Biography
Virginia Woolf, born in London into a wealthy family, was educated at home—an uncommon choice at the time, especially compared to her brothers. Her parents both had children from previous marriages, so she grew up surrounded by a mix of siblings, stepbrothers, and stepsisters. Her father, a respected editor and author, was formerly the son-in-law of William Makepeace Thackeray. Her godfather was author James Russell Lowell, and family friends included Henry James and George Eliot, who frequently visited their home. Woolf later fondly remembered summers spent at the family residence in Cornwall by Porthminster Bay, where the Godrevy Lighthouse inspired her novel "To the Lighthouse."
The sudden death of Woolf’s mother in 1895, when Virginia was 13, followed by her sister’s death two years later, triggered her first mental breakdown. The death of her father in 1904 led to a severe mental and physical collapse, after which she was hospitalized in a mental institution to recover. Throughout her life, Woolf struggled with nervous breakdowns and severe depression. Adding to her emotional turmoil was the sexual abuse she and her sister Vanessa endured from two stepbrothers during childhood, deepening her feelings of guilt and inferiority.
Woolf attended King’s College London, where she met literary figures such as Lytton Strachey, Saxon Sydney-Turner, and Leonard Woolf, whom she married in 1912. She often felt self-conscious about what she called her “unattractive countenance” and once wrote that “being wanted [was] a pleasure that I have never felt.” In 1922, she began a nearly decade-long relationship with Vita Sackville-West, inspiring her to write the novel "Orlando" as a love letter to Sackville-West.
Following the publication of her novel "Between the Acts," Woolf sank into a severe depression worsened by the destruction of her London home during Nazi bombings and the lukewarm critical reception of her biography of her friend Roger Fry. Her condition declined until she was unable to write or even read, culminating in a full nervous breakdown. Feeling unable to continue, she wrote to her husband, expressing certainty that she was “going mad again” and that she “can’t fight any longer” or “go on spoiling your life any longer.” On March 28, 1941, at age 59, she left her home, walked to the nearby River Ouse, filled her pockets with heavy stones, and drowned herself.
