The Widow and the Parrot

The Widow and the Parrot Virginia Woolf Author’s Background (1882-1941) British writer

Virginia Woolf became one of the most prominent literary figures of the early 20th century, with novels like Mrs. Dalloway (1925), Jacob’s Room (1922), To the Lighthouse (1927), and The Waves (1931). Woolf learned early on that it was her fate to be “the daughter of educated men. ” In a journal entry shortly after her father’s death in 1904, she wrote: “His life would have ended mine… No writing, no books: “inconceivable. Luckily, for the literary world, Woolf’s conviction would be overcome by her itch to write.

Virginia Woolf was born Adeline Virginia Stephen on January 25, 1882, in London. Woolf was educated at home by her father, Sir Leslie Stephen, the author of the Dictionary of English Biography, and she read extensively. Her mother, Julia Duckworth Stephen, was a nurse, who published a book on nursing. Her mother died in 1895, which was the catalyst for Virginia’s first mental breakdown. Virginia’s sister, Stella, died in 1897; and her father dies in 1904.

Virginia Woolf died on March 28, 1941 near Rodmell, Sussex, England. She left a note for her husband, Leonard, and for her sister, Vanessa. Then, Virginia walked to the River Ouse, put a large stone in her pocket, and drowned herself. Children found her body 18 days later. Virginia married Leonard Wolf in 1912. Leonard was a journalist. In 1917 she and her husband founded Hogarth Press, which became a successful publishing house, printing the early works of authors such as Forster, Katherine Mansfield, and T.S. Eliot, and introducing the works of Sigmund Freud.

Except for the first printing of Woolf’s first novel, The Voyage Out (1915), Hogarth Press also published all of her works. Virginia Woolf’s works are often closely linked to the development of , but she was also an important writer in the modernist movement. She revolutionized the novel with a stream of consciousness, which allowed her to depict the inner lives of her characters in all too intimate detail.

In A Room of One’s Own Woolf writes, “we think back through our mothers if we are women. It is useless to go to the great men writers for help, however much one may go to them for pleasure.