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The Goat

Virginia Woolf may not have been born at the right time, since during her life, women were still denied higher education, but she was
born in the right place. The Stephen household was a bastion of intellectual curiosity, great respect for literature and an expectation that
each member of the family could hold his or her own intellectually.

Adeline Virginia Stephen was born on January 25th, 1882, in London, to Sir Leslie Stephen and Julia Duckworth Stephen. Virginia's
father, Sir Leslie Stephen, was a luminary in Britain's intellectual circles. His work on the Dictionary of National Biography would still
be of significant importance a hundred years after his death, and his early encouragement and recognition of the talent of then unknowns
like Henry James, Robert Louis Stevenson and Thomas Hardy. He had married before and been made a widower; his first wife, Minny,
was the daughter of Thackeray, and they'd had a daughter named Laura before Minny died in 1875. Laura would battle mental illness her
entire life and would eventually die in an institution. Although shattered, Leslie soon met a beautiful widowed mother of three named
Julia Duckworth. Although a little awed by Leslie's intellect, Julia fell in love with Leslie and the two married in 1878.

Even before Vanessa, Leslie and Julia's first child together, was born, the family was sizable. Julia's three children–Stella, Gerald and
George–and Leslie's daughter Laura, made for a full household. Vanessa Stephen was born in 1878, Thoby in 1882, Virginia in 1882 and
Adrian in 1884. Virginia was born into a world in transition, and would pass her formative years in a shaky new world. Queen Victoria
would die in 1901, WWI would begin in 1914, the British art world would be enraged by Matisse and Picasso and scandalized by
thinkers like Jung, Einstein and Freud.

Virginia was a deeply sensitive, thoughtful child who learned to speak late, at the age of three. She was surrounded early by books and
the great intelligence of her parents and her siblings. Her father was larger-than-life and provided her a model for intellectual
achievement. His massive library was a place of great allure and great comfort to Virginia. If she wanted to read a book, she asked her
father and he unlocked the library door, pulled down the book and handed it to her. She read voraciously and absorbed the ideas and
conversations that took place in the Stephen house, which was a meeting place for a number of great thinkers. Virginia's godfather, for
example, was James Russell Lowell.

Virginia was an unusually pensive child who, nevertheless, had an amusing sense of humor. Her mischievous nature lead to a nickname
of "Goat." All of the Stephen children were beautiful, and Virginia in particular had clear jade- colored eyes and elegant features.
Vanessa and Virginia were extremely close and rarely apart. They deeply admired one another, and would for the rest of their lives.
Almost from the start, they announced their life's plan: Vanessa would be a painter and Virginia would be a writer. In fact, in the Stephen
nursery, which took up the top two floors at twenty-two Hyde Gate, Virginia would make up bedtime stories for her siblings.

Leslie and Julia decided to educate the children at the house before sending Thoby and Adrian off to university. Both parents, though
good-natured in general, were impatient teachers. Julia had Virginia studying French and Latin at age six. Despite losing his temper with
Virginia and Vanessa when they had difficulty with their mathematics lessons, Leslie could enchant his children by reading them Sir
Walter Scott out loud, then asking them what they thought of the work. However, Virginia and Vanessa's education was only to go so
far. They were encouraged-expected, really-to acquire what were then called "accomplishments": proficiency at some musical
instrument, passable drawing skill, graceful manners. These were traits that made one marriageable, and that was the goal for women
then. Virginia felt this injustice acutely. While Vanessa took to painting and drawing with a passion, Virginia began producing a little
household periodical she called Hyde Park Gate News.

Although Julia's children from her first marriage, Gerald, George and Stella, were quite a bit older than the Stephen children, they had an

enormous impact on Virginia's life. George Duckworth, Virginia's handsome, effusive, affectionate and kind older stepbrother, made
what Virginia's biographer and nephew Quentin Bell calls "incestuous advances" and abused both Virginia and Vanessa for a number of
years.

Yet the Stephens were also a traditional Victorian family in that the male children were expected to head off to university–Cambridge,
Oxford, etc–at some point while the daughters were supposed to learn a few charming skills and marry well. This was what the family
expected of Virginia and Vanessa, even as they pushed them to be intelligent, articulate young women. Virginia was bitterly resentful
and envious of her brother's opportunity and her lack. She made up for it by reading nearly every book in her father's library. In fact, by
the time she was thirteen, she was reading so much that her father tired of unlocking the library and pulling down books for her so he
gave her the key. It was a turning point. Having the key to the library could easily be equated, for Virginia, with having the key to the
world. She spent hours alone with books, and also spent many hours at the London Library and the British Museum.

Deaths in the Family

The year Woolf was born, her father, Leslie, had purchased a house in a town called St. Ives. He christened it Talland House. The entire
family congregated there at the beginning of each summer, and Woolf especially loved it. There was a lighthouse there, and she could
hear the roar of the crashing waves from her bedroom window. Cornwall later provided imagery for Woolf's novels To the Lighthouse
and The Waves.

All the Stephen children, her half-brothers Gerald and George (who were by this time on break from Eton and Cambridge respectively)
and her half-sister Stella spent long hours outside. One sibling, however, was either kept out of the fun or sent to sanatoriums for
stretches of time–Laura. From the beginning of her life, Woolf was susceptible to bouts of extreme nervousness, high anxiety and

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madness. Having Laura, who was considered by family doctors to be insane, in close proximity made Woolf question her own sanity
even more.

In 1894, after a hotel was built directly in front of Talland House, blocking their lovely view of the bay, Leslie decided to sell St. Ives
and find another spot for the Stephens' holidays. Back in London, Leslie continued work on the massive Dictionary of National
Biography. It was an exhausting, seemingly endless project. In 1888, Leslie collapsed and took to his bed for a number of weeks. But he
was back at the project in 1890, when he collapsed again. After a number of attempts, Julia persuaded her husband to take a break from
the book, and he did. However, Julia was exhausting herself simply from running a household of eight children. It was in this weakened
condition that she contracted rheumatic fever and died on May 5th, 1895. Woolf was only thirteen years old.

Woolf would later call her mother's death "the greatest disaster that could happen." It was a crushing blow to the children, but it nearly
killed Leslie. His grieving was so intense, so demonstrative-and so hyperbolic-that it affected his children deeply. He wept openly in
front of the children, and began to depend on his children to the extent that it seemed now that they were parenting him. He especially
relied on Stella, who had to fall into the role of mother since both Vanessa and Woolf were still young girls, and since Leslie was
completely helpless. To make matters, worse, Woolf had her first mental breakdown soon after her mother died. Stella looked after her
young stepsiblings as best she could, turning away a number of suitors who asked for her hand in marriage.

George Duckworth, Woolf and Vanessa's handsome half-brother, was now twenty- seven years old. He had matured into a kind, overtly
affectionate man who seemed deeply saddened not just by his mother's death, but also by his half-sisters' grief. He comforted them, was
generous to them and made sure they were taken care of. However, something more sinister was taking place during these comfort
sessions. Woolf's biographer and nephew Quentin Bell writes that George's visits to console Woolf and Vanessa turned into a "nasty
erotic skirmish" and that he sexually abused the sisters. Both girls were extremely shy and naïve, and were horrified by what was taking
place. However, they told no one. Later, when they were adults, Woolf and Vanessa's friends would be confused by both sisters' intense
dislike for their half-brother. He seemed, to everyone else, to be a somewhat dull, inoffensive, nice man. But George had violated both
girls, and this experience changed the way Woolf dealt with her own sexuality for the rest of her life.

In January 1897, Woolf began keeping a diary. She would keep a diary off and on for the rest of her life. After she died in 1941, her
husband published them. Later they would be a place where Woolf would try to spontaneously compose, to be free from the strictures of
formal composition and to record the events of her daily life. But when she was still just a young girl, she used her diary to record each
book she read. Meanwhile, her brothers Thoby and Adrian were off at school. Thoby was at Clifton, were he was doing very well.
Adrian was at Westminster and, although he was doing passably, wasn't doing quite as well academically as Thoby. After having a break
from her home studies after her breakdown, Woolf returned to her subjects and continued to read at a pace that even astonished her
father.

Stella became ill during 1897, and remained so off and on all year. Woolf, too, was battling bouts of sickness, though hers were mental.
Stella had married and in 1897, became pregnant. However, after an operation designed to alleviate some of her symptoms, Stella died in
1897. It was a shock and yet another debilitating blow to the family structure.

New Friends

Woolf encountered the woman upon whom she would model Sally in Mrs. Dalloway only briefly. Madge Symonds was married to one
of Woolf's uncles, and she was a beautiful, thoroughly modern woman who was a writer. Woolf found her enchanting and may have
fallen in love with her. She was one of a number of captivating women who would capture Woolf's attention and find their way into her
fiction.

In 1901, Thoby, who was at Cambridge, met a number of extremely intelligent, interesting young men-fellow students. Lytton Strachey,
Leonard Woolf and Clive Bell were among them. Woolf and Vanessa would not meet these young achievers for a few more years,
however. The sisters were still studying at home during the days and completing household chores in the evening while their brothers
were being educated at the best schools England had to offer. For the rest of her life, Woolf would feel herself behind the curve and
poorly educated because she was not granted the opportunity to attend college simply because she was a female. It seemed a bitter
injustice, and she never forgot it.

Around this time, two more fascinating women came into the sisters' lives. Kitty Maxse was an intelligent, calm, lovely woman who was
married to the editor of the National Review, Leopold Maxse. Julia had introduced them and took pride in having successfully matched
them. Although Kitty and Woolf didn't quite hit it off (she found a confidante, however, in Vanessa), Kitty was likely the model for
Clarissa Dalloway. Violet Dickinson first visited the family at their new summer place in Fritham in 1902. Dickinson was over six feet
tall, was an unusual and intelligent woman and evoked very complex feelings in twenty-year- old Woolf. In the letters the two women
shared, it is fairly clear that Woolf was deeply in love with Violet, though that love was likely never consummated. Violet would remain
a friend of Woolf's for many years, though they would drift apart when Woolf began her foray into the Bloomsbury Group.

That same year, 1902, Leslie Stephen grew more frail and more ill, and it was clear that he was dying. Though he hung on for about a
year, Woolf and Vanessa had to deal with a series of already grieving, wailing female family relatives who taxed the girls' nerves. On
February twenty-two, 1903, Leslie Stephen died.

Woolf was emotionally distraught and exhausted by the year she had spent watching her father die. That year, she and her four Stephen
siblings moved out of the Kensington house at twenty-two Hyde Park Gate and bought a house in then- shabbier Bloomsbury. Before

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moving in, the siblings traveled to Italy for a holiday. Woolf, still emotionally delicate, was weary and irritated halfway through the trip,
and wanted to go home. While Vanessa felt somewhat freed by her father's death (after Stella died, he'd made Vanessa his crutch and
made many demands on her time and emotions), Woolf was desperately sad. The group stopped in Paris and met with Thoby's friend and
painter Clive Bell.

Almost as soon as the siblings returned to London, Woolf had a breakdown. She began to hear voices, her pulse raced, and her heart beat
at what seemed a dangerous pace. Violet arrived in London to take Woolf to her home at Burnham Wood, and there Woolf first
attempted suicide by throwing herself out of a second story window. She was unharmed by the incident and slowly began to recover.

In 1904, Woolf sent an article she'd written about Haworth Parsonage in Yorkshire, the Bronte sisters' family home, to a London weekly

called The Guardian. The editor accepted it happily and from that point on, Woolf was a regular contributor. She was happy to have
found an outlet for her early works of journalism. She was soon regularly employed to write reviews as well as articles. In the meantime,
the Stephen children had comfortably settled in their new home at forty-six Gordon Square in Bloomsbury. Family relatives, including
the Duckworth half-siblings, had been shocked by the Stephens' decision to move into Bloomsbury, which was certainly a step down
from the posh Kensington neighborhood in which they'd grown up. But Vanessa, Woolf, Thoby and Adrian felt stifled by the stiff
Victorian social code that they'd suffered their entire lives. The move into Bloomsbury was a break from social shackles, in many ways.
Thoby began to invite his Cambridge buddies to the house, and instituted Thursday evening get togethers. Clive Bell, Sydney Saxon-
Turner, Leonard Woolf, Lytton Strachey, Desmond MacCarthy and John Maynard Keyes-a veritable laundry list of the most influential
painters, writers and thinkers of the next thirty years-converged on forty-six Gordon Square. Woolf and Vanessa sat in on the gatherings
and were slightly awed by Thoby's friends.

The men were initially extremely reserved, often sitting in chairs silently for hours. They were cerebral, and they expected the same of
Woolf and Vanessa. It was a welcome change from the social expectation that women simply marry and master social skills. Thoby's
friends respected Woolf and Vanessa's great intelligence and talent and expected them to make something of it. While the circle-
christened the Bloomsbury Group-grew closer and more intense, those outside of it grew jealous and judgmental. Many of Woolf's non-
Bloomsbury friends were not impressed with Thoby's friends. They found them untidy and impolite. Even more shocking was the fact
that Woolf and Vanessa were staying up until all hours conversing with them and swapping philosophies and ideas. For young,
unmarried women, this was unacceptable social behavior at the time.

Bloomsbury

Quentin Bell has written that Bloomsbury grew "not only by the making but by the breaking of friendships." Woolf and Vanessa found
they had to choose between their old friends, who were wedded to Victorian social sensibilities, and their new friends. They chose the
intellectually stimulating company of the Bloomsbury Group.

Lytton Strachey was a dark, bearded depressive who, most in the group agreed, had the most talent, and the most potential for success.
He was extremely witty and could be caustic and cutting. As a result, he was a bit intimidating to Woolf, but she found him fascinating.
Saxon Sydney-Turner was a man of letters who wrote poems, painted, and was a musical composer as well as an opera fanatic. Desmond
MacCarthy was a handsome, voluble and extraordinarily talented novelist. Clive Bell was a gifted painter and an athlete. Leonard Woolf,
whom Woolf first met on November fourteen, 1904 the night before he left for Ceylon until 1911, was a writer and political activist.

By this time, Woolf was a regular book reviewer for the London Times Literary Supplement, as well as teaching night classes at Morley,
a night school for working adults. Clive Bell was immediately smitten with Vanessa, and proposed to her in 1905. She turned him down,
but remained friends. It was a provocative, amazing time for Woolf. Although Woolf had always been surrounded by people with
considerable intellects, the Bloomsbury Group was an unprecedented collection of brilliant people.

In 1906, the four Stephen children took a trip to Greece along with Violet Dickinson. Unfortunately, while in Greece Vanessa and Thoby
fell quite ill. Back home in London, while Vanessa recovered, Thoby only got worse. Soon Violet too was sick with typhoid fever as
well. Woolf's attentions were split by the illnesses of two very important people in her life. Slowly, Violet recovered, but Thoby did not.
He died a few months later. The loss was tremendous and haunted Woolf for the rest of her life. Thoby's absence is acutely felt in books
like Jacob's Room and The Waves. Two days after Thoby's death, Vanessa–who, like the rest of the Stephens, was distraught–agreed to
marry Clive Bell. This was another tragedy for Woolf, who didn't like Clive and didn't think him good enough for her sister. But Vanessa
claimed to love Clive, and the two took over the house on Gordon Square. Woolf and Adrian moved to a new house at 29 Fitzroy Square
in Bloomsbury.

As she grieved over her brother's death, the only people Woolf could bear to see were the members of the Bloomsbury Group. In this
period of mourning, they demonstrated that they were not so detached from their emotions that they couldn't provide comfort. Woolf,
grappling with her brother's death, also had very complex feelings about her sister's marriage, feelings that went beyond simply disliking
Clive. She felt abandoned by the sister who'd been such an integral part of her life for so long and who had been with her nearly nonstop
for as long as she could remember. She also looked upon Vanessa and Clive who, having slightly recovered from the shock and sadness
of Thoby's death, were now demonstrably happy with each other, with a touch of envy. She was now being pressed by friends and family
to seek a suitable match for marriage. The constant prodding irritated Woolf, and her letters up to 1907 offer no indication of an interest
in any man. However, in 1907, she took an interest in an old friend of Leslie's named Walter Headlam. He was old enough to be her
father, but was an eminent Greek scholar and a charming man. The two flirted and Woolf showed him her early work, which he critiqued
and advised her on. However, nothing really came of it and the two parted company. However, Woolf would continue to face pressure to
marry for five more years, and would have ample opportunity to do so.

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Meanwhile, Woolf and Adrian resurrected Thoby's Thursday evening get-togethers. The Bloomsbury set now gathered at Woolf and
Adrian's home on Fitzroy Square. That summer, Woolf, Clive, Vanessa and Adrian spent the season in Rye, along with occasional
visitors from Bloomsbury, where Woolf read Henry James and was lukewarm to his prose. In fact, James was an old friend of Leslie's
and he visited the Stephen children in Rye that summer. Although cordial, he did not approve of Woolf's Bloomsbury friends, whom he
saw as unkempt and boorish. Woolf began work on a novel which she called Melymbrosia, but which eventually would go by the title of
The Voyage Out. It was the beginning of an intense labor of love as the book occupied her for the next five years, going through seven
drafts. As she worked on this novel, she continued reviewing for the Guardian and the Times Literary Supplement, as well as for other
smaller journals. But she did not yet try to publish any of her fiction. In fact, she was be thirty-three before her first work of fiction would
be published. She was–and would remain for the rest of her life–terrified of the world's reaction to her work.

In February 1908, Vanessa gave birth to her first child, Julian. Although fond of the baby, both Woolf and Clive felt a little jealous with

Vanessa's attention divided. Though the two hadn't gotten along very well prior to Julian's birth, the event gave them the opportunity to
spend more time together. Their friendship bloomed and grew intense, to the point of bordering on inappropriate. The two flirted and
Clive became obsessed with Woolf, as well as becoming her literary confidante during her struggles with The Voyage Out.

The Importance of Marriage

Throughout 1908 and 1909, Woolf was frequently told she should marry. She was, she was told, getting old; at twenty-seven, Woolf was
dangerously close to becoming a spinster. Few in the Bloomsbury Group were suitable since many were gay. Woolf cast her eye on
Lytton Strachey despite the fact that he was openly gay. He was also a dark, depressive and often impossible man. But he was also
brilliant, and that was quite attractive to Woolf. Lytton, for his part, had strong feelings for Woolf, who was an exceptionally beautiful,
exceptionally intelligent woman. However, his feelings confused him and led to an uncomfortable situation.

On February 17th, 1909, Lytton Strachey proposed marriage to Woolf, and she accepted. The next day, however, he withdrew his
proposal and Woolf graciously agreed to it, saying she was not in love with him. However, she was disappointed as she very much
wanted to marry and she deeply admired Strachey. That summer, a man named Hilton Young proposed to Woolf but she did not love
him and told him, as excuse, that she could marry no one but Strachey.

Back in London, the Bloomsbury Group began to grow and to flourish. The group, sharing philosophies on art, literature and politics,
took as their directive a tenet from philosopher G.E. Moore who believed that these things could only be discussed ideally in a setting in
which frankness and freedom from stifling social dictates could exist. The group firmly believed in the social function of art, and many
in the circle had a chance to put that into practice, including Woolf and Roger Fry, who would join the group in 1910. Bloomsbury was
gaining a reputation in London, and it wasn't a favorable one. Other artists saw the group as a snobbish secret society fraught with
pretension and arrogance. Woolf, however, thrived in their company.

In February of that year, some of the Bloomsbury crew pulled a prank on the British Navy by dressing up as Ethiopian dignitaries-even
blackening their faces–and taking a tour of the British naval ship, and secret man-of-war, the Drednaught. Woolf took part in this, though
others thought it ill advised. It was a success and got into the papers, embarrassing the government.

As Woolf came to the end of The Voyage Out, she fell ill. It was a pattern that would be repeated nearly every time she came to the end
of a work. Woolf spent some time in a nursing home in Twickenham, a step down from an insane asylum. That August, Vanessa gave
birth to Quentin Bell. Woolf recovered and moved back to London, putting her energies into the Adult Suffrage Movement with her
sister. In 1910, Clive, Woolf and Vanessa met Roger Fry for the first time. Roger Fry was a brilliant art critic and painter who was
particularly supportive of modern French painting, specifically the then little- known post-impressionists like Cézanne, Picasso and
Matisse. Largely due to Roger Fry, 1910 was an aesthetic turning point in England. Fry organized the First Post-Impressionist Exhibition
that November, showing the artwork of Van Gogh, Matisse and Picasso, among others. The artwork was unorthodox, shocking and
offensive to many art lovers in London. It was an extremely controversial show.

The next year, Clive, Vanessa and Roger Fry traveled to Constantinople to look at ancient art. Woolf chose not to join them until she
received word that Vanessa was ill. She met them there and once in Constantinople, got to know Fry and found him delightful. Yet by
the time the group returned to London, it was Vanessa who was in love with Fry. He had likewise fallen in love with Vanessa and as a
result, Clive and Vanessa's marriage shifted into a union of friendship. From that point on, they had an open marriage, with both Clive
and Vanessa taking many lovers. Vanessa, in fact, proposed sexual anarchy amongst the Bloomsbury Group, and promoted a libertarian
society. From that point on, it was official: Bloomsbury was scandalous. In July, Woolf entertained her third proposal of marriage, this
time from Walter Lamb. She turned him down.

The next year, 1911, upon the expiration of the least at Fitzroy Square, Woolf and Adrian decided to move into a larger house and share

it with friends. They found a suitable house in Brunswick Square and offered floors to John Maynard Keyes, Duncan Grant and Leonard
Woolf, who was fresh from Ceylon after spending the past seven years there as a colonial administrator. The notion that Woolf, an
unmarried woman, was sharing a house with four men was appalling to polite society.

Leonard Woolf had returned to London that June to a Bloomsbury that looked different from the one he'd left, but one which welcomed
him back with open arms. In Ceylon he'd been a colonial administrator and was on temporary leave before having to return. During this
time, Leonard and Woolf spent a good deal of time together getting to know one another. Leonard fell deeply in love with Woolf almost
at once, awed by her beauty and her intellect. Unfortunately, Woolf fell victim to one of her bouts with extreme anxiety and nervousness
and had to remove herself from London to rest.

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Madness and War

Leonard, also a novelist, began work on his own novel, which was about Ceylon, called The Village in the Jungle. At the same time, he
was fighting an internal battle regarding his position in a colonial empire. He loved Ceylon, but had mixed feelings about England's
colonial policy. Leonard proposed to Woolf, but she was undecided about her feelings. After requesting a four month extension of his
leave and being denied, Leonard resigned from British service and, on May 29th, 1912, Woolf accepted Leonard's proposal, sure now she
loved him. They were married on August 10th.

Thanks to the abuse of her half brother and the delicacy of her mental condition, Woolf was physically unresponsive to men in general,
even to those she loved. She was simply uncomprehending of male lust. Regardless, she and Leonard had a very close relationship, even
if the physical side of it left a little to be desired. Marriage gave Woolf a structure she needed. The couple moved out of Bloomsbury and
was able, away from the excitement of their old neighborhood, to concentrate on their work. Leonard, to make ends meet, had taken a
part-time job at Grafton Galleries where Roger Fry was preparing his Second Post-Impressionist Exhibition, which was sure to cause
another uproar since Picasso and Matisse enraged traditional art lovers because of their audacity and bucking of tradition.

In November 1912, Leonard's book The Village in the Jungle was accepted for publication. Both Leonard and Woolf wanted to make a
living from their writing alone and perhaps raise a family. However, doctors advised Woolf not to have children due to her history of
mental instability. Sorrowfully, Woolf and Leonard agreed that it was just too risky to have children.

With The Village in the Jungle finished, Leonard began work on his second book, titled The Wise Virgins. In March 1913, Woolf finally
finished The Voyage Out. She submitted the manuscript to her half-brother Gerald Duckworth, who had founded his own publishing
company. It wasn't ideal, but it was a foot in the door. Gerald loved the book and said he wanted to publish it immediately. Despite
Gerald's enthusiastic reaction, Woolf was incredibly anxious and nervous to the point of sickness about the reception of her first book.
She was terrified. Her husband worried about her mental health and kept voluminous notes on her moods in his diary. The Woolfs had a
country home by this time, which they called Asham and Woolf retired to it when she was having a bout of anxiety or madness. As
publication of The Voyage Out loomed near, Woolf grew more and more ill. Her doctor told her to return to Twickenham and then go on
vacation. Despite Woolf's negative feelings about Twickenham, the doctor insisted that she spent some time there. She spent two weeks
in the nursing home. When Leonard picked her up, she was much worse; she was almost suicidal. The couple returned to Asham at once
and Leonard called for the doctor, who insisted that they continue on with the plan to holiday in Somerset. Woolf, again, only got worse
by following the doctor's orders.

They traveled back to their home in London and Woolf was left in her room to rest. It was a mistake to leave her alone, even if only for a
few hours. She was found unconscious on her bed, having swallowed one hundred grains of the drug Veronal, a powerful sedative. Her
stomach was pumped at the hospital and Leonard began to contemplate institutionalizing Woolf, as much as it would pain him to do it.

George Duckworth offered the couple use of his country home in Sussex for Woolf's recovery. There, finally, Woolf became to improve
slowly. From Sussex, Leonard moved Woolf into Asham for what he thought was good. He thought-and would continue to think this for
the rest of her life-that London was bad for Woolf's mental well-being. It was a bad year for Woolf as she was ill off and on for nearly a
year. Her world, like everyone else's, was then disrupted by the onset of World War I.

In 1914, a Serbian nationalist assassinated the Arch Duke Ferdinand of Austria- Hungary. This was the most visible catalyst of the Great

War, but tensions had been building in Europe for years, with Germany, France, Britain, Russia and Austria-Hungary growing more
nationalist, more territorial and more hungry for power. On August 1st, Germany declared war on Russia. Two days later, it declared war
on France. Great Britain, France, Russia, Serbia, and Belgium joined forces as the Allies against the Central Powers, made up of
Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire. On April six, 1917, America would enter the war. It was the largest war in world
history up to that point, and it disrupted the lives of nearly everyone in the countries involved in the conflict, including Woolf.
Considered quite small in this context, the delay in the publication of The Voyage Out was due to the outbreak of World War One. The
public would have to wait another few years before they first heard from Virginia Woolf.

The Novelist Emerges

In January of 1916, Woolf and Leonard decided to buy a house that was closer to London but not in the city proper. The settled on a
house in a London suburb called Richmond and named their new home Hogarth House. In a moment of hope, they both confessed that
they wanted also to buy a printing press and start their own publishing house. They resolved to figure out a way to carry out their plan
financially. In February, shortly before The Voyage Out was to be published, Woolf became manic. Her doctor had diagnosed her with
neurasthenia, but Leonard called it, simply, manic-depression. Both Woolf and Leonard learned to recognize physical warning signs that
an attack was imminent: severe headaches, insomnia, quickened pulse, unbearably rapid heartbeat. Woolf's mania manifested itself in
gibberish, a personality shift to uncharacteristic garrulity and extreme excitement. She'd even become violent and enraged, which was
decidedly unlike the normal Woolf. While Leonard moved their things into Hogarth House, he put Woolf in a nursing home for a few
days. She slowly returned to normal.

The Voyage Out was finally published and it was well received. Author E.M. Forster praised it and a number of book reviewers called it
the work of a genius. But Woolf's happiness was short-lived; in 1916, the Conscription Bill was introduced in Parliament, and Leonard
was facing the possibility of being drafted. If he were to leave Woolf for duty, most people believed it would be disastrous for Woolf.
However, he managed to slip past the draft board and stay in London throughout the war.

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At this point, Clive and Vanessa lived apart though they were still married; Clive remained at the home in Bloomsbury and Vanessa, her
affair with Roger Fry over, now lived with Duncan Grant. Woolf continued to remain close to both Clive and Vanessa, though she did
not show her writing to anyone until it was finished, even Leonard. However, after a novel was complete, she sent copies of the
manuscript or galleys to everyone she knew and sought their opinions. Leonard's opinion mattered most to her. Yet Leonard was
concerned by Woolf's dangerous behavior, which seemed to take effect as she finished a novel or other long work. He became a kind of
nurse to Woolf, limiting the hours she worked each day, capping the number of visitors who came to see her, and so on. Woolf was
grateful for this kind of structure.

Having recovered from her latest bout with manic-depression, Woolf set to work on her new novel, Night and Day. In February of 1917,
Lytton Strachey introduce Woolf to a darkly attractive female writer named Katherine Mansfield. Woolf did not like Katherine at first,
and hardly warmed to her during their tumultuous, prickly and very complex friendship, which bordered on romantic, frustrated love.
Mansfield would be one of the first authors Leonard and Woolf published when they finally started Hogarth Press. During World War
One, Leonard and Woolf had finally scraped together enough cash to buy a second-hand printing press in March 1917. They christened
their brand new publishing house Hogarth, after their home. Although later they'd be publishing future luminaries like E.M. Forster, T.S.
Eliot and Sigmund Freud, Woolf and Leonard first had to learn how to operate the press and set the type. Woolf found the physical tasks
of printing invigorating and looked forward to the afternoons when she set down her pen and joined her husband at the press.

Meanwhile, Woolf continued work on Night and Day, which she considered an "exercise." She seemed to follow a pattern of following
up a novel of major import with one that she considered lighter. She considered Night and Day a lighter book. The first publication to
roll off the Hogarth Press was a collection of two stories, one by Woolf and one by Leonard. They titled the publication, "Publication No.
I: Two Stories." The stories were "The Mark on the Wall" by Woolf and "Three Jews" by Leonard. They printed only 150 copies, but it
was received quite well.

At the same time, Leonard was becoming involved in what he called the 1917 Club, a secondary Bloomsbury that met in a building on
Gerrard Street in London's Soho. There, Leonard and other socialist intellectuals met to swap ideas and theories about the world,
economics and politics. Woolf was not very fond of most of the people at the 1917 Club, calling the women "cropheads", a reference to
the new hairstyle many "modern" women were wearing in which their bangs were cut bluntly across their foreheads. On April 14th,
1918, a woman named Harriet Weaver approached the Woolfs with a hefty manuscript by an unknown Irish author that she hoped they'd
publish. The title of the book was Ulysses and the young author's name was James Joyce.

Woolf read the manuscript and although she declared that he seemed to be writing for a snobbish, intellectual clique (of which, many

could argue she herself belonged), Woolf recognized the genius in James Joyce. However, Hogarth simply did not have the resources to
print such a large book and so turned Weaver away, suggesting another house. In June, Lytton Strachey's collection of mini- biographies,
Eminent Victorians appeared in June to wide acclaim. Woolf felt a tinge of jealousy; Lytton was really her only equal amongst the
Bloomsbury writers, and she had not yet made her mark. Lytton's success, while welcomed, reminded her of her own lack of acclaim.

On November 21st, 1918, the armistice ending World War I was signed. That same day, Woolf finished writing Night and Day. Six days
prior to both events, Woolf met T.S. Eliot for the first time. At this point, Eliot was an unknown, poor banker's clerk who wrote poetry in
the evenings. When he brought his poems to Hogarth Press, Leonard and Woolf were astonished and accepted them for publication at
once. In May 1919, Hogarth published Eliot's "Poems." Keeping Eliot company on their list was Middleton Murry's The Critic in
Judgment and Woolf's newest book Kew Gardens. As Eliot and Murry's books sold briskly, no one seemed to be buying Woolf's. This
was a grave disappointment to a writer already extremely sensitive to the opinions of others on her work. The slow sales seemed to say it
all. In her despair, Woolf traveled to the country and, on a whim, bought an ugly house in Lewes. Leonard kept his temper when he
discovered what Woolf had done, but both of them agreed that they hated the home. They sold it and bought another house at Rodmell,
called Monk's House.

The Most Famous Writer in London

A few weeks later, orders began pouring in by the hundreds for Kew Gardens. The Times Literary Supplement had run a very favorable
review of the book and now everyone was rushing to purchase a copy. That fall, Night and Day was finally published. Katherine
Mansfield, Woolf's sometime friend, reviewed it in a publication called The Athenaeum and gave it a bad review, skewering Woolf for
being too traditional and to wary of risk-taking. Later, when Woolf's reputation was established, this criticism would seem decidedly
ironic. Virginia Woolf would be one of the greatest literary risk- takers of the Twentieth Century.

In the spring of 1920, Woolf's next novel, Jacob's Room began to take shape on paper. Woolf told Leonard that she wanted Hogarth
Press to publish this novel; she despised taking her novels to Gerald Duckworth, despite his continued enthusiasm for her work. With
Woolf's novels now a part of their list, Hogarth was publishing some of the best writers of the day: Gorki, Forster, T.S. Eliot and
Katherine Mansfield. Leonard, too, was busy finishing up his own book, Empire and Commerce in Africa, and had already started a new
one titled Socialism and Cooperation. In addition, he was also editing a monthly periodical called The International Review. It was a lot
of work, and Woolf wondered if he could do it all.

A collection of Woolf's short stories, titled Monday or Tuesday appeared in March and was not received well. At the same time, rival and
friend Lytton Strachey's stunning biography of Queen Victoria was universally applauded. While Strachey's professional life was
progressing nicely, his personal life was complicated. He was engaged in a messy ménage with Dora Carrington and Ralph Partridge, a
former Hogarth assistant. Dora Carrington was madly in love with Lytton, who was in love with Ralph Partridge. Partridge was in love
with Dora Carrington. All three lived at Lytton's house. Woolf found herself in the role of adviser to Lytton on this matter more than
once.

7

With Hogarth doing well, and Woolf and Leonard's own books selling well, they were able to buy a new printing machine. On November
4, 1921, Woolf finished Jacob's Room and fell into a dark depression. She spent the early months of 1921 in bed, almost an invalid. As
she rested and read, a story was tumbling around in her head. It was a story, with a character, that had haunted her for years. This
character, Clarissa Dalloway, had made appearances in The Voyage Out and some of Woolf's short stories. When Kitty Maxse, Woolf
and Vanessa's old friend and the reputed model for Clarissa Dalloway, died in 1922 from a fall down a flight of stairs (Woolf was
convinced it was suicide), Woolf found her inspiration to begin Mrs. Dalloway.

Jacob's Room was the first full-length book that Hogarth published. It appeared October 22nd, 1922. Its success signaled the beginning
of Woolf's fame as a writer. Just as Jacob's Room appeared, Woolf found herself itching to get back to the bustling life of London. Life
in boring Richmond was too suburban and dull. She missed the stimulation of London society and the company of her friends. Plus, her
reputation was growing and more and more people wanted her to grace their dinner tables. However, Leonard remained firmly against
the idea of returning to London, convinced as he was of its ill effects on Woolf's health.

In 1922, Woolf decided to begin work on two books simultaneously. One was a work of criticism; the other was a novel. These works
would later be titled The Common Reader and Mrs. Dalloway. The next year, Woolf finally succeeded in wearing Leonard down about
the move back to London and that winter they moved back to Bloomsbury. Hogarth Press now operated out of their basement. Woolf
worked on her books during the morning hours then spent the afternoon at the press with Leonard and his assistants. In April 1925, The
Common Reader was published. A month later, Mrs. Dalloway was published. Both were raging successes and critical triumphs.

The three years between 1925 and 1928 were fruitful for Woolf professionally. She finished Mrs. Dalloway, and The Common Reader;

she published To the Lighthouse, and began planning The Waves. Yet she was running herself ragged and soon fell into one of her bouts
with depression and mania. She had an episode at a family gathering in August 1925, which marked the beginning of a long, debilitating
illness, which she would not come out of until 1926.

To make a dark period even darker, Woolf discovered that her new friend Vita Sackville-West was leaving with her husband, a
Counsellor at the British Embassy in what was then called Persia, for Tehran. Woolf's friendship with Vita was charged with erotic
undertones. Vita was a beautiful, forceful woman who was a writer as well as a great admirer of Woolf's talent. She was also a lesbian,
and although Woolf clearly had feelings for Vita, she was still in love with her husband Leonard. Nevertheless, Woolf's nephew Quentin
Bell says that Woolf and Vita had a love affair between 1925 and 1929 off and on. Although there had been hints of this kind of
relationship between Woolf and Katherine Mansfield, the letters Vita and Woolf sent to each other speak to the deep feelings of mutual
romantic love.

Two Masterpieces

In early 1926, Woolf was coming out of her depression. Things were going so well as she wrote the novel To the Lighthouse. The book,
widely considered to be a masterpiece, was published on May 5, 1927. With the publication of To the Lighthouse and, later, The Waves,
Woolf established herself firmly as one of the leading Modernist voices. In a world that was fundamentally different, fractured and in
upheaval, it seemed that writers and artists had to rethink the way they presented their art to the world. Modernism experimented with
presentation, and Woolf was one of the movement's prominent writers. Contemporaries like James Joyce, T.S. Eliot and D.H. Lawrence
were also trying to turn form upside down and inside out.

When To the Lighthouse appeared, it was a critical success, but it was also a popular book, selling quite well. It sold well enough that
Woolf was able to buy a car. In 1927 she began working on a fanciful novel called Orlando which was about a hero/heroine whose
gender changed throughout the narrative. Orlando's adventures were inspired by Vita Sackville-West's. This was a happy period for
Woolf, who was basking in the success of her last book and the ease of the novel she was now writing. Orlando was finished in May of
1928. Following the completion of this book, Woolf began preparing a series of lectures that she was scheduled to deliver at Cambridge
that October. These lectures centered on the topic of women, women writers and the opportunities that must be afforded to the gifted
female writer if she is to produce great literature-namely, a room of her own. When Orlando was published, it sold exceptionally well,
buffeted by the critical acclaim of To the Lighthouse. After a trip to Berlin, accompanied by Vanessa and Leonard, Woolf became sick
again. She was laid up for six weeks, unable to work.

In 1929, Hogarth Press published Woolf's Cambridge lectures under the title of A Room of One's Own. In this slender book, Woolf
argues that social and economic barriers are the only things keeping women writers from the acclaim they deserve. The best artists, she
argues, are androgynous.

Meanwhile, Vanessa Bell was still painting, but was feeling overshadowed not only by her famous sister, but also by her boyfriend,
painter Duncan Grant. The sisters continued to see each other nearly every day, however. Woolf began working on her most difficult and
most celebrated novel, The Waves, which she was, at this time, still calling Moths. In January and February 1930, she was flying through
page after page. But her work was interrupted by the appearance in her life of seventy-year-old Ethel Smyth, a vivacious, demanding,
unusual old woman who was madly in love with Woolf-and may have been even before meeting her (she was an avid fan of Woolf's
fiction.) Ethel Smyth was a fascinating woman and Woolf enjoyed her company, but was exhausted by her demands for attention. What
was most maddening was the effect Smyth had on the composition of The Waves. Woolf had written so much so quickly, and now she
felt immobilized by distractions.

In October, Woolf and Leonard, overwhelmed by the work Hogarth Press demanded in order to run well, briefly considered putting an
end to the whole endeavor. It simply took up too much time. However, Leonard was very much attached to the venture and found it

8

difficult to close up shop. He hired another assistant (the Woolfs had gone through a succession of assistants during the short history of
Hogarth) named John Lehmann. Lehmann was a friend of the Woolfs' nephew Julian Bell, and it was through him that Woolf and
Leonard met young writers like Christopher Isherwood, C. Day Lewis and W.H. Auden.

On February 7, 1931, Woolf finished what most literary critics believe to be her best work. After giving the finished manuscript of The
Waves to Leonard for editing, Woolf began working on a lighter book called Flush. This book purported to be a biography of the poet
Elizabeth Barrett Browning's dog. In August, Woolf bravely faced the galleys of The Waves and that fall it was published. Woolf, as
usual, took to her bed, fearful of the public response to her book.

She needn't have worried. The Waves was a resounding success. It went into a second edition almost at once. Leonard's own new book,

After the Deluge was, unfortunately, not as successful as both Woolf and Leonard had hoped. Despite that minor disappointment, that
autumn was a happy one for the Woolfs. The year came to a sad close when, in December, Lytton Strachey fell gravely ill. By Christmas
Eve, he was at death's door. Woolf and Leonard were in agony, grieving for their dear friend. The next day, however, they received word
that he was improving. On January 14th, 1932, Woolf and Leonard traveled to Lytton's home and found his family holding vigil, with
Carrington sitting alone looking absolutely miserable. Seven days later, Lytton Strachey died.

Lytton's death devastated Woolf. She'd lost her rival, her friend, and former love. 1932 was a mixed year-Woolf was a famous writer
with six successful novels under her belt, yet she was tired, depressed and emotionally weak. One more event pushed her close to the
breaking point. Carrington, the woman who had spent the greater part of her adult life in love with Lytton Strachey, and who was
married to Ralph Partridge, was now in a state of constant despair. Her husband and friends were convinced that, if given the chance,
she'd kill herself. Partridge begged people to keep an eye on her when he had to be away, including Woolf and Leonard. One day that
winter after Lytton died, the couple visited Carrington and spent the better part of the day with her. After they left, they received word
that Carrington had shot herself.

The End

At the beginning of 1932, Woolf finished Letter to a Young Poet and it was sold by Hogarth Press as a shilling booklet. The Second
Common Reader was published in October of that year and Woolf once again picked up Flush, which she'd set aside. She also began
work on a novel that would give her a great deal of trouble, The Years. In March 1933, the University of Manchester offered Woolf an
honorary degree; she turned it down. The year before she'd refused to accept a post at Cambridge, and six years later, she'd refuse an
honorary doctorate from University of Liverpool. She felt that it was dangerous for a writer to become involved in what she termed the
"academic machine."

The world was again in upheaval the early 1930's. The Nazi Party had been on the rise in Germany during 1932 and the next year Hitler
had become ruler of Germany. In 1933, the Japanese were occupying Manchuria. In 1934, all signs pointed to a Fascist uprising in
France, and in 1936, a civil war broke out in Spain. Two years later, Germany would annex Austria and the stage would be set for a
second world war.

Flush was published the following October and, like most of Woolf's recent novels, was a success. The following April, Leonard opened
up the obituary section of the Times and read that George Duckworth had died. That same year, while Woolf was busy with Here and
Now, Roger Fry died. Although Woolf was deeply saddened by his passing, she was perhaps more affected by watching her sister
Vanessa grieve for her ex-lover. Although Vanessa's love affair with Roger ended amicably nearly twenty years before, the two had
remained good friends. Added to Woolf's grief was the unbearable burden of everyone's expectation that she would be Roger Fry's
biographer. Woolf didn't want to write the biography. Furthermore, The Years was proving a nightmare for Woolf and in 1934, a book by
Wyndham Lewis called Men Without Art appeared in which an entire chapter was devoted to denigrating Woolf and her writing. Lewis
called her "extremely insignificant" as a writer. Although Wyndham Lewis's attack was condemned by a number of Woolf's supporters–
and although history has proven him quite wrong–Woolf feared her reputation was deteriorating.

After grappling with the idea of writing Roger Fry's biography, Woolf finally began work on it. At the same time, she continued work on
The Years, whipsawing back and forth regarding its worth. While reading the galleys of The Years, Woolf decided it was awful and the
thought of launching in into the literary marketplace only to blasted was almost too much for her to bear. Leonard also thought it was sub
par work, but told her that it was extremely good; he was afraid that if he told her the truth, she was try to kill herself. Buoyed by
Leonard's reaction, she began work on Three Guineas. In March 1937, despite both Leonard and Woolf's reservations, The Years was
published to good reviews, even though Woolf's friends were lukewarm about the novel at best. In October, Woolf sold her share of
Hogarth Press to John Lehmann.

Her nephew, Julian Bell, decided to fight in the new civil war taking place in Spain, despite his mother's vehement protests. He was
killed there on July eighteen, 1937. Vanessa was so grief-stricken that she hardly left her bed for two months. Woolf spent the better part
of the summer and fall consoling her sister. After the publication of Three Guineas in June 1938, Woolf began work on Between the Acts
while slogging her way through Roger Fry's biography. On September three, 1939, Britain declared war on Germany and World War
Two was underway.

On May 10th, 1940, Germany invaded Belgium and Holland. On June 14th, Paris fell. War in Britain was imminent and, like many Brits,
Woolf believed Britain was destined to lose. The looming Fascist regime did not bode well for Leonard especially; as a Jew, he was in
great if not yet imminent danger. In August 1940, the Battle of Britain began, in which Britain and Germany fought a series of air battles
over England. The bombing of London commenced soon after. Vanessa's studio and Woolf's home were blown to smithereens in the

9

attacks. However, the Brits managed to fend off the Germans, and the Battle of Britain was Germany's first loss of the new war. Despite
all this, Woolf was able to work. During that summer, her biography of Roger Fry had been published. On November twenty-three, 1940,
she finished Between the Acts and promptly began writing Anon. It was a period of relatively good mental health for her, even though
she'd just finished a novel and was in danger of slipping into a depression as was her tendency. However, by March 1941, her mood had
changed drastically and she was severely depressed. Leonard became quite anxious when Woolf began telling people that she did not
want to see Between the Acts published. She grew pale and emaciated. On Friday March 27th, Leonard took Woolf to see a family friend
who happened to be a doctor. Woolf told the doctor that nothing was wrong with her, despite the fact that she was hearing voices.

The next day, Friday March 28th, 1941, Woolf went to her garden studio for the last time, sat down and wrote two notes–one to Leonard

and one to Vanessa. In these letters, she writes of hearing voices and feeling sure that she'd never make it back from this bout with
madness and so wanted to spare the two most important people in her life from more pain. She walked back to the house, wrote Leonard
a second note and placed it on the mantle. She then picked up her walking stick, walked to the River Ouse, filled her pockets with stones
and drowned herself. She was fifty-eight years old.

Important Terms, People and Events

Terms
Allies - · Alliance of countries that was victorious in World
War One: Belgium, France, Russia, Serbia, Great Britain,
Japan, and America.)

Bloomsbury Group - · The appellation given to a group of
friends-painters, writers, philosophers and economists-that
made the London neighborhood of Bloomsbury its home.
Active mainly between 1904 and 1941. Members included
Virginia and Leonard Woolf, Clive and Vanessa Bell, Roger
Fry, Lytton Strachey, John Maynard Keyes and Duncan Grant,
among others.

Central Powers - · Alliance of countries that lost World War
One to the Allies: Germany, Austro- Hungary and the Ottoman
Empire.

Hogarth Press - · The publishing house founded by Leonard
and Virginia Woolf. Published many of the era's greatest
writers when they were unknowns, such as T.S. Eliot, E.M.
Forster, Katherine Mansfield, Sigmund Freud and Gorki.

Manic-Depression - · Also called Bi-polar Disorder, manic-
depression is characterized by manic episodes–in which the
patient is highly agitated-and periods of dark depression.
Virginia Woolf likely suffered from manic-depression

Modernism - · School of literary technique and thought in
which writers believed new forms of expression were necessary
to relay the realities of a modern and fractured world. Virginia
Woolf, one of the most eminent Modernist writers, utilized
stream-of-consciousness writing, for example, to convey a
character's interior thoughts. Contemporaries included James
Joyce and D.H. Lawrence.

People
Clive Bell - Virginia's brother-in-law, husband to Vanessa.
Like his wife, he was a painter. He was also an art and literary
critic. Author of Art (1914), Since Cézanne (1922), Landmarks
in Nineteenth-Century Painting (1927), and Proust (1929).

Julian Bell - Virginia's nephew (son of Vanessa and Clive
Bell). Killed in the Spanish Civil War in 1937.

Quentin Bell - Virginia's nephew (son of Vanessa and Clive
Bell) and biographer

Vanessa Bell - Virgina's beloved sister and a talented painter.
Married to Clive Bell. The two sisters were extremely close-
emotional and intellectual confidantes.

Violet Dickinson - Virginia's close friend and, according to
biographer and nephew Quentin Bell, the first woman Virginia
was in love with.

George Duckworth - Virginia's elder stepbrother. Sexually
abused her beginning when she was thirteen.

Gerald Duckworth - Virginia's other half-brother. He

published her first novels.

T.S. Eliot - Friend of Leonard and Virginia's. Was an unknown
poet when he first brought his poetry to Hogarth House and was
working in a bank by day to support himself. Best known for
Prufrock and Other Observations (1917), Poems (1920), and
The Waste Land (1922). Eliot won the Nobel Prize in Literature
in 1948. He was also an extremely influential critic and a
playwright. Leonard and Virginia were the first to publish him
and were lifelong supporters of his work.

Roger Fry - A brilliant art critic and painter who was part of
the table at Bloomsbury. He was particularly supportive and
attuned to modern French painting, specifically the post-
impressionists like Cézanne, Picasso and Matisse. Faced
monstrous criticism and controversy when he opened the First
Post-Impressionist Art Exhibit in London in 1910. He wrote
His Vision and Design (1920), Transformations (1926),
Cézanne (1927), and Last Lectures (1939).

Henry James - An American novelist and literary critic who
spent most of his life in Britain. James was a technical
innovator in prose and an exceptionally original stylist. His
books include The Golden Bowl, The Aspern Papers, The
Bostonians, The Europeans, Portrait of a Lady and The Art of
Fiction.

John Maynard Keyes - English economist. His theories and
philosophy-called Keynesian Economics-are widely considered
to have the greatest influence on modern economics.

James Russell Lowell - Major New England poet and literary
critic. He wrote books such as Fireside Travels (1864), Among
My Books (1870), The Bigelow Papers (1848) and Poems
(1844). In 1877 he was appointed minister to London, which is
how he made the acquaintance of Virginia's father Leslie
Stephen.

Katherine Mansfield - British author and considered one of
the century's best practitioners of the short story. Her
collections include Bliss (1920), The Garden Party (1922),
Something Childish (1924) and her collected stories (1937).
Was a friend and sometime foe of Virginia's.

10

Henri Matisse - A French painter and sculptor-considered one
of the post-impressionists. Along with Picasso, considered one
of the most influential artists of the Twentieth Century. He was
one of the artists Roger Fry exhibited at the scandalous Post
Impressionist Art Exhibits in London.

Pablo Picasso - Spanish painter and sculptor who worked in
France. Together, with Matisse, Cézanne and other artists, he
was part of the post-impressionist movement. He was one of
the artists Roger Fry exhibited at the First Post Impressionist
Art Exhibit.

Vita Sackville-West - One of Virginia's closest friends and,
according to Bell, a lover. She was a beautiful, forceful,
aristocratic woman, the wife of a British colonial counselor.
She was also a writer, the author of The Edwardians (1930) and
All Passion Spent (1931) as well as works of poetry and
memoir.

Adrian Stephen - Virginia's younger brother.

Julia Duckworth Stephen - Virginia's mother, Leslie
Stephen's second wife.

Laura Stephen - Sir Leslie Stephen's first daughter by Minny
Thackeray. She was insane her whole life and died in an
institution. Her madness made Virginia acutely aware of her
own tendency towards mental instability.

Leslie Stephen - Virginia's illustrious father. He was the
writer of Dictionary of National Biography, still considered a
massively important work. He also was an ardent supporter of
authors like Thomas Hardy, Henry James and Robert Louis
Stephenson when they were unknowns. Also an avid mountain
climber who wrote about the sport.

Thoby Stephen - Virginia's elder brother. The Thursday night
get togethers he organized with his Cambridge buddies formed

the nucleus of what was later to become, after his untimely
death from Typhoid Fever, the Bloomsbury Circle.

Lytton Strachey - Luminous member of the Bloomsbury
Group and great friend of Virginia's (there was talk of marriage,
which was later dropped.) Although also a respected literary
critic, Strachey is perhaps England's most famous biographer;
the author, most famously, of Eminent Victorians (1918),
Queen Victoria (1921) and Portraits in Miniature (1931).

William Makepeace Thackeray - English novelist and
satirist. His daughter, Harriet (or Minny), was Virginia's father
Sir Leslie Stephen's first wife.

Queen Victoria - Queen of England and Ireland from 1837–
1901.

Leonard Woolf - Virginia's husband, and a novelist in his
own right. He also was an economic critic, an active socialist
and, with his wife, publisher of Hogarth Press.

Events
Battle of Britain - A series of air battles fought between Great
Britain and Germany between August and October of 1940.
Considered a prelude to a German invasion of England, Britain
managed to fend off the German forces, despite heavy night
bombings of London and other English cities.

First Post-Impressionist Exhibition - An art exhibition held
in 1910 at the London Museum, curated by Roger Fry. It
featured works by artists like Cézanne, Matisse and Picasso and
caused a major scandal in the London art scene.

World War One - Also known as the Great War, a conflict
lasting from 1914–1918 between the Allies (Britain, America,
France, Russia, Japan, Serbia and Belgium) and the Central
Powers (Germany, Austro-Hungary and Ottoman Empire). It
was, at that point, the largest war in world history.