Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) was born in London as the 7thof her father’s 8 children. She is known as a novelist but was a prolific writer of essays and short stories as well. Her father was a Man of Letters (a scholar) at Cambridge, her mother was also known to be well educated. Woolf was educated mostly at home by her parents and various tutors. Woolf was plagued with an undiagnosed mental illness that is said to have manifested around the time of her mother’s death in 1895. After her father’s death Woolf stayed with her brother and became a part of the intellectual circle known as The Bloomsbury Group. It was in this group that she met her husband, Leonard Woolf, they married in 1912.The couple began to print books for friends within the Group, it later became a full publishing house, Hogarth Press. It was also in the Bloomsbury Group that Woolf met the inspiration for Orlando, Vita Sackville-West. Vita and Virginia had a passionate friendship, it is implied that they might have been much more than friends, thus the exploration of sexuality in Orlando. Throughout her writing Woolf struggled with her mental health, often locking herself away in deep depressive episodes. This eventually led to her taking her own life in March 1941.
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