Our people page on Virginia Woolf

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Virginia Woolf
(biographical info at bottom of page)

When the Day of Judgment dawns and people, great and small, come
marching in to receive their heavenly rewards, the Almighty will gaze
upon the mere bookworms and say to Peter, Look, these need no
reward. We have nothing to give them. They have loved reading.

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

I can only note that the past is beautiful because one never realises an emotion at the time. It expands later, and thus we don't have complete emotions about the present, only about the past. What is the meaning of life? That was all- a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years, the great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead, there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark; here was one. -To the Lighthouse Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.

I am not one and simple, but complex and many.

Beauty, the world seemed to say. And as if to prove it (scientifically) wherever he looked at the houses, at the railings, at the antelopes stretching over the palings, beauty sprang instantly. To watch a leaf quivering in the rush of air was an exquisite joy. Up in the sky swallows swooping, swerving, flinging themselves in and out, round and round, yet always with perfect control as if elastics held them; and the flies rising and falling; and the sun spotting now this leaf, now that, in mockery, dazzling it with soft gold in pure good temper; and now again some chime (it might be a motor horn) tinkling divinely on the grass stalks—all of this, calm and reasonable as it was, made out of ordinary things as it was, was the truth now; beauty, that was the truth now. Beauty was everywhere. -Mrs. Dalloway

No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anyone but yourself.

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What is meant by “reality”? It would seem to be something very erratic,
very undependable—now to be found in a dusty road, now in a scrap of
newspaper in the street, now a daffodil in the sun. It lights up a group in
a room and stamps some casual saying. It overwhelms one walking home
beneath the stars and makes the silent world more real than the world of
speech—and then there it is again in an omnibus in the uproar of Piccadilly.
Sometimes, too, it seems to dwell in shapes too far away for us to discern
what their nature is. But whatever it touches, it fixes and makes permanent.
That is what remains over when the skin of the day has been cast into the
hedge; that is what is left of past time and of our loves and hates.

A Room of One’s Own

Happiness is in the quiet, ordinary things. A table, a chair, a book
with a paper-knife stuck between the pages. And the petal falling
from the rose, and the light flickering as we sit silent.

The Waves

Fear no more, says the heart, committing its burden to some sea,
which sighs collectively for all sorrows, and
renews, begins, collects, lets fall.

Mrs. Dalloway

Adeline Virginia Woolf, née Stephen; 25 January 1882 – 28 March 1941) was an English writer and one of the most influential 20th century modernist authors. She helped to pioneer the use of stream of consciousness narration as a literary device.

Woolf was born into an affluent household in South Kensington, London as the seventh child of Julia Prinsep Jackson and Leslie Stephen. She grew up in a blended family of eight that included her sister, modernist painter Vanessa Bell. From a young age, she was home-schooled in English classics and Victorian literature. Between 1897 to 1901, she attended the Ladies' Department of King's College London, where she studied classics and history. There, she encountered early reformers advocating for women's higher education and the women's rights movement.

After her father's death in 1904, the Stephen family moved from Kensington to Bloomsbury, a more bohemian neighbourhood. There, alongside her brothers' intellectual friends, she helped form the artistic and literary Bloomsbury Group. In 1912, she married Leonard Woolf, and in 1917, the couple founded the Hogarth Press, which went on to publish much of her work. They rented a home in Sussex and permanently settled there in 1940.

Woolf began writing professionally in 1900. During the inter-war period, Woolf became an important part of London's literary and artistic society, and its anti-war position. In 1915, she published her first novel, The Voyage Out, through her half-brother's publishing house, Gerald Duckworth and Company. Her best-known works include the novels Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927) and Orlando (1928). She is also known for her essays, such as "A Room of One's Own" (1929).

Woolf became one of the central subjects of the 1970s movement of feminist criticism. Her works, translated into more than 50 languages, have attracted attention and widespread commentary for inspiring feminism. A large body of writing is dedicated to her life and work. She has been the subject of plays, novels, and films. Woolf is commemorated by statues, societies dedicated to her work, and a building at the University of London. (from Wikipedia)

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