Virginia Woolf

Born Adeline Virginia Stephen, Virginia Woolf, as she would later come to be known, grew up in her parents’ well-connected household in Kensington, London. At age 13, Virginia suffered a nervous breakdown after the death of her mother, and had another collapse when her father died nine years later. She began writing professionally in 1900 but would not publish her most influential work, the novel Mrs. Dalloway, until 1925. Virginia married the writer Leonard Woolf in 1912. Woolf’s other major works included the novels To the Lighthouse (1927) and Orlando (1927) and the essay, A Room of One’s Own. In 1941, after suffering from a period of depression, Woolf wrote a suicide note to her husband and drowned herself in the River Ouse.