Biography
British writer, a novelist and essayist who used the English language
superbly. After the death of her father in 1904, she and her siblings
moved to Bloomsbury where their home became the center for the
avant-garde literary salon, the Bloomsbury Group. Her first two novels
were traditional in format; in 1921 she began her experimental,
impressionistic style. The subsequent novels had greater success,
Jacob's Room, 1922, Mrs. Dalloway, 1925, A
Biography, 1928 and a feminist essay, "A Room of One's Own"
in 1929. Four of her books were published posthumously and her total
output was 9 novels, 1 play, 14 volumes of diaries and letters as well as
many essays, portraits, reviews and memoirs.
The daughter of Sir Leslie Stephen, Virginia was the youngest of four
children by her dad's second marriage; her mom died when she was thirteen.
The family had a total of eight kids due to prior marriages of her
parents. Educated at home, she had the run of her father's magnificent
library.
She married Leonard Woolf in 1912. They were true companions though it
was a sexless marriage and she later fell in love with another woman, Vita
Sackville-West.
Virginia received income from a small trust fund but it was
insufficient to meet her needs. In 1917, she and her husband, Leonard,
founded the Hogarth Press. With a small, kitchen-table model printing
press, they taught themselves to set type and print. Virginia and Leonard
were budding novelists, reviewers and essayists. Their first publication,
a 32-page pamphlet, sold 134 copies of the 150 printed. Within several
years, they developed a commercially successful publishing company that
produced 25 to 35 books per year.
Virginia and Leonard were prolific writers and managed the publishing
company as a part time enterprise. The authors they published included C.
Day Lewis, T. S. Eliot, Anna and Sigmund Freud, Maxim Gorky, Rainer Maria
Rilke, Gertrude Stein, H. G. Wells, and many other notable writers. In the
1930s, they began using their influence in the literary community to
address their social concerns. They published books on disarmament,
feminism, peace, the League of Nations, problems of race and slavery,
economics, education, economics and psychology. One biographer stated the
Woolfs considered Hogarth Press the child their marriage never produced.
Virginia suffered from a mental breakdown during WW I, followed by
subsequent periods of physical, mental and emotional breakdowns which
doctors treated with psychiatric drugs. Her early childhood experience of
sexual abuse by her half brothers, Gerald and George Dunkworth, was
thought to be the cause. Gerald later became her publisher.
Virginia had a complicated and stormy relationship with her sister,
Vanessa Bell, which biographers reveal was also physical. She is also
reported to have an early love interest with a close friend, Violet
Dickinson.
Her writing expressed the themes that troubled her the most: life,
death, suicide, madness and past memories. She was hypersensitive to
criticism. Virginia was a noted biographer and critic and used writing as
a distraction from realty. When she realized she could not write any
longer, she chose not to live. On 3/28/1941 she drowned herself, fearing
the recurrence of a mental breakdown, Sussex, England.
In December 2002, the film "The Hours" was released, based
on Michael Cunningham's prize-winning novel. The movie stars Nicole Kidman
playing the role of Woolf, wearing a false nose to elongate her face. On
March 23, 2003, Kidman won the Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role.
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What Do You Think?
Bring the chart with you to the movies as you see Nichole Kidman play
the iconoclast, feminist writer. Virginia and her husband lived in a
sexless marriage, but they loved each other deeply and their union was
fruitful. Their "child", Hogarth Press, published the works of T. S.
Eliot, Anna and Sigmund Freud, Maxim Gorky, Rainer Maria Rilke, Gertrude
Stein, H. G. Wells, and many other notable writers. Their home became the
center for the avant-garde literary salon, the Bloomsbury Group. As a
novelist, Virginia Woolf's claim to fame is her pioneering use of
impressionistic, stream-of-consciousness writing to explored the interior
experience of women.
- With her Moon in Aries sextiled by Mars in the first house, Virginia
Woolf had plenty of animus in her chart. Where is her focus on exploring
the interior lives of women?
- One of her most famous books was entitled A Room of One's Own.
She writes, "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to
write fiction." Where's the business savvy in her chart?
- Virginia had several nervous breakdowns during her lifetime. Some say
she wrote to exorcise the demons. She drowned herself on March 28, 1941
when the voices returned and she found she could not concentrate enough
to write. Where are the "voices" in her chart and what would bring them
back in March of 1941?
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