Virginia Woolf was a pioneering 20th century English writer and feminist. She was born in 1882 in London to an affluent family with an extensive library where she developed her love of reading and writing. She was a member of the Bloomsbury Group and married fellow writer Leonard Woolf in 1912. Some of her most famous works include Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, and A Room of One's Own. She suffered from depression throughout her life and ultimately died by suicide in 1941.
2. Name: Insiyafatema Alvani
Roll No: 11
Sem: 2 (M.A)
Paper No: 106 Paper Code: 22399
Paper Name: The Twentieth Century Literature: 1900 to
World War II
Topic: Biography Of Virginia Woolf
Submitted to: Smt S.B Gardi, Department of English,
M.K.B.U
Email: insiyafatemaalvani@gmail.com
3. Table of Content
Early Life & Education
Bloomsbury Group and marriage life
Famous works
Writing style
Feminism
‘A Room of One's Own’
Death
4. Early Life
● Adeline Virginia Woolf was born on 25 January 1882 in
London.
● She was educated at home but her family had a expensive
library in which Woolf could indulge her self in reading and
writing.
● From 1897 to 1901, she attended the Ladies department of
King's College, London
● Her father Leslie Stephen was a famous scholar, editor and
philosopher.
● She was pioneer of Stream of Consciousness as a narrative
device.
5. Bloomsbury Group and marriage life
● In 1904 she moved to Bloomsbury and became the member of
group. A group of intellectuals and creatives that became
Woolf’s close friends and business partners.
● Here she meet Leonard Sidney Woolf, Leonard and Virginia
married in 1912 and in 1997, couple founded Hogarth Press.
● She had a emotional and sexual affair with Sackville-West for
approximately ten years
6. Famous works
● The Voyage Out (1915)
● Mrs Dalloway (1925)
● To the Lighthouse (1927)
● Orlando (1928)
● A Room of One's Own (1929)
● The Waves (1931)
7. Writing style
● Woolf was journalist as well as writer and recognized as one of
the best novelists and short story writers of the twentieth
century.
● She was best known for fractured narratives and writing in a
stream-of-consciousness prose style, in which characters are
depicted through their interior monologue; her books were
sometimes called psychological novels.
8. Feminist Woolf
What is Feminism?
● Feminism is the belief that women should be allowed the
same rights, power, and opportunities as men and be treated
in the same way, or the set of activities intended to achieve
this state.
● woman question in the nineteenth century was concerned
largely with issues of the vote and education, Virginia
Woolf became the leading spokeswoman for the dominant
issue of the twentieth century:
9. ‘A Room of One’s Own’
● It considers the first major work in feminist criticism.
● It's an extended essay by Virginia Woolf which
Published on 24 October 1929. The essay based on
series of lectures at Newnham College and ODTAA
society at Girton College of Cambridge University in
1928.
● Woolf builds the argument that literature and history is
a male construct that has traditionally marginalised
women.
10. Continue…
● "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to
write fiction". Woolf suggests that impressive and influence piece
need financial and spatial freedom.
● She argues that women are not treated equal to men in the society.
She gives a example of Judith, a fictional sister of Shakespeare
who always underestimated and treated as second sex.
● She States that Jane Austen , George Eliot and the Bronte sisters
have produces some good works of literature
11. Death
● Virginia Woolf left nine novels, 4000
letters, 400 essays and thirty volumes of
her diary.
● She ended her own life by committing a
suicide and reason is depression she
suffered all throughout her life.
● On March 28,1941, she loaded her
pocket full of stones and thrown herself in
the river Ouse.
12. Citation
● Gordon, Lyndall. "Woolf [née Stephen], (Adeline) Virginia (1882–1941),
writer and publisher." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 23.
Oxford University Press. Date of access 10 Mar. 2023,
<https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001
.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-37018>
● “FEMINISM | English meaning - Cambridge Dictionary.” Cambridge
Dictionary,
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/feminism.
● “Representation of Women In a Room of One's Own By Virginia
Woolf.” Ignited Minds Journals, http://ignited.in/I/a/89077.