„Books are the mirrors of the soul.“
— Virginia Woolf, book Between the Acts
Source: Between the Acts
Birthdate: 25. January 1882
Date of death: 28. March 1941
Other names: Adeline Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English writer who is considered one of the foremost modernists of the twentieth century, and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device. Born in an affluent household in Kensington, London, she attended the King's College London and was acquainted with the early reformers of women's higher education.
Having been home-schooled for most part of her childhood, mostly in English classics and Victorian literature, Woolf began writing professionally in 1900. During the interwar period, Woolf was a significant figure in London literary society and a central figure in the influential Bloomsbury Group of intellectuals. She published her first novel titled The Voyage Out in 1915, through the Hogarth Press, a publishing house that she established with her husband, Leonard Woolf. Her best-known works include the novels Mrs Dalloway , To the Lighthouse and Orlando , and the book-length essay A Room of One's Own , with its dictum, "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction."
Woolf became one of the central subjects of the 1970s movement of feminist criticism, and her works have since garnered much attention and widespread commentary for "inspiring feminism", an aspect of her writing that was unheralded earlier. Her works are widely read all over the world and have been translated into more than fifty languages. She suffered from severe bouts of mental illness throughout her life and took her own life by drowning in 1941 at the age of 59.
— Virginia Woolf, book Between the Acts
Source: Between the Acts
— Virginia Woolf, book Orlando: A Biography
Source: Orlando
— Virginia Woolf, book A Room of One's Own
Source: A Room of One's Own (1929), Ch. 1, p. 4
"The Leaning Tower", lecture delivered to the Workers' Educational Association, Brighton (May 1940)
The Moment and Other Essays (1948)
Source: A Room of One's Own / Three Guineas
— Virginia Woolf, book Orlando: A Biography
Source: Orlando: A Biography (1928), Ch. 6
— Virginia Woolf, book The Waves
Source: The Waves
Variant: It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality
Source: The Death of the Moth and Other Essays
— Virginia Woolf, book Mrs Dalloway
Source: Mrs. Dalloway
"Women and Fiction"
Granite and Rainbow (1958)
Context: The extraordinary woman depends on the ordinary woman. It is only when we know what were the conditions of the average woman's life … it is only when we can measure the way of life and the experience of life made possible to the ordinary woman that we can account for the success or failure of the extraordinary woman as a writer.
— Virginia Woolf, book Jacob's Room
Source: Jacob's Room