Who was Virginia Woolf?
Virginia Woolf was an English writer and one of the most important modernist authors of the 20th century. She is known for novels such as Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse and Orlando, and the essay A Room of One's Own.
Woolf was born in London in 1882. Her father, Leslie Stephen, was a writer and editor. She grew up surrounded by books and intellectual discussion.
She was a central member of the Bloomsbury Group, a circle of writers, artists and thinkers in London that included her sister, the painter Vanessa Bell.
Modernist writer
Woolf developed a style called stream of consciousness, which shows characters' thoughts and feelings as they flow.
In A Room of One's Own, published in 1929, she argued that a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.
With her husband, Leonard Woolf, she founded the Hogarth Press, which published her works and those of other writers.
Woolf struggled with mental illness throughout her life. She died in 1941. Her home, Monk's House, in Sussex, is owned by the National Trust.