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Virginia Woolf –

Top 10 Incredible Facts about Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf was an English writer, considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device.

Woolf was born into an affluent household in South Kensington, London, the seventh child of Julia Prinsep Jackson and Leslie Stephen in a blended family of eight which included the modernist painter Vanessa Bell. She was home-schooled in English classics and Victorian literature from a young age. From 1897 to 1901, she attended the Ladies’ Department of King’s College London, where she studied classics and history and came into contact with early reformers of women’s higher education and the women’s rights movement.

Here are the top 10 incredible facts about Virginia Woolf.

1. Woolf had romantic relationships with women though she was married

In 1912, Virginia married Leonard Woolf, and in 1917, the couple founded the Hogarth Press, which published much of her work. They rented a home in Sussex and moved there permanently in 1940. 

Woolf had romantic relationships with women, including Vita Sackville-West, who also published her books through Hogarth Press. Both women’s literature became inspired by their relationship, which lasted until Woolf’s death.

2. Woolf was an important part of London’s literary and artistic society

Virginia Woolf statue, Tavistock Square by PAUL FARMER –

During the inter-war period, Woolf was an important part of London’s literary and artistic society. In 1915, she published her first novel, The Voyage Out, through her half-brother’s publishing house, Gerald Duckworth and Company. 

Her best-known works include the novels Mrs Dalloway in 1925, To the Lighthouse in 1927 and Orlando in 1928. She is also known for her essays, including A Room of One’s Own in 1929.

3. Woolf was acclaimed for inspiring feminism in the 1970s

Woolf became one of the central subjects of the 1970s movement of feminist criticism and her works have since attracted much attention and widespread commentary for “inspiring feminism”. Woolf believed that to break free of a patriarchal society 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.

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.

4. Woolf’s works have been translated into more than 50 languages

First edition UK cover of Night and Day by Virginia Woolf –

Despite the considerable conceptual difficulties, given Woolf’s idiosyncratic use of language, her works have been translated into over 50 languages.

Some writers, such as the Belgian Marguerite Yourcenar, had rather tense encounters with her, while others, such as the Argentinian Jorge Luis Borges, produced versions that were highly controversial.

5. Woolf’s work was immortalized through the University of London

Her works have been translated into more than 50 languages. A large body of literature is dedicated to her life and work, and she has been the subject of plays, novels and films. 

Woolf is commemorated today by statues, societies dedicated to her work and a building at the University of London. The University of London is a federal public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom.

6. Woolf suffered from bipolar disorder her whole life

Portrait of Virginia Woolf by George Charles Beresford –

Throughout her life, Woolf was troubled by mental illness. She was institutionalized several times and attempted suicide at least twice. 

According to Dalsimer in 2004, her illness was characterised by symptoms that would today be diagnosed as bipolar disorder, for which there was no effective treatment during her lifetime. In 1941, at age 59, Woolf died by drowning herself in the River Ouse at Lewes.

7. Virginia contributed majorly to the Bloomsbury Group

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 more influential books of the 20th century. 

The Group, which had been scattered by the war, was reconvened by Mary 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.[These were 22 Hyde Park Gate in 1921, Old Bloomsbury in 1922 and Am I a Snob? in 1936.

8. Woolf is considered to be one of the more important 20th-century novelists

Photograph of Virginia Woolf –

A modernist, she was one of the pioneers of using a stream of consciousness as a narrative device, alongside contemporaries such as Marcel Proust, Dorothy Richardson and James Joyce.

Woolf’s reputation was at its greatest during the 1930s but declined considerably following World War II. The growth of feminist criticism in the 1970s helped re-establish her reputation.

9. Woolf published novels as a public intellectual to both critical and popular acclaim

Much of her work was self-published through the Hogarth Press. “Virginia Woolf’s peculiarities as a fiction writer have tended to obscure her central strength: she is arguably the major lyrical novelist in the English language. Her novels are highly experimental: a narrative, frequently uneventful and commonplace, is refracted and sometimes almost dissolved in the characters’ receptive consciousness. 

Intense lyricism and stylistic virtuosity fuse to create a world overabundant with auditory and visual impressions. The intensity of Virginia Woolf’s poetic vision elevates the ordinary, sometimes banal settings often wartime environments of most of her novels.

10. Woolf’s fiction has been studied for its insight into many 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. In the postwar Mrs Dalloway in 1925, Woolf addresses the moral dilemma of war and its effects and provides an authentic voice for soldiers returning from World War I, suffering from shell shock, in the person of Septimus Smith. In A Room of One’s Own in 1929 Woolf equates historical accusations of witchcraft with creativity and genius among women.