The Facts

Virginia Woolf was born Adeline Virginia Stephen in 1882, the third child of four children (Vanessa, Thoby, Virginia and Adrian) born to Leslie and Julia Stephen. Leslie Stephen was a writer and editor; Julia Stephen was the archetypal Victorian housewife. Both Virginia Stephen's parents had been married before, and widowed. With his previous wife her father had one child, Laura, who was mentally or developmentally handicapped, and her mother had three children from her first marriage, George, Stella and Gerald. Effectively, then, Virginia grew up as one of eight children. Her mother died in 1895 when she was thirteen, and two years later her half-sister Stella, who had taken over management of the household after her mother's death, died three months after her wedding. In February 1904 Virginia's father died and Virginia suffered a serious breakdown. Later that year, the Stephen children moved from the oppressive family house at Hyde Park Gate to a more Bohemian address in Gordon Square, Bloomsbury, where the famous "Bloomsbury Group" began to take shape. In 1906 Virginia's brother Thoby died. Virginia continued to write and to publish short journalistic pieces and book reviews. She also probably started work on her first novel. In 1912 she married Leonard Woolf, and suffered periods of severe mental illness until 1915, when her novel, The Voyage Out, was published. In 1917 she and Leonard bought a printing press and started the Hogarth Press, partly so that they could publish their own work without interference from commercial publishers. Leonard's attitude to his wife was loyal and protective. He thought of her as a genius, whose mental balance must be protected at all costs so that she would be able to write, and find their life together, after the first turbulent years, was calm and productive. Virginia Woolf gradually became known as one of the leading English modernists. Some of her most famous works are Mrs. Dalloway (1924), To the Lighthouse (1927), A Room of One's Own (1929), The Waves (1931), The Years (1937), and Between the Acts (1941). In 1941, anxiety about the Second World War and about Between the Acts brought Virginia close, once again, to mental breakdown, and in March, she took her own life by drowning herself in the River Ouse in Sussex.
 

	What aspects of Virginia Woolf's life does the writer of this short, apparently factual piece seem to regard as the most significant?
	Do you think it is possible to write an objective biography? Is the biographical sketch above objective?

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