1. Virginia Woolf (1882-1941): Spokeswoman

2. Young Woolf age 20

3. Time and Place
Born in Kensington, United Kingdom on January 25, 1882 as Adeline Virginia Woolf Stephen.
Early education by parents; took courses at the Ladies Department of the King’s College London.
Dissatisfied with the Victorian “Angel of the House” status reserved for women of nobility.
Died March 28, 1941 by drowning.

4. Professional Career
Began professional career in 1910 with Times Literary Supplement.
First novel The Voyage Out was published in 1915.
Started Hogarth Press with husband Leonard Woolf; published some of Woolf’s and T.S. Eliot’s work.
The Bloomsbury Group; a group of intellectuals who lived in Bloomsbury district of London created “The Dreadnought Hoax.”

5. Cultural Influence
She taught literature and composition at Morley College, an institution that provided educational opportunities for the volunteer faculty.
Worked for both a feminist group and the women’s suffrage movement.
Woolf reviewed articles for the Times Literary Supplement before writing novels.
Acquainted with E.M. Forster (novelist) and Lytton Strachey (historian).

6. Rhetorical Discourse Challenged notion of women’s subjugation to men.
Impressed upon her readers that nature and creativity are androgynous.
Believed that subjectivity is always at work in literature and everyday life.
Concerned about the predicament of women writers.

7. Major Works The Voyage Out (1915) Mrs. Dalloway (1925)
To the Lighthouse (1927)
Orlando: A Biography (1928)
A Room of One’s Own (1929)
Jacob’s Room (1932)
The Waves (1938)
Between the Acts (published after Woolf’s death in 1941)

8. Personal Tragedies Contracted whooping cough at the age of six.
First major nervous breakdown at the age of thirteen after the death of her mother.
Half sister died two years after the death of their mother.
Institutionalized in 1904 after her father’s death and possible sexual abuse from her half brothers.
Continued writing during times of institutionalization.
London home destroyed by Nazis during the Blitz.
Committed suicide by drowning herself in a lake near her home.

9. Virginia’s Quotes
“For most of history, Anonymous was a woman.” Woolf, Virginia.
“What had our mothers been doing then that they had no wealth to leave us? Powdering their noses? Looking in at shop windows? Flaunting in the sun at Monte Carlo?”
“Possibly when the professor insisted a little too emphatically upon the inferiority of women, he was concerned not with their inferiority, but with his own superiority.”

10. Works Cited
The Norton Anthology of World Literature. 2nd ed. Vol.2. New York: W.W. Norton &, Print
Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One's Own. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Print.
National Portrait Gallery - Large Image - NPG P1293; “The Dreadnought Hoax.” National Portrait Gallery - Large Image - NPG P1293; The Dreadnought Hoax. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Feb

11. Works Cited (cont.)
Woolf, Virginia. Orlando: A Biography. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, Print.