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Virginia Woolf was born Adeline Virginia Stephen on January 25, 1882. She grew up in an upper-middle class family closely connected to London’s literary and artistic world. Her father, Leslie Stephen, was an author and historian. Her mother, Julia, was a model and philanthropist. Woolf showed an early interest and talent for writing, penning the family newspaper from the age of nine.
Woolf struggled with mental illness for most of her life. In 1895, at age 13, she suffered her first mental breakdown, after her mother’s sudden death from complications related to influenza. Two years later, her half-sister Stella died. When her father died of cancer in 1904, she suffered another breakdown and was briefly institutionalized. Her brother Thoby died only two years later.
Woolf, her sister, and their two brothers, all in their 20s, moved to the bohemian London neighborhood of Bloomsbury. Their home became a meeting place for young writers, artists, and intellectuals, including poet T. S. Eliot, novelist Aldous Huxley, and short story master Katherine Mansfield. The gatherings became known as the Bloomsbury Group. It was there that Virginia met her future husband, Leonard Woolf, a fellow writer, political activist, and publisher.
In 1910, Virginia and Leonard began regular retreats from their London home to Sussex in southeast England. Between 1912 and 1919, they spent holidays and weekends at Asheham House near the village of Beddingham. Rumored to be haunted, Asheham was one of the inspirations for “A Haunted House.” Leonard reported hearing a ghostly couple walking from room to room in the deserted house, whispering, sighing, and opening and closing doors.
In 1919, the Woolfs bought Monk’s House, a 17th-century cottage, about four miles west of Asheham. They built a garden room extension on the house, lined with bookshelves and an expansive view of the countryside. The room eventually became Virginia’s bedroom, where she would write. She also converted a wooden garden shed into her studio, where she wrote in warmer months. Virginia wrote many of her most lauded works there. Through her studio window, she could view Sussex Downs, a ridge of hills that runs through Sussex County. She refers to them as “the Downs” in “A Haunted House.” Leonard loved gardening and would sell apples and pears from their trees. He often disturbed Virginia’s writing by sorting apples in the shed’s loft. As the narrator of “A Haunted House” says, “The apples were in the loft.”
Woolf is best known for her novels, including Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), and Orlando (1929). In her novels, she pioneered Modernist literary elements, such as stream of consciousness narration. She also wrote influential essays, including A Room of One’s Own (1929), a feminist essay that reflects on the challenges women faced throughout history, including the lack of economic and intellectual freedom needed to thrive in literature and the arts.
On March 28, 1941, Woolf drowned herself by filling her pockets with heavy stones and wading into the River Ouse near Monk’s House.
