Biography of Virginia Woolf - Docx Final
Biography of Virginia Woolf - Docx Final
Biography of Virginia Woolf - Docx Final
Cedillo
MAED-English
Educ 224
Career
Virginia Woolf had begun writing professionally in 1900. The first of her writings, which was a
journalistic account of a visit to the Bronte family, was published anonymously in a journal in December
1904. She started writing for ‘The Times Literary Supplement’ the following year.
She published her first novel ‘The Voyage Out’ in 1915, though it was originally titled ‘Melymbroisa.’
The book was mostly about the experiences in her own life. She continued writings novels, self-
publishing most of them, and slowly she became a famous personality in the Victorian literary society.
In 1928, Virginia Woolf started taking a grassroots approach to inspiring feminism. She started
addressing undergraduate women in various colleges. ‘A Room of One’s Own’ and ‘Three Guineas’
were two of her non-fiction works that discuss the hardships that women writers and intellectuals had to
go through since it was men who held legal and economic power. She wanted to make people realize the
effects of industrialization as well as create awareness about birth control too.
It was during the bombing of London in 1940 and 1941 when she worked on ‘Between the Arts.’ Here,
she portrayed war as threatening art and humanity itself. Though she raised several questions in this
work, she later felt that her work was of little significance as England seemed on the verge of invasion
and civilization about to slide over a cliff. It was such horrors that made her unable to write. She found
herself haunted by her fears, which led to her killing herself by drowning in 1941. Her work was
published later that year after her death.
With the end of the Second World War, her posthumous popularity suffered. However her works gained
popularity again in the 1970s with the advent of feminist criticism. Despite her fame, she earned
criticism for being anti-Semitic and for her snobbery—attributes she had herself admitted to in her
personal diary.
Major Works
Her first work ‘The Voyage Out’ was published on 26 March 1915 by her half-brother Duckworth’s
company. It was written during the periods when she was psychologically vulnerable, and suffered from
depression.
In 1981, an alternate version of ‘The Voyage Out’ under its original title of ‘Melymbrosia’ was
published by Loise DeSalvo, an American writer, editor and professor. DeSalvo claimed that her work
was an attempt to restore the text of the novel as Virginia Woolf had originally conceived it, and
contained much more commentary of subjects like homosexuality, women’s issues, and colonialism.
Since Woolf had been warned by her colleagues that publishing such an outspoken work would affect
her career, the earlier version had been heavily edited.
’To the Lighthouse’ was another one of her important works. It was published in 1927 by the Hogarth
Press—which she had co-founded with her husband. What’s unique about this novel was that it
contained little dialogue, and almost no action, as most of it was written as thoughts and observations.
Childhood emotions were recalled and adult relationships were highlighted. She had begun writing this
book as a way of understanding as well as dealing with unresolved issues concerning her parents. That is
why similarities with her life can be seen in the book.
’The Waves’ was published in 1931. It was one of her most experimental novels. It consisted of six
characters, through which Virginia Woolf explores concepts of individuality, self, and community. It is
difficult to assign a genre to this novel, because of its complexity. Even the term ‘novel’ may not
describe it in an accurate way because of its complexity. As described in Woolf’s biography, it was less
of a novel and more of a ‘playpoem.’ The book was translated by Marguerite Yourcenar in 1937.
'Flush: A Biography’ was published in 1933 by Hogarth Press. The book, which views city life through
the eyes of a dog, is a harsh criticism of the unnatural ways in which people live in the city. Woolf’s
emotional and philosophical views are verbalized in this book.