Virginia Woolf

English writer (1882-1941)

Virginia Woolf famously wrote in one of her defining works, A Room of One’s Own, “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction." Woolf herself was born into an affluent and creative English family in 1882, and she was celebrated for...

Virginia Woolf famously wrote in one of her defining works, A Room of One’s Own, “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” Woolf herself was born into an affluent and creative English family in 1882, and she was celebrated for the experimental, stream-of-consciousness style of her novels Mrs. Dalloway, Orlando, and To the Lighthouse. 
Despite her success, Woolf struggled with depression throughout her life. She experienced profound losses in close succession during her life, including the deaths of her mother, half-sister, father, and brother. She also wrote in 22 Hyde Park Gate of the sexual abuse she endured from her half-brothers. Woolf took her own life in 1941 at the age of 59. Years later, during feminism’s second wave throughout the 1970s, Woolf’s work resonated with an entirely new generation of readers, and it remains timeless today.