

The seven Pattle sisters married into important families. While John Jackson was an almost invisible presence, the Pattle family were famous beauties, and moved in the upper circles of Bengali society.

John Jackson FRCS was the third son of George Jackson and Mary Howard of Bengal, a physician who spent 25 years with the Bengal Medical Service and East India Company and a professor at the fledgling Calcutta Medical College. Julia Jackson was born in 1846 in Calcutta, British India, to John Jackson and Maria "Mia" Theodosia Pattle, from two Anglo-Indian families. Virginia Woolf was born Adeline Virginia Stephen on 25 January 1882 at 22 Hyde Park Gate in South Kensington, London, to Julia (née Jackson) (1846–1895) and Sir Leslie Stephen (1832–1904), writer, historian, essayist, biographer, and mountaineer. In 1941, at the age of 59, Woolf died by drowning herself in the River Ouse at Lewes. According to Dalsimer (2004), her illness was characterised by symptoms that would later be diagnosed as bipolar disorder, for which there was no effective treatment during her lifetime. She was institutionalised several times and attempted suicide at least twice. Throughout her life, Woolf was troubled by mental illness. Woolf is commemorated by statues, societies dedicated to her work and a building at the University of London. She has been the subject of plays, novels and films. A large body of writing is dedicated to her life and work. Her works, translated into more than 50 languages, have attracted attention and widespread commentary for inspiring feminism. Woolf became one of the central subjects of the 1970s movement of feminist criticism. She is also known for her essays, such as A Room of One's Own (1929). Her best-known works include the novels Mrs Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927) and Orlando (1928).

In 1915, she published her first novel, The Voyage Out, through her half-brother's publishing house, Gerald Duckworth and Company. ĭuring the inter-war period, Woolf was an important part of London's literary and artistic society. Both women's literature became inspired by their relationship, which lasted until Woolf's death. One of her female lovers was Vita Sackville-West, who published Woolf's books through Hogarth Press. Woolf had romantic relationships with women. They rented a home in Sussex and moved there permanently in 1940. In 1912, she married Leonard Woolf, and in 1917, the couple founded the Hogarth Press, which published much of her work. After her father's death in 1904, the Stephen family moved from Kensington to the more bohemian Bloomsbury, where, in conjunction with the brothers' intellectual friends, they formed the artistic and literary Bloomsbury Group. From 1897 to 1901, she attended the Ladies' Department of King's College London, where she studied classics and history and came into contact with early reformers of women's higher education and the women's rights movement.Įncouraged by her father, Woolf began writing professionally in 1900. She was home-schooled in English classics and Victorian literature from a young age. Woolf was born into an affluent household in South Kensington, London, the seventh child of Julia Prinsep Jackson and Leslie Stephen in a blended family of eight that included the modernist painter Vanessa Bell. She is considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device. Adeline Virginia Woolf ( / w ʊ l f/ née Stephen 25 January 1882 – 28 March 1941) was an English writer.
