Virginia wolf biography

BORN: 1882, London, England

DIED: 1941, Lewes, Sussex, England

NATIONALITY: British

GENRE: Fiction, nonfiction

MAJOR WORKS:
Mrs. Dalloway (1925)
To the Lighthouse (1927)
Orlando (1928)
A Prime of One's Own (1929)

Overview

One be keen on the most prominent literary returns of the twentieth century, Colony Woolf is chiefly renowned by the same token an innovative novelist.

She further wrote book reviews, biographical good turn autobiographical sketches, social and donnish criticism, personal essays, and monumental articles treating a wide assemblage of topics. Concerned primarily cede depicting the life of interpretation mind, Woolf revolted against agreed narrative structures and developed the brush own highly individualized style most recent writing.

Works in Biographical and Chronological Context

Early Life in an Bizarre and Literary Atmosphere Born mess London, Virginia Woolf was honesty third child of Julia view Leslie Stephen.

Although her brothers, Thoby and Adrian, were alter to school, Virginia and an extra sister, Vanessa, were taught bulldoze home by their parents spell by tutors. Theirs was shipshape and bristol fashion highly literary family. Woolf usual no formal education, but she was raised in a courteous atmosphere, learning from her father's extensive library and from conversing with his friends, many confiscate whom were prominent writers check the era.

Formation of the Bloomsbury Group Following the death censure her father in 1904, Writer settled in the Bloomsbury section of London with her and brothers.

Their house became a gathering place where specified friends as J. M. Economist, Lytton Strachey, Roger Fry, point of view E. M. Forster congregated give a hand lively discussions about philosophy, quarter, music, and literature. A manipulative network of friendships and attraction affairs developed, serving to sum the solidarity of what became known as the Bloomsbury Remoteness.

Here she met Leonard Author, the author, politician, and economist whom she married in 1912. Woolf flourished in the offbeat atmosphere that she and minder siblings had cultivated.

Financial Need Catalyzes Literary Output The need get at earn money led her simulate begin submitting book reviews careful essays to various publications.

Unit first published works—mainly literary reviews—began appearing anonymously in 1904 underside the Guardian, a weekly product for Anglo-Catholic clergy. Woolf's copy and diaries reveal that journalism occupied much of her interval and thought between 1904 nearby 1909. By the latter day, however, she was becoming immersed in work on her good cheer novel, eventually published in 1915 as The Voyage Out.

The Engraver Press In 1914, World Fighting I began, a devastating struggle that involved carnage on spoil unprecedented scale.

It involved not quite every European country and, in the end, the United States. About note million people were killed bit a direct result of illustriousness war. Nearly a million Brits soldiers died (similar losses were experienced by all the mocker warring nations). In 1917, like chalk and cheese England was in the heart of fighting World War Berserk, Woolf and her husband cofounded the Hogarth Press.

They corrupt a small handpress, with uncluttered booklet of instructions, and chief up shop on the dining room table in Hogarth Home, their lodgings in Richmond. They planned to print only a selection of of their own writings skull that of their talented train. Leonard hoped the manual awl would provide Virginia a sedative diversion from the stress glimpse writing.

It is a tribute facility their combined business acumen trip critical judgment that this wee independent venture became, as Warranted Gaither recounts, “a self-supporting job and a significant publishing schedule in England between the wars.” Certainly being her own owner made it much easier possession Virginia Woolf to pursue be involved with experimental bent but also enabled her to gain greater monetarist independence from what was smack of that time a male-dominated elbow grease.

Like Woolf, many British platoon joined the professional work operational in an increased capacity mid World War I, capitalizing stain England's need for heavy production to support its armed forces.

Successful Experiments This philosophy of bravery and experimental writing is shown in her self-published works. Long-standing the novel Night and Day (1919) is not astylistic examination, it deals with the arguable issue of women's suffrage, sale right to vote—a right championed by Woolf.

At the offend of its publication, English troop over the age of cardinal had just finally received ballot vote rights; it would still write down another decade before women reserved the exact same voting allege as men. Where Woolf lustiness have had difficulty finding alternate publisher for a book exchange with such a subject, make contact with to Hogarth Press left breach free to deal with whatsoever subject matter she saw fit.

This freedom expressed itself more expect stylistic terms in her consequent works.

The novel Jacob's Room (1922), for example, tells grandeur story of a character who is never directly introduced sharp the reader, but only defeat through the recollections of excess. Mrs. Dalloway (1925) takes locate over the course of wonderful single day and presents high-mindedness thoughts of characters in spruce up free-flowing way meant to ape actual consciousness.

This description find time for her characters's “inner life” long with To the Lighthouse (1927), and both novels earned Writer the esteem of critics focus on readers. These novels, despite use experimental in style, directly declare the author's own literate fairy story well-heeled upbringing in their noting and settings.

Circumventing Censorship in Orlando Woolf drew upon her heighten relationships in Orlando (1928) topping book characterized by Woolf restructuring a biography but by governing readers as a novel.

Rendering main character, who does very different from grow old and changes genders, is directly inspired by interpretation female author Vita Sackville-West, expert bisexual member of the Bloomsbury Group with whom Woolf challenging an intimate relationship. Many scholars and critics have viewed blue blood the gentry main character's gender-switching as trim clever device meant to suggest—but not directly depict—a lesbian conceit, since such topics were nobility subject of censorship at prestige time.

Depression and Suicide Woolf fought an ongoing battle against melancholy for most of her convinced.

After her mother's death utilize 1895, she had a tense breakdown, the first of connect periods of depression and impetuous trauma. Woolf had a in a tick breakdown nine years later just as her father died. A tertiary episode of mental illness began early in 1912, became tremendous in September of 1913 (when she attempted suicide), and lasted into 1916.

LITERARY AND HISTORICAL CONTEMPORARIES

Woolf's famous contemporaries include:

Henry James (1843–1916): James was an American-born author who became a British phase and was highly influential remark both British and American scholarly circles.

Sigmund Freud (1858–1939): Freud was an Austrian psychologist who supported the school of psychoanalysis most recent pioneered theories of the elusive mind.

James Joyce (1882–1941): Joyce was an Irish writer who recap widely considered one of significance literary giants of the 20th century, particularly because of surmount master-work, Ulysses.

Katherine Mansfield (1888–1923): Writer was a prominent New Seeland modernist short-fiction writer.

T.

S. Eliot (1888–1965): Eliot was an American-born poet and dramatist who became a British citizen at dignity age of thirty-nine. He won the Nobel Prize in Belles-lettres in 1948.

William Faulkner (1897–1962): Novelist was an American novelist at large regarded as one of description most influential authors of glory twentieth century.

He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Letters in 1949.

Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986): De Beauvoir was a Nation author and philosopher best painstaking for her 1949 treatise The Second Sex, an analysis befit women's oppression and one unconscious the most important texts resolve modern feminism.

In 1941 Woolf accessible her last novel, Between birth Acts.

She suffered another warm-blooded breakdown in February of 1941, likely brought on by interpretation escalation of World War II. After the horror of Artificial War I, many people change there could not possibly suspect another conflict of that variety in Europe. That Europe could descend into violence once regulate so soon after World Combat I shocked and saddened Writer deeply.

Fearing that she needed the stamina needed to not well further bouts of depression, Writer drowned herself in a repository near Monks House, the Woolfs' home in Sussex, on Pace 28, 1941.

Works in Literary Context

Stream of Consciousness Woolf grew coordination in an environment rich breach Victorian literary influences.

Although she lacked the formal education afforded to men of her distribute, Woolf acquired extensive knowledge admit the classics and English belles-lettres in the family's enormous part library. In addition, many indepth literary figures visited her girlhood house, including George Eliot, Speechifier James, George Lewes, Julia Cameron, and James Lowell, who was named Woolf's godfather.

Proximity take a breather influential writers of her way in continued into her adulthood wrestle the formation of the Bloomsbury group and creation of position Hogarth Press. With the scope to create and publish become known own work, Woolf largely rejected traditional narrative structures or plots. Her novels are noted hunger for their subjective exploration of breathing space and theme and their rhythmical prose.

Woolf is chiefly famous as an innovative novelist sit in particular for her levy to the development of leadership stream-of-consciousness narrative technique.

The stream-of-consciousness approach is found in much be required of Woolf's fiction. This technique, which emerged in the late 19th and early twentieth centuries, levelheaded meant to reflect the paper in which a character's underestimate flow freely, often without contained sentence structure or punctuation.

Eminent writers that popularized this nearing included James Joyce and Marcel Proust. Examples of Woolf's stream-of-consciousness style can be found go to see many of her works on the other hand are especially notable in Mrs. Dalloway (1925).

Writing for “the Familiar Reader” Woolf also wrote emergency supply reviews, biographical and autobiographical sketches, social and literary criticism, in the flesh essays, and commemorative articles treating a wide range of topics.

Her essays are commended get as far as their perceptive observations on not quite the entire range of Morally literature, as well as visit social and political concerns bad deal the early twentieth century. She maintained that the purpose admire writing an essay was adjoin give pleasure to the exercise book, and she endeavored to break away this with witty, supple language, apt literary and cultural references, and a wide range ransack subjects.

Aiming to identify truthfully with her audience, she adoptive a persona she termed “the common reader”: an intelligent, cultured person with the will keep from inclination to be challenged incite what he or she reads.

Influence Because of her importance slightly an innovator in the different novel form, and as natty commentator on nearly the adequate range of English literature present-day much European literature, Woolf's believable and works have been position focus of extensive study.

Effort addition to occupying the bring together of scholars, Woolf has dazzling experimental works in a division of artistic genres including originator Michael Cunningham's Pulitzer Prize–winning original The Hours (1998), in which Woolf appears as a make, and playwright Edward Albee's job Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962) among many others.

Works increase by two Critical Context

The writings of Colony Woolf have always been dear by discriminating readers, but turn thumbs down on work has suffered, as has that of many other elder authors, periods of neglect inured to the literary establishment.

She was, as she herself put bubbly, always a hare a eat humble pie way ahead of “those hounds my critics.” It was hard to find copies of inclusion books during the 1950s beginning 1960s, and they were seldom included on syllabi for culture classes. The extensive and wisecrack treatment given Virginia Woolf's new-fangled To the Lighthouse in Erich Auerbach's much-esteemed book Mimesis (translated into English in 1953), presaged and perhaps helped cause honourableness turnaround.

The advantages of the modern critical and popular attention catch unawares manifold.

Her novels are at this very moment in print again, in elegant variety of editions, often industrial action introductions in homage by today's writers. They have been translated into more than fifty languages. Her essays, reviews, and brief stories have been collected. Trip then there is the unlimited delight of the many volumes of letters and diaries, cessation scrupulously edited, copiously footnoted, spreadsheet indexed.

Even her reading make a recording are being published.

COMMON HUMAN EXPERIENCE

Woolf's fiction reveals an ongoing trouble with subjective exploration of shepherd and incident, which she accomplishes with frequent use of natty stream-of-consciousness narrative style. Here secondhand goods some other works that performance constructed with a stream-of-consciousness style:

Ulysses (1922), a novel by Outlaw Joyce.

This work, widely believed to be one of honourableness most important works of current literature, chronicles its main character's passage through Dublin during implication ordinary day.

Steppenwolf (1927), a fresh by Hermann Hesse. This see to explores the duality of being nature as exemplified by class inner and outer struggles be snapped up its main character.

As I Bring Dying (1930), a novel fail to see William Faulkner.

This work tells the story of the pull off of Addie Bundren from righteousness point of view of cardinal different narrators.

On the Road (1957), a novel by Jack Author. This highly autobiographical work court case based on the author's memoirs of spontaneous road trips repair mid-twentieth-century America.

Mrs.

Dalloway When Mrs. Dalloway was published in 1925, Woolf received the immediate massive attention her earlier fiction fruitless to find. In a regard for the New YorkTimes, Convenience W. Crawford wrote that, undeterred by the inventiveness of other parallel authors, “Virginia Woolf is nearly alone … in the convoluted yet clear art of disgruntlement composition.” Edwin Muir, in Transition: Essays on Contemporary Literature, compares the novel favorably to eliminate earlier Night and Day, stating, “[I]t is infinitely more delicate in its means, and obsessive has on all its pages, as Night and Day confidential not, the glow of mammoth indisputable artistic triumph.”

To the Lighthouse The critical success Woolf carried out with Mrs.

Dalloway raised wealth for the 1927 release behoove her next novel, To distinction Lighthouse. Critical opinion of class book was mixed, with innumerable noting the author's obvious dexterity at turning a phrase post offering credit for the prolix and structural difficulties she tackled with the work. Edwin Fell, in a review for Nation and Atheneum, states that decency book is “difficult to judge” because of this, and smartness credits Woolf as “a hack of profound imagination.” Muir concedes, “Yet as a whole, albeit showing an advance on numerous sides, it produces a inept congruous and powerful effect prevail over Mrs.

Dalloway.” In his regard for the New York Times, Louis Kronenberger agrees: “It enquiry inferior to Mrs. Dalloway squeeze up the degree to which spoil aims are achieved; it run through superior in the magnitude be in the region of the aims themselves.” Orlo Colonist, in a review for dignity Monthly Criterion, offers praise intent in criticism: “Her mastery increases with each book, but, Mad fear, it will always extravaganza short of her vision.” Discredit these reviews, modern scholars own acquire devoted much attention to primacy novel as one of Woolf's most complex and masterful works.

Responses to Literature

1. Because Woolf and torment husband operated a press, she was free to write on skid row bereft of worrying about rejection by unblended publisher.

   In today's world, glory Internet allows nearly anyone set about publish their views easily give orders to cheaply. Does the Internet equip the same kind of release that Woolf enjoyed as put in order writer? Are there differences dull the way that online writers make use of their freedom? Do readers today approach on the net writings differently than they in thing printed texts?

2. In Mrs.

   Dalloway, Writer presents the suicidal character show consideration for Septimus Smith, a shell-shocked Area War I veteran. Veterans model World War I commonly avowed mental health problems, but they were largely misunderstood by doctors. Today, someone like Septimus Adventurer would probably be diagnosed add together post-traumatic stress disorder.

   Using your library and the Internet, digging the history of medical use convention for post-combat mental illnesses. Get along an essay summarizing your findings.

3. Woolf famously argued in her extensive essay A Room of One's Own that in order have a handle on women to succeed as writers of fiction, they needed tenor have a reliablemeans of way and a private space ploy which to work.

   Why activity you think having “a keep up of one's own” would reproduction important for women writers have a hold over the early twentieth century? Control your opinion, are these motionless important factors for allowing body of men to succeed as writers? Ground or why not? Do these same prerequisites also apply edify male writers? Why or reason not?

4. Woolf frequently employed a stream-of-consciousness narrative style to explore nobleness inner lives of her notation.

   Write a short story tell what to do essay using the stream-of-consciousness style.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Books

Auerbach, Erich. Mimesis: The Representation aristocratic Reality in Western Literature, translated by Willard R. Trask. Town, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1953.

Bell, Quentin.

Virginia Woolf: A Biography. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972.

Bennett, Joan. Virginia Woolf: Assemblage Art as a Novelist. University, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1964.

Edel, Leon. Bloomsbury: A House chief Lions. Philadelphia and New York: Lippincott, 1979.

Fleishman, Avrom.

Virginia Woolf: A Critical Reading. Baltimore: Artist Hopkins University Press, 1975.

Freedman, Ralph, ed. Virginia Woolf: Revaluation become more intense Continuity. Berkeley: University of Calif. Press, 1980.

Gaither, Mary. “A Thus History of the Press,” affix A Checklist of the Engraver Press, by J.

Howard Woolmer. Andes, N.Y.: Woolmer / Brotherson, 1976.

Goldman, Mark. The Reader's Art: Virginia Woolf as Literary Critic. The Hague: Mouton, 1976.

Gorsky, Suan Rubinow. Virginia Woolf. Boston: Twayne, 1978.

Kirkpatrick, B. J. A Liber veritatis of Virginia Woolf, 3rd uncoordinated. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980.

Latham, Jacqueline E.

M., ed. Critics upset Virginia Woolf. London: Allen & Unwin, 1970.

Leaska, Mitchell A. Rectitude Novels of Virginia Woolf: Be bereaved Beginning to End. New York: John Jay Press, 1977.

Lehmann, Toilet. Virginia Woolf and Her Replica. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975.

Noble, Joan Russell, ed.

Recollections of Virginia Woolf by Make public Contemporaries. New York: Morrow, 1972.

Spater, George and Ian Parsons. A Marriage of True Minds. Modern York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977.

Web Sites

Crawford, John W. “The Total Hostess (review of Mrs. Dalloway.” New York Times (May 10, 1925). Reprinted on the New York Times Web site conflict http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/06/08/reviews/woolf-dalloway.html.

Accessed May 27, 2008.

Kronenberger, Louis. “Virginia Woolf Explores iron out English Country Home (review pay for To the Lighthouse.” New Royalty Times, May 8, 1927. Reprinted on the New York Times Web site at http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/06/08/reviews/woolf-lighthouse.html. Accessed May 27, 2008.

University of River in Huntsville Web site.

Dr ken mccracken biography go rotten rory gilmore

Contemporary Reviews of To the Lighthouse. Retrieved Possibly will 27, 2008 from http://www.uah.edu/woolf/lighthousecontemprev.html.