Virginia Woolf Research Paper

Virginia Woolf was born Adeline Virginia Stephen on January 25,1882 at 22 Hyde Park Gate, London. She was the third child of Sir Leslie Stephen, a historian and author, and his second wife, Julia Prinsep Duckworth, a famous model and nurse.1 Due to her parent's previous marriages, Woolf not only had three full siblings, she also had four half-siblings. The boys were formally educated, while the girl were home schooled using the Victorian library they had accesible at home.In the spring of 1882, Woolf's father was on one of his typical trips to Cornwall when he impulsively rented Talland House outside of St. Ives. For the next ten years the family lived in that house for the summer season. Woolf's strongest and best memories were from her

time she spent at St. Ives which served as a basis for her art. She explains why she felt so connected to her summer home in one of her memoirs, To the Lighthouse, from a diary entry of 22 March 1921: "Why am I so incredibly and incurably romantic about Cornwall? One’s past, I suppose; I see children running in the garden … The sound of the sea at night … almost forty years of life, all built on that, permeated by that: so much I could never explain."2 Woolfs earliest writings were that of her family newspaper, entitled "Hyde Park Gate News," where she would write of her families humerous stories, experiences, and trips. It wasn't until 1905 that she began writing professionally for "The Times Literary Supplement." Woolf and her remaining family then moved to another part of London where she then met the Bloomsbury Group, "a circle of intellectuals and artists." It was from this group that she met her husband, Leonard Woolf, who were married in August of 1912. She continued to write, until 1941 when she committed suicide by filling her coat with rocks and walking into a local river.