Virginia Woolf- Virginia Woolf- Biography and Biography and

Literary Literary ContributionContribution

A presentation in English literature for the

12-th classCreated bySnezhanka StefanovaAprilov National High School

Virginia WoolfVirginia Woolf/1882-1941//1882-1941/

Virginia Woolf was a British novelist regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century. Her stream-of-consciousness technique and poetic style are among the most important contributions to the modern novel.

BiographyBiography• Born Adeline Virginia Stephen in

London to Sir Leslie Stephen and Julia Prinsep Duckworth (née Jackson) (1846–1895), she was educated by her parents in their literate and well-connected household at 22 Hyde Park Gate, Kensington. Virginia's parents had married each other after being widowed and the household contained the children of three marriages.

• Sir Leslie Stephen's eminence as an editor, critic, and biographer, and his connection to William Thackeray (he was the widower of Thackeray's eldest daughter) meant that Woolf was raised in an environment filled with the influences of Victorian literary society.

• The sudden death of her father, when Virginia was 14, and that of her sister Stella 2 years later, led to the first of Virginia’s nervous breakdowns.

• The death of her father in 1904 provoked her most alarming collapse and she was briefly institutionalised.

• Although she was married to Leonard Woolf from 1912 until her death in 1941, some of Virginia’s strongest romantic ties were with women.

• In 1917 with her husband she founded the Hogarth Press which became the first to publish Sigmund Freud in English (this greatly inspired Woolf). The Hogarth Press also published T.S.Eliot, Katherine Mansfield, Maxim Gorky and all Woolf's writings.

• 1941: At the onset of another mental breakdown, which she feared would be permanent, Virginia Woolf filled her pockets with stones and drowned herself in the River Ouse near her home leaving the following suicide note for her husband and sister.

Suicide note to her husband, Leonard Sidney Woolf

(18 March 1941)Dearest, I feel certain I am going mad again. I feel we can't go through another of these terrible times. And I shan't recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and can't concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don't think two people could have been happier till this terrible disease came. I can't fight any longer, I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can't even write this properly. I can't read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that — everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can't go on spoiling your life any longer. I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been.

Places of Artistic Places of Artistic InspirationInspiration

The area around St. Ives was a fruitful childhood haunt for the young Virginia. The far-off vision of the Godrevy lighthouse was to come back to her as a potent literary motif in later life.

""Probably nothing

Probably nothing

we had as

we had as children was quite

children was quite

so important to us

so important to us

as our summers in

as our summers in

Cornwall…to hear

Cornwall…to hear

the waves

the waves breaking…to dig

breaking…to dig

in the sands; to

in the sands; to

scramble over the

scramble over the

rocks and see the

rocks and see the

anemones

anemones flourishing their

flourishing their

antennae in the

antennae in the

pools"pools"

Charleston in Firle, East Sussex has become a Mecca for anyone interested in Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury set. It was acquired by Virginia's sister, Vanessa, in 1916, and became a home and meeting place for some of the most influential artists and thinkers of the day.

Decorated in the Bloomsbury style, its preserved interior is a unique example of Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant's distinctive style of decorative art in a domestic context and is the fruition of over 60 years of artistic creativity.

The interior of the house is preserved just the way it was. Everywhere you look there is art, even in the bathroom.

Sissinghurst, Vita Sackville West's house and garden creation is home to the first printing press used by Woolf in the early days of the Hogarth Press.

1940: The Woolfs’ London home in Meckleburgh Square was bombed in August 1940 and their country home, Monks House in Rodmell, East Sussex, became their permanent residence. It is now a National Trust property and its preserved rooms effectively reflect the life and times of Virginia Woolf and her circle.

Literary Work and Literary Work and ContributionContribution

• 1905: Virginia began writing professionally for the Times Literary Supplement. At the same time she and her sister and brothers established a household in the Bloomsbury section of London, which became a gathering place for members of the London intelligentsia.Between the World Wars the Bloomsbury group inspired the trends and ideas in modern, 20-th century thinking, philosophy and art.

• Virginia Woolf is considered one of the greatest innovators of the English language. In the words of E.M. Foster, she “ pushed the English language a little further against the dark” ,and her literary achievements and creativity are influential even today. Woolf is 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 consciousnesses. Intense lyricism and stylistic virtuosity fuse to create a world overabundant with auditory and visual impressions.

A narrative technique in non-dramatic fiction

Employed literary devices Artistic outcome

Revelation of the thoughts passing through the mind of the protagonist through:

• snatches of incoherent thoughts• free association of ideas and images• ungrammatical constructions• self-analysis• dramatised inner conflicts• imagined dialogue

Examination of the psychological and emotional motives of characters

Almost no action, all events occur in the characters’ minds

Substitution of linear narrative by a fractured one

Presentation of the full richness,

speed and subtlety of the human mind

Rendering the flow of the myriad

impressions-visual, auditory, physical

etc. - that form the awareness of the

individual along with his rational thoughts

Penetrating explorations of the

workings of the human consciousness

1915The Voyage Out

1919Night and Day

1922Jacob’s Room

1923Fresh Water/only play/

1925Mrs. Dalloway

1927To the Lighthouse

1928Orlando: A Biography

1929A Room of One’s Own

1931The Waves

1941Between the Acts

/last work/

The beauty of the world

which is so soon to perish,

has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish,

cutting the heart asunder.

The EndThe End