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 28,1941.

On her final note to her husband she wrote:

I have a feeling i shall go mad

I cannot go on longer

in these terrible times

I hear voices

and cannot concentrate on my work

I have fought against it

but cannot fight any longer

I owe all my happiness to you

but cannot go on and spoil your life.

That's how she spent all her life,and that's all for this time.

I still don't intend to talk about her works.The more i want to say,the less i find myself know about her.

Grow up in her father's study with a huge number of books,Virginia didn't go to school.As she complained in her letter in

her middle age,there was no school no friend.These add her poor health meant she didn't have a happy childhood