Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) - in full Adeline Virginia Woolf, original surname Stephen

As an essayist Woolf was prolific, publishing some 500 essays in periodicals and collections, beginning 1905. Characteristic for Woolf's essays are dialogic nature of style and continual questioning of opinion - her reader is often directly addressed, in a conversational tone, and her rejection of an authoritative voice links her essays to the tradition of Montaigne.Leonard (Sidney) Woolf (1880-1969) - Born in London as the son of a barrister. Woolf studied at Cambridge and in 1904 he went into civil service to Ceylon. His first book, The Village in the Jungle, appeared in 1913. Woolf joined the Fabian Society and wrote for The New Statesman. From 1923 to 1930 he was a literary editor on the Nation. In 1917 he set up a small hand press at Hogart House, and worked as the director of the Hogarth Press until his death. Among Woolf's works are novels, non-fiction and his five volume memoirs Sowing (1960), Growing (1961), Beginning Again (1964), Downhill All the Way (1967) and The Journey Not the Arrival Matters (1969). - For further information: Leonard Woolf by S.S. Myerowitz (1982); A Marriage of True Minds by G. Spater and I.M. Parsons (1977) - For further reading: Virginia Woolf by Quentin Bell (1972, 2 vols.); Moments of Being, ed. by Jeanne Schulkind (1976); The Novels of Virginia Woolf from Beninning to End by M.A. Leaska (1977); Virginia Woolf: A Feminist Slant by by J. Marcus (1983); Woman of Letters by Rose Phyllis (1978); Virginia Woolf: a Winter's Life by Lyndall Gordon (1984); Virginia Woolf by Rachel Bowlby (1988); Virginia Woolf and the Fictions of Psychoanalysis by Elizabeth Abel (1989); Virginia Woolf: The Impact of Childhood Sexual Abuse on Her Life and Work by Louise DeSalvo (1989); Virginia Woolf: A Literary Life by John Mepham (1991); Virginia Woolf: A Collection of Critical Essays by M. Homans (1993); Vita and Virginia by Suzanne Raitt (1993); Virginia Woolf by Quentin Bell (1996); The Feminist Aesthetics of Virginia Woolf by Jane Goldman (1998); Virginia Woolf by Hermione Lee (1996); Virginia Woolf by Nigel Nicolson (2000) - Note: Toni Morrison, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993, wrote her thesis at Cornell University on Faulkner and Virginia Woolf. - See also: Katherine Mansfield, Marcel Proust

SELECTED WORKS:

•THE VOYAGE OUT, 1915

•NIGHT AND DAY, 1919

•MONDAY OR TUESDAY, 1921

•JACOB'S ROOM, 1922

•MRS. DALLOWAY, 1925 - suom. - film 1998, dir. by Marleen Gorris, adapted by Eileen Atkins, starring Vanessa Redgrave, Michael Kitchen, Rupert Graves, John Standing, Lena Headley. - "What had seemed at first a frivolous exercise in social decorum has turned into a probing examination of the Big Question that haunts our lives. As Mrs. Dalloway leaves the party to stand outside the window at her balcony, looking down at the hard, upraised iron spikes of the fence below - the same kind of spikes that impaled the body of the wretched Septimus - she asks to herself, Is there a plan for our lives? Why do we live on in the face of pain and tragedy?" (from Novels into Film by John C. Tibbetts and James M. Welsh, 1997)

•THE COMMON READER, 1925

•TO THE LIGHTHOUSE, 1927 - Majakka - film 1983

•ORLANDO, 1928 - suom. (Chief model for the character of Orlando was writer Vita Sackville-West, with whom Woolf had a lesbian relationship) - film 1992, written and dir. by Sally Potter, starring Tilda Swinton, Billy Zane, Lothaire Bluteau, John Wood

•A ROOM OF ONE'S OWN, 1929 - Oma huone

•THE WAVES, 1931 - Aallot

•FLUSH, 1933 - Runoilijan koira

•THE YEARS, 1937

•THREE GUINEAS, 1938

•ROGER FRY: A BIOGRAPHY, 1940

•BETWEEN THE ACTS, 1941

•THE DEATH OF THE MOTH, 1942

•A HAUNTED HOUSE, 1943