About Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf is one of my favorite writers.
She was born in London,a member of the Duckworth publishing family.Becauce of her poor health,Virginia was educated at
home by her father.In middle age,she described this period in a letter to Vita Sackville-West:"Think how i was brought
up!No school,mooning about alone among my father's books;never any change to pick up all that goes on in schools---throwing
balls.ragging.slang.vulgarities.scenes.jealousies!"
Virginia's youth was shadowed by series of emotional shocks.Gerald Duckworth,her half-brother,sexually abused her.In sketch
of the past(1939)she wrote:"I can remember the feel of his hands going under my clothes,going firmly and steadily lower and
lower,i remember how i hoped he would stop,how i stiffened and wriggled as his hands approached my private parts.But he did
not stop."Julia Jackson Duckworth(her mother)died when she was in her early teens. Stella,her half-sister,took her mother's
place but died two years later.Leslie Stephen(her father)suffered a slow death from cancer.When her brother Toby died in 1906,
she had a mental breakdown.Vanessa(her sister),whom in childhood Virginia had bathed and slept with ,influenced a lot of her
characters.
In 1912 she married a political theorist Leonard (Sidney)Woolf(1880--1969).Leonard Woolf was born in London as a son of a
barrister.He studied in Cambridge and in 1904 he went in civil service in Ceylon.From 1923 to 1930 he was a literary editor
on the Nation.In 1917 he set up a small hand press at Hogart House,and worked as its director until
his death.
In the event of a Nazi invastion,Virginia and Leonard had made provisions to kill themselves.After the final attack of
mental illness,Virginia loaded her pocket full of stones and drowned herself in the river of Ouse near her Sussex home on
March...
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