Woolf, Leonard ___ 1880-1969 ___ British ___ civilservant, writer

BIOGRAPHICAL SUMMARY
Leonard Sidney Woolf was the third of ten children. When his father died in 1892, Woolf was sent to board at Arlington House, a preparatory school near Brighton. Thereafter he was educated at St Paul's and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he joined a group of writers and intellectuals - including Bertrand Russell, Lytton Strachey and E M Forster - who called themselves The Apostles. For several years, before marrying Virginia, Woolf worked as a British colonial civil servant in Ceylon. He opposed Britain's involvement in the First World War, and, having been rejected for military service on health grounds, began to focus increasingly on politics and sociology. Settled in Gordon Square, Sydney and Virginia Woolf formed the focus of the Bloomsbury Group, which included many of The Apostles. Together they set up Hogarth Press, with Leonard as the main director, a position he retained until his death in 1969. His main work, however, was as a political writer and editor. He also spent much time caring for his wife, through her bouts of manic depression. After Virginia's death, he fell in love with a married woman called Trekkie, an artist. The unusual relationship lasted a quarter of a century, with Trekkie living partly with her husband and partly with Leonard. In terms of diaries, Woolf is probably better remembered for being the editor of his wife's journal, but the Hogarth Press also published his own diaries written during his time in Ceylon.
A biography link
Wikipedia bio
The Diary Review - Woolf on rinderpest and salt

DIARY DATES, CONTENT DESCRIPTORS
1908-1911 ___ literary travel SriLanka

WEB TEXT LINKS
etext (pdf)
 

ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT LINKS
University of Sussex Library - Special Collections

SOME PUBLISHED TITLES
Diaries in Ceylon, 1908-1911
 

May 2005, August 2008, April 2013
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IMPORTANT NOTES AND CAUTIONS: 1) The first line of basic information may be incomplete in several ways: some historical figures have different names (titles, pen-names); their birth and death dates may be unknown or uncertain (g - guess, c - circa); similarly, their occupations may be unknown, or they may have had other jobs; and, for early diarists, I've used 'British' a bit too freely. 2) The biographical summary may not be accurate. It was compiled quickly from various sources, mostly on the internet, and the facts were not checked anywhere near as rigorously as they would have been if they'd been intended for publication in a printed form. 3) The journal dates and descriptors (which are in no particular order) must be treated with caution: since I have not examined the diaries myself, the descriptors are only guesses based on bibliographies, anthologies and internet biographies. 4) For the biography and etext links, I have ignored any sites with charges, and I have avoided, wherever possible, those with pop-ups or too much advertising. I have limited myself to providing three etext links where there is some variety between them. 5) For the original manuscript links, I have limited myself to providing a maximum of two (although, for a few diarists, their original diaries are held in more than two places). 6) I have provided the titles - chosen randomly - for up to three printed editions of the diaries.