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Introduction

Virginia Woolf

Who was afraid of Virginia Woolf? In the end, maybe only Virginia herself. The troubled writer is as famous for her mental illness as for her writing. Though some critics have dismissed Woolf’s oeuvre as narrow and elitist (an accusation leveled at Modernist authors in general), many others have heralded her books for expanding the ideas of time and place in traditional narrative. Perhaps even more importantly, Woolf has been recognized for her philosophical musings on literature, sex, and gender. Her seminal nonfiction work, A Room of One’s Own, notes the difficulties faced by women writers and places them in historical context. Although the feminist movements of the 1960s and 1970s helped return Woolf to prominence, her own unique talents have sustained her respected position in 20th-century literature.

Essential Facts

1. Woolf’s family was full of historical and cultural connections. Her father’s first wife was the daughter of William Makepeace Thackeray, and her mother was a descendant of one of Marie Antoinette’s ladies in waiting.
2. Woolf was a member of the famous Bloomsbury Group. Its constituents included such literary luminaries as E. M. Forester and Lytton Strachey. The writer and critic Leonard Woolf, who eventually became her husband, was a member too.
3. Woolf was a devoted diarist. The collected edition of her diary spans five volumes.
4. Woolf’s mental illness has inspired many posthumous diagnoses, most commonly bipolar disorder or manic depression. Her struggles ended with her suicide in 1941.
5. Woolf’s life was fictionalized in Michael Cunningham’s 1998 novel The Hours, which was adapted into a film in 2002. Nicole Kidman won an Oscar for her role as Woolf.