Virginia Woolf was an influential English writer known for works like Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse. She grew up in a wealthy family but experienced mental health issues like depression from an early age. As an adult, she was part of the Bloomsbury Group in London and married fellow writer Leonard Woolf. Some of her most famous novels experimented with stream of consciousness and nonlinear narrative techniques. Woolf ultimately drowned herself in 1941 while struggling with mental illness during World War II.