Virginia Woolf (January 25th 1882 - March 28th 1941) is a English Woman of letters and a Féministe. During the inter-war period, it was an outstanding figure of the London literary company and a member of the Bloomsbury Group.

Biography

Born Adeline Virginia Stephen with London from Sir Leslie Stephen and Julia Princep Duckworth (1846 - 1895), she was educated by her parents in their residence of 22 Hyde Park Gate, Kensington in a literary environment of the high society.

The parents of Virginia were both widowers when he married, thus their house gathered the children of three different marriages. Children of Julia and its first husband Herbert Duckworth: George Duckworth (1868 - 1934); Stella Duckworth (1869 - 1897); and of Gerald Duckworth (1870 - 1937). The girl of Leslie and her first wife Minny Thackeray: Laura Makepeace Stephen which was diagnosed mental handicapped person and lived with them before being placed in an asylum in 1891 until the end of its days. Lastly, children of Leslie and Julia: Vanessa Stephen (1879 - 1961); Thoby Stephen (1880 - 1906); Virginia and Adrian Stephen (1883 - 1948).

Sir Leslie Stephen was a writer, an editor and an eminent mountaineer. Its bonds with William Thackeray (widowed of the oldest daughter of Thackeray) show that Virginia Woolf was educated in an atmosphere influenced by the literary community victorienne.

Henry James, George Henry Lewes, Julia Margaret Cameron (aunt de Julia Duckworth) and James Russell Lowell, which was the godfather of Virginia, also formed part of its knowledge. Julia Duckworth Stephen maintained moreover many relations. Downward of following of Marie Antoinette, it was originating in a family famous for the beauties which composed it and which left a trace in the company victorienne as models of the painters préraphaélites and of the photographers of the time. In addition to these influences, Virginia had access to the vast library of its residence of 22 Hyde Park Gate, which enabled him to discover the traditional ones and the English literature (with the difference of his/her brothers which followed a traditional education).

In its memories, its sharpest memories of childhood are however not in London, but with St Ives in Cornouailles where its family spent all her summers until 1895. The memories of holidays in family, the impressions left by the landscape and the headlight Godevry (Godrevy Lighthouse), were notable sources of inspiration of its novels, in particular " Travel in Phare" (" To the Lighthouse").

The death of his/her mother, deceased of the influenza, and that of his/her Stella half-sister two years later, involved Virginia in its first nervous breakdown. The death of his/her father in 1904 caused its most worrying collapse, it was briefly interned.

The current specialists estimate that its depressions and the recurring periods of depress were also due to the sexual abuses of which it and her Vanessa sister were victims on behalf of their half-brothers George and Gerald (to which Woolf refers in its autobiographical tests " With Sketch off the Past" and 22 Hyde Park Gate ).

The modern diagnoses would speak about bipolar Trouble, a disease which would have marked its life and its work and control perhaps with the suicide.

After the death of his/her father (Sir Leslie Stephen, writer and critical literary) in 1904 and its second nervous breakdown, Virginia, Vanessa and Adrian sold 22 Hyde Park Gate and bought a house in 46 Gordons Square in Bloomsbury. They became acquainted then there with Lytton Strachey, Clive Beautiful, Saxon Sydney-Turner, Duncan Grant and Leonard Woolf (a former student of Cambridge, member of the Cambridge Apostles just like Strachey). They formed together the core of the circle of intellectuals known under the name of Bloomsbury Group.

Virginia Woolf married the writer Leonard Woolf in 1912. It called it during their engagement " the Jew without the sou". Several biographers supposed that their marriage fully had never been consumed, and that the sexuality of Virginia Woolf was mainly turned towards the women. However, the husbands had very strong bonds, and in 1937 Woolf described in its newspaper makes it be a wife like an enormous pleasure and its marriage like complete. They worked together as editors: they founded in 1917 the house Hogarth Press, which published the majority of works of Virginia Woolf.

The environment of the group of Bloomsbury encouraged the meetings and the connections, and in 1922, Woolf met Vita Sackville-West. After a test, they started a connection which lasted all along the years 1920. In 1928, Woolf took as a starting point Vita Sackville-West for Orlando , a fantastic biography in which the hero éponyme crosses the centuries and changes sex. Nigel Nicolson, wire of Vita Sackville-West, called it " longest and the most charming love letter of the littérature." After the end of their connection, the two women remained friendly.

Among his larger friends, one counts Madge Vaughn (the girl of John Addington Symonds, which inspired the character of Mrs. Dalloway), Purple Dickinson, and the compositrice Ethel Smyth. It was also very close to her sister Vanessa Bell.

In 1941, Virginia Woolf commits suicide. She fills her pockets with stones and throws herself in the Ouse river, close to her house of Rodmell. She leaves a note to her husband: “I have the certainty which I will become insane: I feel that we will not be able to still support one of these terrible periods. I feel that I will not go back from there this time. I start to hear voices and donot can concentrate me. Then I make what seem to be the best thing to be made. You gave me greatest possible happiness… I cannot fight any more, I know that I waste your life, that without me you could work. ”

Work

It begins the writing like community activity in 1905, initially for the literary supplement of the Times . In 1912, it marries Leonard Woolf, civil servant and political theorist. Its first novel, The Travels Out , is published in 1915. It continues to publish novels and tests as intellectual, which meet a success as well near the criticism as of the general public. The majority of its works will be published in account of author to the Hogarth presses. She is regarded as one of the largest novelists of the XXe century and largest innovating in the English language. In its works, it tries out with acuity the subjacent reasons for its characters, as well psychological as emotive, as well as the various possibilities of the narration and the chronology parcelled out. According to Edward Morgan Forster, it pushed the English language “a little more against darkness”; the influence of its literary achievements and its creativity is still sensitive today.

Recent work

Recently, of the studies on Virginia Woolf concentrated on the feminist topics and lesbians in his work, as in the anthology of critical tests published in 1997: Virginia Woolf: Lesbian Readings , published by Eileen Barrett and Patricia Cramer. Louise A. DeSalvo proposes a treatment of the incestueux sexual abuse which V. Woolf undergoes when it was young in Virginia Woolf: The Impact off Childhood Sexual Deceives one her Life and World . Its imaginary is also studied for its depth of sight in topics like the syndrome commotionnel, the war, the classes and the modern British company. Most known of its nonromantic works, in particular a room with oneself and Three Guineas , treat future of female education and role of the women authors in the Western literary guns.

In 2002, The Hours , a film based on the life of Virginia Woolf and the effect of its novel Mrs. Dalloway , was nominated for Academy Award of best film. This one was adapted of the same novel titrates Michael Cunningham, published in 1998 and Prix Pulitzer. The Hours was the provisional title of V. Woolf for Mrs. Dalloway . Many specialists in V. Woolf are highly critical on the painting which the film of V. Woolf and its works gives. According to them, neither the novel, nor the film could be regarded as a correct talk or a literary criticism of Mrs. Dalloway

List works

• The Travels out (1915). Translations in French:

• the Crossing of appearances , transl. L. Savitzky, Paris, 1948, rééd. 1982 and 1985.
• Cruising , transl. Armel Guerne, Robert Marine, 1952.
• Night and day (1919)
• the Room of Jacob (1922)
• Mrs. Dalloway (1925)
• Victorian Photographs off Famous Men and Fair Women (1926) - introduction of the first monograph sur
  the photographer Julia Margaret Cameron, of which it was the small-niece.
• the walk with the headlight , also translated under the title '' Towards the headlight '' (1927) ( To the lighthouse )
• the Waves (1929)
• The Years (1937)
• Between the acts (1941)
• Monday gold Tuesday (1921)
• has Haunted House and Other Stories (1943)
• Lettre with a young poet ( has Letter to has Young Poet ) (1932)
• Orlando (1928)
• Flush (1933)
• The Common Reader (1925)
• a room with oneself (1929)
• The Second Common Reader (1933)
• Three Guineas (1938)
• Life of Roger Fry (1940)
• The Death off the Moth and Other Essays (1942)
• The Moment and Other Essays (1948)
• Moments off Being
• Modern Fiction (1919)
• the art of the novel (1962)

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