Virginia Woolf
TeSi I--I
Demographics
Gender Female
Birth Name Adeline Virginia Stephen
Birthplace South Kensington, London, England, U.K.
Birth Date January 25, 1882
Ethnicity Northwestern European
Overview English
Nationality British
Career Writer, author
Color Season Light Summer
Notes and Motifs
Te-Lead feminist
Ji melancholic
Known for her novels and literary criticism
Part of the Modernist movement
Pioneered the use of stream of consciousness narration as a literary device
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)
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
TeSi I--I Unseelie
NOTE: This is a historical typing, so quotes are the basis of this typing conclusion.
Woolf: "If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people."
Woolf: "This soul, or life within us, by no means agrees with the life outside us. If one has the courage to ask her what she thinks, she is always saying the very opposite to what other people say."
Woolf: "Nothing has really happened until it has been recorded."
Woolf: "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."
Woolf: "Language is wine upon the lips."
Woolf: "My own brain is to me the most unaccountable of machinery - always buzzing, humming, soaring roaring diving, and then buried in mud. And why? What's this passion for?"
Woolf: "The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages."
Woolf: "Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end."
Woolf: "These are the soul's changes. I don't believe in ageing. I believe in forever altering one's aspect to the sun. Hence my optimism."
Woolf: "The man who is aware of himself is henceforward independent; and he is never bored, and life is only too short, and he is steeped through and through with a profound yet temperate happiness."
Woolf: "Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others."
On her personality: The picture that emerges from reminiscences is remarkably consistent. Socially she was a talkative, formidably intelligent, witty, and humorous woman. With friends she was talkative, given to flights of fancy, and fond of jokes and gossip. Even in private she talked.
On her personality: She was a mixture of shyness and liveliness. She 'was shy and awkward, often silent, or, if in the mood to talk, would leap into fantasy and folly and terrify the innocent and unprepared.
On her personality: Away from social life, she was a workaholic like her father. 'Leonard has said that of the sixteen hours of her waking life, Virginia was working fifteen hours in one way or another.'
On her personality: Her conversation was a brilliant mixture of reminiscence, gossip, extravagantly fanciful speculation and serious critical discussion of books and pictures. She was malicious and she liked to tease.....she gave an impression of quivering nervous excitement, of a spirit balanced at a pitch of intensity impossible to sustain without collapse......She loved jokes, cracked them herself without decorum, and laughed at those of others.'
On her personality: The talk would be of literature, sometimes of politics, when she would fall silent and let the men talk. She loved to talk about social class divisions, and about the Royal Family, sometimes to the point of tedium.
On her personality: It was characteristic that she interrogated everyone she met about thedetails of their lives. She wanted to know all the details of peoples lives. "Now what did you do,exactly, what did you do?", Elizabeth Bowen remembers her asking, both of adults and children, making them scrutinise their lives, pinning them down, and of course provide her with copy.
On her personality: Her love of fantasy led her to tease. If someone gave her a humdrum account of a holiday abroad, she would invent adventures they must have had, which became more and more extravagant and unlikely as they developed.
On her personality: She could be rude at times, even snobbish, but she never experienced the slightest difficulty in communication - on the contrary. Friends delighted in her conversation, and many thought her the wittiest conversationalist of a highly articulate circle.