Virginia Woolf

1882–1895

Virginia Woolf provides insight into her early life in her autobiographical essays, including Reminiscences (1908),^[35] 22 Hyde Park Gate (1921)^[36] and A Sketch of the Past (1940).^[37] Other essays that provide insight into this period include Leslie Stephen (1932).^{[38][lower-alpha 8]} She also alludes to her childhood in her fictional writing. In To The Lighthouse (1927)^[40] Her depiction of the life of the Ramsays in the Hebrides is an only thinly disguised account of the Stephens in Cornwall and the Godrevy Lighthouse they would visit there.^[41][27][42] However, Woolf's understanding of her mother and family evolved considerably between 1907 and 1940, in which the somewhat distant, yet revered figure of her mother becomes more nuanced and filled in.^[43] In February 1891, with her sister Vanessa, Woolf began the Hyde Park Gate News,^[44] chronicling life and events within the Stephen family,^[45][33] and modelled on the popular magazine Tit-Bits. Initially this was mainly Vanessa's and Thoby's articles, but very soon Virginia became the main contributor, with Vanessa as editor. Their mother's response when it first appeared was "Rather clever I think".^[46] The following year the Stephen sisters also used photography to supplement their insights, as did Stella Duckworth.^[47] Vanessa Bell's 1892 portrait of her sister and parents in the Library at Talland House (see image) was one of the family's favourites, and was written about lovingly in Leslie Stephen's memoir.^[48] In 1897 ("the first really lived year of my life)"^[49] Virginia began her first diary, which she kept for the next twelve years,^[50] and a notebook in 1909.^[51]

Virginia was, as she describes it, "born into a large connection, born not of rich parents, but of well—to—do parents, born into a very communicative, literate, letter writing, visiting, articulate, late nineteenth century world".^[52] It was a well-connected family consisting of six children, with two half brothers and a half sister (the Duckworths, from her mother's first marriage), another half sister, Laura (from her father's first marriage), and an older sister, Vanessa and brother Thoby. The following year, another brother Adrian followed. The handicapped Laura Stephen lived with the family until she was institutionalised in 1891.^[53] Julia and Leslie had four children together:^[14]

• Vanessa "Nessa" (30 May 1879 – 1961), married Clive Bell 1907
• Thoby (9 September 1880 – 1906), founded Bloomsbury Group
• Virginia "Jinny", "Ginia" (25 January 1882 – 1941), married Leonard Woolf 1912
• Adrian (27 October 1883 – 1948), married Karin Costelloe 1914

Virginia was born at 22 Hyde Park Gate and lived there till her father's death in 1904. Number 22 Hyde Park Gate, South Kensington, lay at the south east end of Hyde Park Gate, a narrow cul-de-sac running south from Kensington Road, just west of the Royal Albert Hall, and opposite Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park,^[54] where the family regularly took their walks (see Map; Street plan). Built in 1846 by Henry Payne of Hammersmith as one of a row of single family townhouses for the upper middle class,^[55] it soon became too small for their expanding family. At the time of their marriage, it consisted of a basement, two stories and an attic. In July 1886 Leslie Stephen obtained the services of J. W. Penfold, architect, to add additional living space above and behind the existing structure. The substantial renovations added a new top floor (see image of red brick extension), with three bedrooms and a study for himself, converted the original attic into rooms, and added the first bathroom.^{[46][lower-alpha 9]} It was a tall but narrow townhouse, that at that time had no running water. Virginia would later describe it as "a very tall house on the left hand side near the bottom which begins by being stucco and ends by being red brick; which is so high and yet—as I can say now that we have sold it—so rickety that it seems as if a very high wind would topple it over".^[56] The servants worked "downstairs" in the basement. The ground floor had a drawing room, separated by a curtain from the servant's pantry and a library. Above this on the first floor were Julia and Leslie's bedrooms. On the next floor were the Duckworth children's rooms, and above them the day and night nurseries of the Stephen children occupied two further floors.^[57] Finally in the attic, under the eaves, were the servant's bedrooms, accessed by a back staircase.^[20][37][3] Life at 22 Hyde Park Gate was also divided symbolically, as Virginia put it "The division in our lives was curious. Downstairs there was pure convention: upstairs pure intellect. But there was no connection between them", the worlds typified by George Duckworth and Leslie Stephen.^[58] Their mother, it seems was the only one who could span this divide.^[59][60] The house was described as dimly lit and crowded with furniture and paintings.^[61] Within it the younger Stephens formed a close-knit group. Life in London differed sharply from their summers in Cornwall, their outdoor activities consisting mainly of walks in nearby Kensington Gardens, where they would play Hide-and-Seek, and sail their boats on the Round Pond,^[46] while indoors, it revolved around their lessons.^[4]

Leslie Stephen's eminence as an editor, critic, and biographer, and his connection to William Thackeray, meant that his children were raised in an environment filled with the influences of Victorian literary society. Henry James, George Henry Lewes, Alfred Tennyson, Thomas Hardy, Edward Burne-Jones and Virginia's honorary godfather, James Russell Lowell, were among the visitors to the house. Julia Stephen was equally well connected. Her aunt was a pioneering early photographer Julia Margaret Cameron who was also a visitor to the Stephen household. The two Stephen sisters, Vanessa and Virginia, were almost three years apart in age, and exhibited some sibling rivalry. Virginia christened her older sister "the saint" and was far more inclined to exhibit her cleverness than her more reserved sister. Virginia resented the domesticity Victorian tradition forced on them, far more than her sister. They also competed for Thoby's affections.^[62] Virginia would later confess her ambivalence over this rivalry to Duncan Grant in 1917. "indeed one of the concealed worms of my life has been a sister's jealousy — of a sister I mean; and to feed this I have invented such a myth about her that I scarce know one from t'other".^[63]

Virginia showed an early affinity for writing. Although both parents disapproved of formal education for females, writing was considered a respectable profession for women, and her father encouraged her in this respect. Later she would describe this as "ever since I was a little creature, scribbling a story in the manner of Hawthorne on the green plush sofa in the drawing room at St. Ives while the grown-ups dined". By the age of five she was writing letters and could tell her father a story every night. Later she, Vanessa and Adrian would develop the tradition of inventing a serial about their next-door neighbours, every night in the nursery, or in the case of St. Ives, of spirits that resided in the garden. It was her fascination with books that formed the strongest bond between her and her father.^[4] For her tenth birthday, she received an ink-stand, a blotter, drawing book and a box of writing implements.^[46]

Talland House (1882–1894)

Leslie Stephen was in the habit of hiking in Cornwall, and in the spring of 1881 he came across a large white house^[64] in St Ives, Cornwall, and took out a lease on it that September.^[65] Although it had limited amenities,^{[lower-alpha 10]} its main attraction was the view overlooking Porthminster Bay towards the Godrevy Lighthouse,^[4] which the young Virginia could see from the upper windows and was to be the central figure in her To the Lighthouse (1927).^[40] It was a large square house, with a terraced garden, divided by hedges, sloping down towards the sea.^[4] Each year between 1882 and 1894 from mid-July to mid-September the Stephen's leased Talland House^{[4][66][lower-alpha 11]} as a summer residence. Leslie Stephen, who referred to it thus: "a pocket-paradise",^[67] described it as "The pleasantest of my memories... refer to our summers, all of which were passed in Cornwall, especially to the thirteen summers (1882-1894) at St Ives. There we bought the lease of Talland House: a small but roomy house, with a garden of an acre or two all up and down hill, with quaint little terraces divided by hedges of escallonia, a grape-house and kitchen-garden and a so-called 'orchard' beyond".^[68] It was in Leslie's words, a place of "intense domestic happiness".^[69] Virginia herself described the house in great detail:

Activities at Talland

Her brother's keeper: Virginia and Adrian Stephen playing cricket 1886

Julia, Leslie and Virginia, Library, Talland House 1892

Virginia and Vanessa 1894^[70]

In both London and Cornwall, Julia was perpetually entertaining, and was notorious for her manipulation of her guests' lives, constantly matchmaking in the belief everyone should be married, the domestic equivalence of her philanthropy.^[10] As her husband observed "My Julia was of course, though with all due reserve, a bit of a matchmaker".^[71] Amongst their guests in 1893 were the Brookes, whose children, including Rupert Brooke, played with the Stephen children. Rupert and his group of Cambridge Neo-pagans would come to play an important role in their lives in the years prior to the First World War.^[72] While Cornwall was supposed to be a summer respite, Julia Stephen soon immersed herself in the work of caring for the sick and poor there, as well as in London.^{[66][67][lower-alpha 12]} Both at Hyde Park Gate and Talland House, the family mingled with much of the country's literary and artistic circles.^[37] Frequent guests included literary figures such as Henry James and George Meredith,^[71] as well as James Russell Lowell, and the children were exposed to much more intellectual conversations than their mother's at Little Holland House.^[61] The family did not return, following Julia Stephen's death in May 1895.^[67]

For the children it was the highlight of the year, and Virginia's most vivid childhood memories were not of London but of Cornwall. In a diary entry of 22 March 1921,^[73] she described why she felt so connected to Talland House, looking back to a summer day in August 1890. "Why am I so incredibly and incurably romantic about Cornwall? One's past, I suppose; I see children running in the garden … The sound of the sea at night … almost forty years of life, all built on that, permeated by that: so much I could never explain".^[73][4][74] Cornwall inspired aspects of her work, in particular the "St Ives Trilogy" of Jacob's Room (1922),^[75] To the Lighthouse (1927),^[75] and The Waves (1931).^[76][77]

1895–1904

Julia Stephen fell ill with influenza in February 1895, and never properly recovered, dying on 5 May,^[78] when Virginia was only 13. This was a pivotal moment in her life and the beginning of her struggles with mental illness.^[4] Essentially, her life had fallen apart.^[79] The Duckworths were travelling abroad at the time of their mother's death, and Stella returned immediately to take charge and assume her role. That summer, rather than return to the memories of St Ives, the Stephens went to Freshwater, Isle of Wight, where a number of their mother's family lived. It was there that Virginia had the first of her many nervous breakdowns, and Vanessa was forced to assume some of her mother's role in caring for Virginia's mental state.^[78] Stella became engaged to Jack Hills the following year and they were married on 10 April 1897, making Virginia even more dependent on her older sister.

George Duckworth also assumed some of their mother's role, taking upon himself the task of bringing them out into society.^[79] First Vanessa, then Virginia, in both cases an equal disaster, for it was not a rite of passage which resonated with either girl and attracted a scathing critique by Virginia regarding the conventional expectations of young upper class women "Society in those days was a perfectly competent, perfectly complacent, ruthless machine. A girl had no chance against its fangs. No other desires – say to paint, or to write – could be taken seriously".^{[lower-alpha 13][58]} Rather her priorities were to escape from the Victorian conventionality of the downstairs drawing room to a "room of one's own" to pursue her writing aspirations.^[79] She would revisit this criticism in her depiction of Mrs Ramsay stating the duties of a Victorian mother in To the Lighthouse "an unmarried woman has missed the best of life".^[81]

The death of Stella Duckworth, her pregnant surrogate mother, on 19 July 1897, after a long illness,^[82] was a further blow to Virginia's sense of self, and the family dynamics.^[83] Woolf described the period following the death of both her mother and Stella as "1897–1904 — the seven unhappy years", referring to "the lash of a random unheeding flail that pointlessly and brutally killed the two people who should, normally and naturally, have made those years, not perhaps happy but normal and natural".^[84][79] In April 1902 their father became ill, and although he underwent surgery later that year he never fully recovered, dying on 22 February 1904.^[85] Virginia's father's death precipitated a further breakdown.^[86] Later, Virginia would describe this time as one in which she was dealt successive blows as a "broken chrysalis" with wings still creased.^[4] Chrysalis occurs many times in Woolf's writing but the "broken chrysalis" was an image that became a metaphor for those exploring the relationship between Woolf and grief.^[87][88] At his death, Leslie Stephen's net worth was £15,715 6s. 6d.^{[lower-alpha 14]} (probate 23 March 1904)^{[lower-alpha 15][91]}

Education

In the late nineteenth century, education was sharply divided along gender lines, a tradition that Virginia would note and condemn in her writing. Boys were sent to school, and in upper-middle-class families such as the Stephens, this involved private boys schools, often boarding schools, and university.^{[92][93][94][lower-alpha 16]} Girls, if they were afforded the luxury of education, received it from their parents, governesses and tutors.^[100] Virginia was educated by her parents who shared the duty. There was a small classroom off the back of the drawing room, with its many windows, which they found perfect for quiet writing and painting. Julia taught the children Latin, French and History, while Leslie taught them mathematics. They also received piano lessons.^[101] Supplementing their lessons was the children's unrestricted access to Leslie Stephen's vast library, exposing them to much of the literary canon,^[11] resulting in a greater depth of reading than any of their Cambridge contemporaries, Virginia's reading being described as "greedy".^[102] Later she would recall

Even today there may be parents who would doubt the wisdom of allowing a girl of fifteen the free run of a large and quite unexpurgated library. But my father allowed it. There were certain facts - very briefly, very shyly he referred to them. Yet 'Read what you like', he said, and all his books . . . were to be had without asking.^[103]

After Public School, the boys in the family all attended Cambridge University. The girls derived some indirect benefit from this, as the boys introduced them to their friends.^[104] Another source was the conversation of their father's friends, to whom they were exposed. Leslie Stephen described his circle as "most of the literary people of mark...clever young writers and barristers, chiefly of the radical persuasion...we used to meet on Wednesday and Sunday evenings, to smoke and drink and discuss the universe and the reform movement".^[17]

Education

Virginia (3rd from left) with her mother and the Stephen children at their lessons, Talland House c. 1894^{[lower-alpha 17]}

13 Kensington Square, former home of the Ladies' Department, King's College

Later, between the ages of 15 and 19 she was able to pursue higher education. She took courses of study, some at degree level, in beginning and advanced Ancient Greek, intermediate Latin and German, together with continental and English history at the Ladies' Department of King's College London at nearby 13 Kensington Square between 1897 and 1901.^{[lower-alpha 18]} She studied Greek under the eminent scholar George Charles Winter Warr, professor of Classical Literature at King's.^[106] In addition she had private tutoring in German, Greek and Latin. One of her Greek tutors was Clara Pater (1899–1900), who taught at King's.^{[107][105][108]} Another was Janet Case, who involved her in the women's rights movement, and whose obituary Virginia would later write in 1937. Her experiences there led to her 1925 essay On Not Knowing Greek.^[109] Her time at King's also brought her into contact with some of the early reformers of women's higher education such as the principal of the Ladies' Department, Lilian Faithfull (one of the so-called Steamboat ladies), in addition to Pater.^[110] Her sister Vanessa also enrolled at the Ladies' Department (1899–1901). Although the Stephen girls could not attend Cambridge, they were to be profoundly influenced by their brothers' experiences there. When Thoby went up to Trinity in 1899 he became friends with a circle of young men, including Clive Bell, Lytton Strachey, Leonard Woolf and Saxon Sydney-Turner, that he would soon introduce to his sisters at the Trinity May Ball in 1900.^{[lower-alpha 19][113]} These men formed a reading group they named the Midnight Society.^[114][115]

Relationships with family

Although Virginia expressed the opinion that her father was her favourite parent, and although she had only just turned thirteen when her mother died, she was profoundly influenced by her mother throughout her life. It was Virginia who famously stated that "for we think back through our mothers if we are women",^[116] and invoked the image of her mother repeatedly throughout her life in her diaries,^[117] her letters^[118] and a number of her autobiographical essays, including Reminiscences (1908),^[35] 22 Hyde Park Gate (1921)^[36] and A Sketch of the Past (1940),^[37] frequently evoking her memories with the words "I see her ...".^[119] She also alludes to her childhood in her fictional writing. In To The Lighthouse (1927)^[40] the artist, Lily Briscoe, attempts to paint Mrs Ramsay, a complex character based on Julia Stephen, and repeatedly comments on the fact that she was "astonishingly beautiful".^[120] Her depiction of the life of the Ramsays in the Hebrides is an only thinly disguised account of the Stephens in Cornwall and the Godrevy Lighthouse they would visit there.^[41][27][42] However, Woolf's understanding of her mother and family evolved considerably between 1907 and 1940, in which the somewhat distant, yet revered figure becomes more nuanced and filled in.^[43]

While her father painted Julia Stephen's work in terms of reverence, Woolf drew a sharp distinction between her mother's work and "the mischievous philanthropy which other women practise so complacently and often with such disastrous results". She describes her degree of sympathy, engagement, judgement and decisiveness, and her sense of both irony and the absurd. She recalls trying to recapture "the clear round voice, or the sight of the beautiful figure, so upright and distinct, in its long shabby cloak, with the head held at a certain angle, so that the eye looked straight out at you".^[121] Julia Stephen dealt with her husband's depressions and his need for attention, which created resentment in her children, boosted his self-confidence, nursed her parents in their final illness, and had many commitments outside the home that would eventually wear her down. Her frequent absences and the demands of her husband instilled a sense of insecurity in her children that had a lasting effect on her daughters.^[122] In considering the demands on her mother, Woolf described her father as "fifteen years her elder, difficult, exacting, dependent on her" and reflected that this was at the expense of the amount of attention she could spare her young children, "a general presence rather than a particular person to a child",^[123][124] reflecting that she rarely ever spent a moment alone with her mother, "someone was always interrupting".^[125] Woolf was ambivalent about all this, yet eager to separate herself from this model of utter selflessness. In To the Lighthouse she describes it as "boasting of her capacity to surround and protect, there was scarcely a shell of herself left for her to know herself by; all was so lavished and spent".^[126] At the same time she admired the strengths of her mother's womanly ideals. Given Julia's frequent absences and commitments, the young Stephen children became increasingly dependent on Stella Duckworth, who emulated her mother's selflessness, as Woolf wrote "Stella was always the beautiful attendant handmaid ... making it the central duty of her life".^[127]

Julia Stephen greatly admired her husband's intellect, and although she knew her own mind, thought little of her own. As Woolf observed "she never belittled her own works, thinking them, if properly discharged, of equal, though other, importance with her husband's". She believed with certainty in her role as the centre of her activities, and the person who held everything together,^[10] with a firm sense of what was important and valuing devotion. Of the two parents, Julia's "nervous energy dominated the family".^[128] While Virginia identified most closely with her father, Vanessa stated her mother was her favourite parent.^[129] Angelica Garnett recalls how Virginia asked Vanessa which parent she preferred, although Vanessa considered it a question that "one ought not to ask", she was unequivocal in answering "Mother"^[128] yet the centrality of her mother to Virginia's world is expressed in this description of her "Certainly there she was, in the very centre of that great Cathedral space which was childhood; there she was from the very first".^[130] Virginia observed that her half-sister, Stella, the oldest daughter, led a life of total subservience to her mother, incorporating her ideals of love and service.^[131] Virginia quickly learned, that like her father, being ill was the only reliable way of gaining the attention of her mother, who prided herself on her sickroom nursing.^[122][125]

Other issues the children had to deal with was Leslie Stephen's temper, Woolf describing him as "the tyrant father".^[132][133] Eventually she became deeply ambivalent about her father. He had given her his ring on her eighteenth birthday and she had a deep emotional attachment as his literary heir, writing about her "great devotion for him". Yet, like Vanessa, she also saw him as victimiser and tyrant.^[134] She had as lasting ambivalence towards him through her life, albeit one that evolved. Her adolescent image was of an "Eminent Victorian" and tyrant but as she grew older she began to realise how much of him was in her "I have been dipping into old letters and father's memoirs....so candid and reasonable and transparent—and had such a fastidious delicate mind, educated, and transparent",^[135] she wrote (December 22, 1940). She was in turn both fascinated and condemnatory of Leslie Stephen " She [her mother] has haunted me: but then, so did that old wretch my father. . . . I was more like him than her, I think; and therefore more critical: but he was an adorable man, and somehow, tremendous".^{[lower-alpha 20][4][137]}

Sexual abuse

Much has been made of Virginia's statements that she was continually sexually abused during the whole time that she lived at 22 Hyde Park Gate, as a possible cause of her mental health issues,^[138][139] though there are likely to be a number of contributing factors (see Mental health). She states that she first remembers being molested by Gerald Duckworth when she was six. It has been suggested that this led to a lifetime of sexual fear and resistance to masculine authority.^[4] Against a background of over committed and distant parents, suggestions that this was a dysfunctional family must be evaluated. These include evidence of sexual abuse of the Stephen girls by their older Duckworth stepbrothers, and by their cousin, James Kenneth Stephen (1859–1892), at least of Stella Duckworth.^{[lower-alpha 21]} Laura is also thought to have been abused.^[140] The most graphic account is by Louise DeSalvo,^[141] but other authors and reviewers have been more cautious.^[142][143] Lee states that "The evidence is strong enough, and yet ambiguous enough, to open the way for conflicting psychobiographical interpretations that draw quite different shapes of Virginia Woolf's interior life"^[144]

Gordon Square (1904–1907)

On their father's death, the Stephens first instinct was to escape from the dark house of yet more mourning, and this they did immediately, accompanied by George, travelling to Manorbier, on the coast of Pembrokeshire on 27 February. There they spent a month, and it was there that Virginia first came to realise her destiny was as a writer, as she recalls in her diary of 3 September 1922.^[73] They then further pursued their new found freedom by spending April in Italy and France, where they met up with Clive Bell again.^[145] Virginia then suffered her second nervous breakdown, and first suicidal attempt on 10 May, and convalesced over the next three months.^[146]

Before their father died, the Stephens had discussed the need to leave South Kensington in the West End, with its tragic memories and their parents' relations.^[147] George Duckworth was 35, his brother Gerald 33. The Stephen children were now between 24 and 20. Virginia was 22. Vanessa and Adrian decided to sell 22 Hyde Park Gate in respectable South Kensington and move to Bloomsbury. Bohemian Bloomsbury, with its characteristic leafy squares seemed sufficiently far away, geographically and socially, and was a much cheaper neighbourhood to rent in (see Map). They had not inherited much and they were unsure about their finances.^[148] Also Bloomsbury was close to the Slade School which Vanessa was then attending. While Gerald was quite happy to move on and find himself a bachelor establishment, George who had always assumed the role of quasi-parent decided to accompany them, much to their dismay.^[148] It was then that Lady Margaret Herbert^{[lower-alpha 22]} appeared on the scene, George proposed, was accepted and married in September, leaving the Stephens to their own devices.^[149]

Vanessa found a house at 46 Gordon Square in Bloomsbury, and they moved in November, to be joined by Virginia now sufficiently recovered. It was at Gordon Square that the Stephens began to regularly entertain Thoby's intellectual friends in March 1905. The circle, which largely came from the Cambridge Apostles, included writers (Saxon Sydney-Turner, Lytton Strachey) and critics (Clive Bell, Desmond MacCarthy) with Thursday evening "At Homes" that became known as the Thursday Club, a vision of recreating Trinity College ("Cambridge in London"^[150]).^[151] This circle formed the nucleus of the intellectual circle of writers and artists known as the Bloomsbury Group.^{[114][115][152]} Later it would include John Maynard Keynes (1907), Duncan Grant (1908), E. M. Forster (1910), Roger Fry (1910), Leonard Woolf (1911) and David Garnett (1914).^{[lower-alpha 23][154][155]}

The Stephens and their Bloomsbury Friends

Vanessa Stephen 1902

Thoby Stephen 1902

Adrian Stephen
Karin Stephen 1914

Clive Bell 1910

Lytton Strachey
Sydney Saxon-Turner 1917

Desmond MacCarthy 1912

In 1905 Virginia and Adrian visited Portugal and Spain, Clive Bell proposed to Vanessa, but was declined, while Virginia began teaching evening classes at Morley College and Vanessa added another event to their calendar with the Friday Club, dedicated to the discussion of and later exhibition of the fine arts.^[114][156] This introduced some new people into their circle, including Vanessa's friends from the Royal Academy and Slade, such as Henry Lamb and Gwen Darwin (who became secretary),^[157] but also the eighteen year old Katherine Laird ("Ka") Cox (1887–1938), who was about to go up to Newnham.^{[lower-alpha 24][161]} Although Virginia did not actually meet Ka till much later, Ka would come to play an important part in her life. Ka and others brought the Bloomsbury Group into contact with another, slightly younger, group of Cambridge intellectuals to whom the Stephen sisters gave the name "Neo-pagans". The Friday Club continued till 1913.^[162]

The following year, 1906, Virginia suffered two further losses. Her cherished brother Thoby, who was only 26, died of typhoid, following a trip they had all taken to Greece, and immediately after Vanessa accepted Clive's third proposal.^[163][164] Vanessa and Clive were married in February 1907 and as a couple, their interest in avant garde art would have an important influence on Woolf's further development as an author.^[165] With Vanessa's marriage, Virginia and Adrian needed to find a new home.^[166]

Fitzroy Square (1907–1911)

Virginia moved into 29 Fitzroy Square in April 1907, a house on the west side of the street, formerly occupied by George Bernard Shaw. It was in Fitzrovia, immediately to the west of Bloomsbury but still relatively close to her sister at Gordon Square. The two sisters continued to travel together, visiting Paris in March. Adrian was now to play a much larger part in Virginia's life, and they resumed the Thursday Club in October at their new home, while Gordon Square became the venue for the Play Reading Society in December. During this period the group began to increasingly explore progressive ideas, first in speech, and then in conduct, Vanessa proclaiming in 1910 a libertarian society with sexual freedom for all.^[167]

Meanwhile, Virginia began work on her first novel, Melymbrosia that eventually became The Voyage Out (1915).^[168][169] Vanessa's first child, Julian was born in February 1908, and in September Virginia accompanied the Bells to Italy and France.^[170] It was during this time that Virginia's rivalry with her sister resurfaced, flirting with Clive, which he reciprocated, and which lasted on and off from 1908 to 1914, by which time her sister's marriage was breaking down.^[171] On 17 February 1909, Lytton Strachey proposed to Virginia and she accepted, but he then withdrew the offer.^[172]

It was while she was at Fitzroy Square that the question arose of Virginia needing a quiet country retreat, and she required a six-week rest cure and sought the countryside away from London as much as possible. In December, she and Adrian stayed at Lewes and started exploring the area of Sussex around the town. She started to want a place of her own, like St Ives, but closer to London. She soon found a property in nearby Firle (see below), maintaining a relationship with that area for the rest of her life.^[173][174]

Dreadnought hoax 1910

Main article: Dreadnought hoax

Several members of the group attained notoriety in 1910 with the Dreadnought hoax, which Virginia participated in disguised as a male Abyssinian royal. Her complete 1940 talk on the hoax was discovered and is published in the memoirs collected in the expanded edition of The Platform of Time (2008).^[175]

Brunswick Square (1911–1912)

In October 1911 the lease on Fitzroy Square was running out and Virginia and Adrian decided to give up their home on Fitzroy Square in favour of a different living arrangement, moving to a four-storied house at 38 Brunswick Square in Bloomsbury proper^{[lower-alpha 25]} in November. Virginia saw it as a new opportunity, "we are going to try all kinds of experiments", she told Ottoline Morrell.^[174] Adrian occupied the second floor, with Maynard Keynes and Duncan Grant sharing the ground floor.^[179] This arrangement for a single woman was considered scandalous, and George Duckworth was horrified. The house was adjacent to the Foundling Hospital, much to Virginia's amusement as an unchaperoned single woman.^[176] Originally Ka Cox was supposed to share in the arrangements, but opposition came from Rupert Brooke, who was involved with her and pressured her to abandon the idea.^[174] At the house, Duncan Grant decorated Adrian Stephen's rooms (see image).^[180]

Hogarth Press (1917–1938)

Woolf's in Richmond

17 The Green

Hogarth House

Virginia had taken up book-binding as a pastime in October 1901, at the age of 19,^[206][207] and the Woolfs had been discussing setting up a publishing house for some time, and at the end of 1916 started making plans. Having discovered that they were not eligible to enroll in the St Bride School of Printing, they started purchasing supplies after seeking advice from the Excelsior Printing Supply Company on Farringdon Road in March 1917, and soon they had a printing press set up on their dining room table at Hogarth House, and the Hogarth Press was born.^[207]

Their first publication was Two Stories in July 1917, inscribed Publication No. 1, and consisted of two short stories, "The Mark on the Wall"^[208] by Virginia Woolf and Three Jews by Leonard Woolf. The work consisted of 32 pages, hand bound and sewn, and illustrated by woodcuts designed by Dora Carrington. The illustrations were a success, leading Virginia to remark that the press was "specially good at printing pictures, and we see that we must make a practice of always having pictures" (July 13, 1917). The process took two and a half months with a production run of 150 copies.^[209] Other short short stories followed, including Kew Gardens (1919)^[210] with a woodblock by Vanessa Bell as frontispiece.^[172] Subsequently, Bell added further illustrations, adorning each page of the text.^[211]

The press subsequently published Virginia's novels along with works by T. S. Eliot, Laurens van der Post, and others.^[212] The Press also commissioned works by contemporary artists, including Dora Carrington and Vanessa Bell. Woolf believed that to break free of a patriarchal society that women writers needed a "room of their own" to develop and often fantasised about an "Outsider's Society" where women writers would create a virtual private space for themselves via their writings to develop a feminist critique of society.^[213] Though Woolf never created the "Outsider's society", the Hogarth Press was the closest approximation as the Woolfs chose to publish books by writers that took unconventional points of view to form a reading community.^[213] Initially the press concentrated on small experimental publications, of little interest to large commercial publishers. Until 1930, Woolf often helped her husband print the Hogarth books as the money for employees was not there.^[213] Virginia relinquished her interest in 1938. After it was bombed in September 1940, the press was moved to Letchworth for the remainder of the war.^[214] Both the Woolfs were internationalists and pacifists who believed that promoting understanding between peoples was the best way to avoid another world war and chose quite consciously to publish works by foreign authors of whom the British reading public were unaware.^[213] The first non-British author to be published was the Soviet writer Maxim Gorky, the book Reminiscences of Leo Nikolaiovich Tolstoy in 1920, dealing with his friendship with Count Leo Tolstoy.^[207]

Memoir Club (1920–1941)

Bloomsberries

Mary MacCarthy & son 1915

E.M.Forster 1917

Duncan Grant (L)
John Maynard Keynes 1912

Roger Fry 1913

David Garnett ca. 1902

1920 saw a postwar reconstitution of the Bloomsbury Group, under the title of the Memoir Club, which as the name suggests focussed on self-writing, in the manner of Proust's A La Recherche, and inspired some of the most influential books of the twentieth century. The Group, which had been scattered by the war, was reconvened by Mary ('Molly') MacCarthy who called them "Bloomsberries", and operated under rules derived from the Cambridge Apostles, an elite university debating society that a number of them had been members of. These rules emphasised candour and openness. Among the 125 memoirs presented, Virginia contributed three that were published posthumously in 1976, in the autobiographical anthology Moments of Being.^[215] These were 22 Hyde Park Gate (1921), Old Bloomsbury (1922) and Am I a Snob? (1936).^[216]

Vita Sackville-West (1922–1941)

The ethos of the Bloomsbury group encouraged a liberal approach to sexuality, and on December 14, 1922^[217] she met the writer and gardener Vita Sackville-West,^[197] wife of Harold Nicolson, while dining with Clive Bell. Writing in her diary the next day, she referred to meeting "the lovely gifted aristocratic Sackville West".^[218] At the time, Sackville-West was the more successful writer as both poet and novelist,^[219] commercially and critically, and it was not until after Woolf's death that she became considered the better writer.^[220] After a tentative start, they began a sexual relationship, which, according to Sackville-West in a letter to her husband on August 17, 1926, was only twice consummated.^[221] The relationship reached its peak between 1925 and 1928, evolving into more of a friendship through the 1930s,^[222] though Woolf was also inclined to brag of her affairs with other women within her intimate circle, such as Sibyl Colefax and Comtesse de Polignac.^[223] This period of intimacy was to prove fruitful for both authors, Woolf producing three novels, To the Lighthouse (1927), Orlando (1928) and The Waves (1931) as well as a number of essays, including Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown (1924)^[224] and A Letter to a Young Poet (1932).^[225][219]

Sackville-West worked tirelessly to lift up Woolf's self-esteem, encouraging her not to view herself as a quasi-reclusive inclined to sickness who should hide herself away from the world, but rather offered praise for her liveliness and sense of wit, her health, her intelligence and achievements as a writer.^[226] Sackville-West led Woolf to reappraise herself, developing a more positive self-image, and the feeling that her writings were the products of her strengths rather than her weakness.^[226] Starting at the age of 15, Woolf had believed the diagnosis by her father and his doctor that reading and writing were deleterious to her nervous condition, requiring a regime of physical labour such as gardening to prevent a total nervous collapse. This led Woolf to spend much time obsessively engaging in such physical labour.^[226] Sackville-West was the first to argue to Woolf she had been misdiagnosed, and that it was far better to engage in reading and writing to calm her nerves—advice that was taken.^[226] Under the influence of Sackville-West, Woolf learned to deal with her nervous ailments by switching between various forms of intellectual activities such as reading, writing and book reviews, instead of spending her time in physical activities that sapped her strength and worsened her nerves.^[226] Sackville-West chose the financially struggling Hogarth Press as her publisher in order to assist the Woolfs financially. Seducers in Ecuador, the first of the novels by Sackville-West published by Hogarth, was not a success, selling only 1500 copies in its first year, but the next Sackville-West novel they published, The Edwardians, was a bestseller that sold 30,000 copies in its first six months.^[226] Sackville-West's novels, though not typical of the Hogarth Press, saved Hogarth, taking them from the red into the black.^[226] However, Woolf was not always appreciative of the fact that it was Sackville-West's books that kept the Hogarth Press profitable, writing dismissively in 1933 of her "servant girl" novels.^[226] The financial security allowed by the good sales of Sackville-West's novels in turn allowed Woolf to engage in more experimental work, such as The Waves, as Woolf had to be cautious when she depended upon Hogarth entirely for her income.^[226]

In 1928, Woolf presented Sackville-West with Orlando,^[200] a fantastical biography in which the eponymous hero's life spans three centuries and both sexes. It was published in October, shortly after the two women spent a week travelling together in France, that September.^[227] Nigel Nicolson, Vita Sackville-West's son, wrote, "The effect of Vita on Virginia is all contained in Orlando, the longest and most charming love letter in literature, in which she explores Vita, weaves her in and out of the centuries, tosses her from one sex to the other, plays with her, dresses her in furs, lace and emeralds, teases her, flirts with her, drops a veil of mist around her."^[228] After their affair ended, the two women remained friends until Woolf's death in 1941. Virginia Woolf also remained close to her surviving siblings, Adrian and Vanessa; Thoby had died of typhoid fever at the age of 26.^[229]

Novels

Her first novel, The Voyage Out,^[168] was published in 1915 at the age of 33, by her half-brother's imprint, Gerald Duckworth and Company Ltd. This novel was originally titled Melymbrosia, but Woolf repeatedly changed the draft. An earlier version of The Voyage Out has been reconstructed by Woolf scholar Louise DeSalvo and is now available to the public under the intended title. DeSalvo argues that many of the changes Woolf made in the text were in response to changes in her own life.^[314] The novel is set on a ship bound for South America, and a group of young Edwardians onboard and their various mismatched yearnings and misunderstandings. In the novel are hints of themes that would emerge in later work, including the gap between preceding thought and the spoken word that follows, and the lack of concordance between expression and underlying intention, together with how these reveal to us aspects of the nature of love.^[315]

"Mrs Dalloway (1925)^[199] centres on the efforts of Clarissa Dalloway, a middle-aged society woman, to organise a party, even as her life is paralleled with that of Septimus Warren Smith, a working-class veteran who has returned from the First World War bearing deep psychological scars",^[313]

"To the Lighthouse (1927)^[40] is set on two days ten years apart. The plot centres on the Ramsay family's anticipation of and reflection upon a visit to a lighthouse and the connected familial tensions. One of the primary themes of the novel is the struggle in the creative process that beset painter Lily Briscoe while she struggles to paint in the midst of the family drama. The novel is also a meditation upon the lives of a nation's inhabitants in the midst of war, and of the people left behind."^[313] It also explores the passage of time, and how women are forced by society to allow men to take emotional strength from them.^[316]

Orlando: A Biography (1928)^[200] is one of Virginia Woolf's lightest novels. A parodic biography of a young nobleman who lives for three centuries without ageing much past thirty (but who does abruptly turn into a woman), the book is in part a portrait of Woolf's lover Vita Sackville-West. It was meant to console Vita for the loss of her ancestral home, Knole House, though it is also a satirical treatment of Vita and her work. In Orlando, the techniques of historical biographers are being ridiculed; the character of a pompous biographer is being assumed in order for it to be mocked.^[317]

"The Waves (1931) presents a group of six friends whose reflections, which are closer to recitatives than to interior monologues proper, create a wave-like atmosphere that is more akin to a prose poem than to a plot-centred novel".^[313]

Flush: A Biography (1933)^[318] is a part-fiction, part-biography of the cocker spaniel owned by Victorian poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The book is written from the dog's point of view. Woolf was inspired to write this book from the success of the Rudolf Besier play The Barretts of Wimpole Street. In the play, Flush is on stage for much of the action. The play was produced for the first time in 1932 by the actress Katharine Cornell.

"Her last work, Between the Acts (1941),^[247] sums up and magnifies Woolf's chief preoccupations: the transformation of life through art, sexual ambivalence, and meditation on the themes of flux of time and life, presented simultaneously as corrosion and rejuvenation—all set in a highly imaginative and symbolic narrative encompassing almost all of English history."^[313] This book is the most lyrical of all her works, not only in feeling but in style, being chiefly written in verse.^[319] While Woolf's work can be understood as consistently in dialogue with the Bloomsbury group, particularly its tendency (informed by G. E. Moore, among others) towards doctrinaire rationalism, it is not a simple recapitulation of the coterie's ideals.^[16]

Themes

Woolf's fiction has been studied for its insight into many themes including war, shell shock, witchcraft, and the role of social class in contemporary modern British society.^[320] In the postwar Mrs. Dalloway (1925),^[199] Woolf addresses the moral dilemma of war and its effects^[321][322] and provides an authentic voice for soldiers returning from World War I, suffering from shell shock, in the person of Septimus Smith.^[323] In A Room of One's Own (1929) Woolf equates historical accusations of witchcraft with creativity and genius among women^[324] "When, however, one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman possessed by devils, ...then I think we are on the track of a lost novelist, a suppressed poet, of some mute and inglorious Jane Austen".^[325] Throughout her work Woolf tried to evaluate the degree to which her privileged background framed the lens through which she viewed class.^[326][244] She both examined her own position as someone who would be considered an elitist snob, but attacked the class structure of Britain as she found it. In her 1936 essay Am I a Snob?,^[327] she examined her values and those of the privileged circle she existed in. She concluded she was, and subsequent critics and supporters have tried to deal with the dilemma of being both elite and a social critic.^{[328][329][330]}

Despite the considerable conceptual difficulties, given Woolf's idiosyncratic use of language,^[331] her works have been translated into over 50 languages.^[320][332] Some writers, such as the Belgian Marguerite Yourcenar having had rather tense encounters with her, while others such as the Argentinian Jorge Luis Borges produced versions that were highly controversial.^[331][265]

Drama

Virginia Woolf researched the life of her great-aunt, the photographer Julia Margaret Cameron, publishing her findings in an essay titled Pattledom (1925),^[333] and later in her introduction to her 1926 edition of Cameron's photographs.^[334][335] She had begun work on a play based on an episode in Cameron's life in 1923, but abandoned it. Finally it was performed on January 18, 1935 at the studio of her sister, Vanessa Bell on Fitzroy Street in 1935.^[336] Woolf directed it herself, and the cast were mainly members of the Bloomsbury Group, including herself. Freshwater is a short three act comedy satirizing the Victorian era, that was only performed once in Woolf's lifetime.^[202] Beneath the comedic elements, there is an exploratin of both generational change and artistic freedom. Both Cameron and Woolf fought against the class and gender dynamics of Victorianism^[337] and the play shows links to both To the Lighthouse and A Room of One's Own that would follow.^[335]

A Room of One's Own

Amongst Woolf's non fiction works, one of the best known is A Room of One's Own (1929),^[201] a book-length essay. Considered a key work of feminist literary criticism, it was written following two lectures she delivered on "Women and Fiction" at Cambridge University the previous year. In it, she examines the historical disempowerment women have faced in many spheres, including social, educational and financial. One of her most famous dicta is contained within the book "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction". Much of her argument ("to show you how I arrived at this opinion about the room and the money") is developed through the "unsolved problems" of women and fiction writing to arrive at her conclusion, although she claimed that was only "an opinion upon one minor point".^[341] In doing so, she states a good deal about the nature of women and fiction, employing a quasi-fictional style as she examines where women writers failed because of lack of resources and opportunities, examining along the way the experiences of the Brontës, George Eliot and George Sand, as well as the fictional character of Shakespeare's sister, equipped with the same genius but not position. She contrasted these women who accepted a deferential status, to Jane Austen who wrote entirely as a woman.^[342]