virginia, became one of her closest friends and one of her most loyal nurses. "Romantic love" was portrayed by the writer (Letter to Violet, May 1903). Thoby's death in 1906 marked a "decade of deaths" that ended her childhood and adolescence. "Ghostly voices spoke to her with increasing vigor, perhaps more true than those who lived by her side," Gordon (2004) writes. When voices of the dead urged her to bizarre things, they led her mad, but they never became the stuff of fiction."

Virginia spent three short periods at Burley House in 1910, 1912, and 1913, according to Miss Jean Thomas' "private nursing home for women with nervous disorder." Dr. Savage predicted moving away from London by the end of February 1910. Vanessa rented Moat House outside Canterbury in June, but there was no change, so Dr. Savage took her to Burley for a "rest cure." This involved partial solitude, deprivation of literature, and force feeding, and after six weeks, she was able to convalesce in Cornwall and Dorset during the autumn.

She loathed the experience, writing to her sister on July 28th, how she discovered the phony religious atmosphere in the house and the institution ugly, and she warned Vanessa that she would soon have to leap out of a window. If she were to be sent back, she might consider suicide later. Despite her protests, Savage would refer her to 1912 for insomnia and 1913 for depression.

On her return from Burley House in September 1913, she sought further information from two other physicians on the 13th: Maurice Wright, Henry Head, Henry James' physician. Both suggested that she return to Burley House. She returned home and attempted suicide by taking an overdose of 100 grains of veronal (a barbiturate) and almost dying: Ka Cox was compelled to assist her.

On recovery, she went to Dalingridge Hall, George Duckworth's home in East Grinstead, Sussex, to convalesce on September 30th, along with Ka Cox and a nurse. Maurice Craig, a forensic psychologist who said she was not sufficiently psychotic to be affiliated or committed to an institution, remained unstable over the next two years, with another case involving veronal that she denied was an "accident" and consulted another psychiatrist in April 1914.

The rest of the summer of 1914 went well for her, and they moved to Richmond in February 1915, but the year after the Voyage Outbreak was set to be announced, she relapsed once more and remained in poor health for the majority of the year. Despite Miss Thomas' gloomy prognosis, the woman began to recover after 20 years of poor health. However, many around her had the impression that she had been completely changed, but not for the better.

She suffered with bouts of depression for the remainder of her life. A variety of factors appeared to overwhelm her in 1940. Roger Fry's biography had been published in July, but she had been dissatisfied with the event's reception. The horrors of war gripped her, and their London homes were destroyed in the Blitz in September and October. Woolf had completed Between the Acts (published posthumously in 1941) in November, and finishing a novel was often followed by exhaustion. Her health became more and more of an issue, culminating in her decision to end her life on March 28, 1941.

Although this turmoil would often have an effect on her social life, she was able to maintain her literary success with no interruptions throughout her life. Woolf herself gives not only a clear glimpse of her diaries and letters, but also her reaction to the demons that haunted her and made her long for death: "It's always a question whether or not I want to prevent these glooms." One goes down into deep waters during these nine weeks, and no one shields one from the assault of truth."

Woolf had nothing to do, but she knew that writing was one of the ways she was able to cope with her illness: "Working is the only way I stay afloat... is the only way I can stay afloat..." I begin to work down, and I feel like I am sinking down, down. As usual, I believe that if I sink deeper, I will find the truth." Woolf's metaphor for both the effects of depression and psychosis, as well as finding truth, was her ultimate choice of death.

Woolf struggled with illness throughout her life: on one hand, an immunization, and on the other hand, an essential part of who she was and a necessary condition of her art. Her experiences inspired her writing, including the story of Septimus Warren Smith in Mrs Dalloway (1925), who, like Woolf, was haunted by the dead, and ultimately dies rather than being admitted to a sanitorium.

Leonard Woolf relates how they consulted many doctors in the Harley Street area during their 30 years of marriage, and although they were given a diagnosis of neurasthenia, they complained that they had no idea of the causes or nature. The suggested solution was straightforward—she lived a healthy life without any physical or mental strain, she was doing fine. On the other hand, any mental, emotional, or physical strain resulted in a reoccurrence of her health, beginning with a headache, followed by insomnia and thoughts that began to race. Her cure was straightforward: she'd bed returned to bed in a dimened room, eat, and drink a lot of milk, and the symptoms gradually faded.

Modern scholars, including her nephew and biographer Quentin Bell, have suggested that the sexual assault she and her sister Vanessa suffered with by their half-brothers George and Gerald Duckworth (which Woolf recalls in her autobiographical essays "A Sketch of the Past" and "22 Hyde Park Gate") were influenced by their half-brothers George and Gerald Duckworth (see Sexual abuse). Biographers point out that there was no counterbalance to regulate George's predation and his nighttime prowling when he died in 1897. "The old ladies of Kensington and Belgravia never knew" George Duckworth was not only father and husband, brother, and sister to those poor Stephen children; he was also their lover," Virginia says.

Other causes are likely to have played a role. Both trauma and family history have been implicated in bipolar disorder, according to a study. Leslie Stephen, Virginia's father, died of depression, and her half-sister Laura was institutionalized. Many of Virginia's signs, including persistent headache, insomnia, irritability, and fear, were similar to her father's. Another determining factor is the pressure she put on herself in her work; for example, her 1913 breakdown was triggered in part by the desire to complete The Voyage Output.

As she wrote in A Room of One's Own that Shakespeare had a sister of equal genius, she might have gone crazed, shot herself, or ended her days in some remote cottage outside the village, half witch and mocked. These inspirations grew from Woolf's description of her time at Burley in a 1930 letter to Ethel Smyth, who referred to it as her lava of madness.

She wrote: "She wrote: 'In a suicide note addressed to her husband, she wrote: 'I'm sorry for your loss.'

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