Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) epitomized rare literary genius.  Despite debilitating battles with mental breakdowns, Woolf produced a body of work considered among the most groundbreaking in twentieth century literature. Nurtured by husband Leonard Woolf and beloved by the literary circle of her Bloomsbury colleagues, Woolf might have lived the ideal writing life were it not for her illness. Along with her numerous books of fiction and nonfiction, Woolf left much insight into the writer’s life as a diarist and essayist. She encouraged women to write about whatever fascinated them, and to dare to be dreamers and creators.

As a young woman, Woolf developed her writer’s voice with a number of litary pursuits. She reviewed books for the Times Literary Supplement, wrote scores of articles and essays, and for a short time, taught English and history at Morley College in London (she herself had never earned a degree). Woolf started her first novel in 1907, The Voyage Out, and after seven and a half years of toil, eventually completed and published it in 1915.

Major Works

• The Years
• Jacob’s Room
• To the Lighthouse
• Mrs. Dalloway
• Orlando
• A Room of One’s Own 

More Information

• Virginia Woolf on Wikipedia
• The Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain
• The International Virginia Woolf Society
• Virginia Woolf in the Virtual World

Visit Virginia Woolf’s Home

• Monk’s House - Lewes, Sussex, UK

Virginia Woolf Quotes

“A good essay must have this permanent quality about it; it must draw its curtain round us, but it must be a curtain that shuts us in not out.”

“A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.”

“If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.”

“As a woman I have no country. As a woman my country is the whole world.”

“Every secret of a writer’s soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written large in his works.”

“Fiction is like a spider’s web, attached ever so slightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. Often the attachment is scarcely perceptible.”

“It is only when we can measure the way of life and experience made possible to the ordinary woman that we can account for the success or failure of the extraordinary woman as a writer.”

“Happiness is to have a little strong onto which things will attach themselves…as if dipped loosely into a wave of treasure to bring up pearls sticking to it.” (In her journal, April 20, 1925)

“What is the use of saying one is indifferent to reviews when positive praise, though mingled with blame, gives one such a start on, that instead of feeling dried up, one feels…flooded with ideas?” (Six days after the publication of To the Lighthouse, May 11, 1927)

“Success, I believe, produces a kind of modesty. It frees you from bothering about yourself.” (In her journal, October 11, 1919)

“Fame grows. Chances of meeting this person, doing that thing, accumulate. Life is, as I’ve said since I was ten, awfully interesting…” (In her journal, November 23, 1926)

“O why do I ever let anyone read what I write! Every time I have to go through a breakfast with a letter of criticism I swear I will write for my own praise or blame in future. It is a misery.” (From a letter to Violet Dickinson, 1907)

“My writing makes me tremble…I have wasted all my time trying to begin things and taking up different points of view, and dropping them, and grinding out the dullest stuff, which makes my blood run thick. However, I shall begin again now. I have 4 books of white paper waiting me.” (From a letter to Violet Dickinson, 1907)

“In case you ever foolishly forget; I am never not thinking of you.”

“I thought about how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse, perhaps, to be locked in.”

“I have a deeply hidden and inarticulate desire for something beyond the daily life.”

“You cannot find peace by avoiding life.”

“One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.”