Google celebrates the 136th birth anniversary of one of Britain’s greatest novelists, Virginia Woolf, through a Google doodle.
VIRGINIA Woolf is widely regarded as a great writer of her times, whose influence on the literary world continues to be felt even to this day.
Who was Virginia Woolf?
Virginia Woolf was born Adeline Virginia Stephen in Kensington, London on January 25, 1882.
Her father was the celebrated historian and critic Sir Leslie Stephen and her mother, Julia Stephen, was a famous personality known for her beauty. Together, they raised their daughter in a literate, well-connected household.
Virginia, however, suffered from mental illness after the death of her mother in 1895. Unfortunately, this was to be the first of the mental health episodes which later destroyed her life, including a more serious breakdown when her father passed away in 1904.
Her writing career
She began writing at an early age. Her first piece was published in December 1904. Along with her husband, Leonard, whom she married in 1912, she became part of an influential group of writers known as the Bloomsbury Group. This group was prominent in London during the early 20th century.
Woolf’s first novel, The Voyage Out, was published in 1915, and her subsequent writings established her as one of the leading novelists and essayists of her time.
She published prolifically between the First and Second World Wars, with her final novel ‘Between the Acts’ issued just after her death in 1941.
In total, Woolf published nine novels:
The Voyage Out (1915)
Night and Day (1919)
Jacob’s Room (1922)
Mrs Dalloway (1925)
To the Lighthouse (1927)
Orlando (1928)
The Waves (1931)
The Years (1937)
Between the Acts (1941)
She’s also well known for her non-fiction, particularly the book-length essays titled ‘A Room of One’s Own’ and ‘Three Guineas’, published in 1929 and 1938 respectively.
Her tragic end
After producing the final manuscript for her last book, she fell into a depression.
On March 28 1941 she drowned herself in the River Ouse near her home, Monk’s House in Lewes, Sussex, her body being untraceable for three weeks.
In her suicide note to her husband, she wrote the following, “Dearest, I feel certain that I am going mad again. I feel we can’t go through another of those terrible times. And I shan’t recover this time.”
A tragic end of a person, who in the times to come, influenced the rise of the modern feminist movement particularly in the 1970’s.
The famous play, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf by Edward Ablee, has been successful worldwide and also inspired a film version starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.
Nicole Kidman won an Oscar for portraying Woolf in the 2002 film ‘The Hours’, an adaptation of Michael Cunningham’s 1998 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.