Woolf, Virginia ___ 1882-1941 ___ British ___ writer

BIOGRAPHICAL SUMMARY
Virginia was the second daughter of Sir Leslie Stephen, the first editor of the 'National Biography'. The family lived in Hyde Park Gate but had a country home at St Ives in Cornwall. Woolf's mother died when she was 13 and her father died ten years later. Both these losses precipitated mental breakdowns which left her psychologically fragile for the rest of her life. She settled in Gordon Square with her sister Vanessa and her brother Adrian, and subsequently married Leonard Sidney Woolf. The Woolfs and their many literary friends became known as the Bloomsbury Group. In 1917, Virginia and Sydney launched the Hogarth Press, and, two years later, they bought Monks House in Rodmell, East Sussex. It was there Virginia wrote most of her novels. Severely distressed, and depressed by the war, she drowned herself in a river near Monks House. Her diaries are evidently literary; they also give an excellent insight into a writer's creative processes. Moreover, since the Bloomsbury Group has such a revered position within the English literature world, Woolf's diaries have historical importance.
A biography link
Wikipedia bio
The Diary Review - One wave after another

DIARY DATES, CONTENT DESCRIPTORS
1915-1941 ___ literary people society self creativity

WEB TEXT LINKS
two or three extracts
a few pages
a dissertation on the diaries, full of extracts

ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT LINKS
University of Sussex Library - Special Collections - possibly

SOME PUBLISHED TITLES
A Writer's Diary
The Diary of Virginia Woolf
 

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.