Woolf, Virginia
Virginia Woolf (January 25, 1882 - March 28, 1941) was a English author and feminist. Born Adeline Virginia Stephens in London she was brought up and educated at home. In 1895 following the death of her mother she had the first of numerous nervous breakdowns. Following the death of her father (Sir Leslie Stephen, a literary critic) in 1904, she moved with her sister and two brothers to a house in Bloomsbury. She began writing professionally in 1905, initially for the Times Literary Supplement. In 1912 she married Leonard Woolf, a civil servant and political theorist. Her first novel, The Voyage Out, was published in 1915. Between the wars, Woolf was a significant figure in London literary society and a member of the Bloomsbury group. In March 1941, Woolf drowned herself in the River Ouse, near her Rodmell residence. She had published ten (?) novels and over 500 essays.
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Jacob's Room is Virginia Woolf's first truly experimental novel. It is a portrait of a young man, who is both representative and victim of the social values which led Edwardian society into war. Jacob's life is traced from the time he is a small boy playing on the beach, through his years in Cambridge, then in artistic London, and finally making a trip to Greece, but this is no orthodox Bildungsroman. Jacob is ...
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Woolf portrays the fascinations of self-discovery through relationships with other people, and she also looks into the intricacies of love--are we aware of love? Katharine Hilbery is beautiful and privileged but uncertain of her future. She must choose between becoming engaged to the oddly prosaic poet William, and her dangerous attraction to the lower-class Ralph. As she struggles to decide, the lives of two other ...
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In The Voyage Out, one of Woolf's wittiest, socially satirical novels, Rachel Vinrace embarks for South America on her father's ship, and is launched on a course of self-discovery in a modern version of the mythic voyage. Lorna Sage's Introduction and Explanatory Notes offer guidance to the reader new to Woolf, and illuminate Woolf's presence, not identifiable in the heroine, but in the social satire, lyricism and ...
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A haunted house that holds the mystery of the human heart; a challenge to read the contents of a library -- that reveals how dismally bad all too many books are. Five faces in a train compartment that among them become an unwritten novel. . . . a garden that holds the memory of love. Monday or Tuesday contains eight beautiful tales from the strange beautful mind of Virginia Woolf, one of the 20th century's most ...
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CHAPTER ONE
"So of course," wrote Betty Flanders, pressing her heels rather deeper in the sand, "there was nothing for it but to leave."
Slowly welling from the point of her gold nib, pale blue ink dissolved the full stop; for there her pen stuck; her eyes fixed, and tears slowly filled them. The entire bay quivered; the lighthouse wobbled; and she had the illusion that the mast of Mr. Connor's little yacht ...
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A HAUNTED HOUSE
Whatever hour you woke there was a door shutting. From room to room they went, hand in hand, lifting here, opening there, making sure—a ghostly couple.
"Here we left it," she said. And he added, "Oh, but here too!" "It's upstairs," she murmured. "And in the garden," he whispered. "Quietly," they said, "or we shall wake them."
But it wasn't that you woke us. Oh, no. "They're looking for ...
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Chapter I
As the streets that lead from the Strand to the Embankment are very narrow, it is better not to walk down them arm-in-arm. If you persist, lawyers' clerks will have to make flying leaps into the mud; young lady typists will have to fidget behind you. In the streets of London where beauty goes unregarded, eccentricity must pay the penalty, and it is better not to be very tall, to wear a long blue ...
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CHAPTER I
It was a Sunday evening in October, and in common with many other young ladies of her class, Katharine Hilbery was pouring out tea. Perhaps a fifth part of her mind was thus occupied, and the remaining parts leapt over the little barrier of day which interposed between Monday morning and this rather subdued moment, and played with the things one does voluntarily and normally in the daylight. But ...
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