Virginia Woolf was an English novelist and essayist regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century.
During the interwar period, Woolf was a significant figure in London literary society and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Her most famous works include the novels Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), and Orlando (1928), and the book-length essay A Room of One's Own (1929) with its famous dictum, "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction."
Woolf and her husband had an understanding in their marriage, so when she met fellow writer Vita Sackville-West, the romantic relationship that developed between them was not secret or illicit and was, in fact, something that the women talked openly about.
Beyond the feminism for which she is known, Woolf's lyrical writing is characterized by and celebrated for her love of experimentation. Indeed, her novels are highly experimental. Flush: A Biography, for example, is written entirely from the point of view of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's dog. From the poetic monologues in The Waves to the unique temporal structure of To the Lighthouse, all of Woolf's works challenge the idea of a traditional narrative in some way.
Since her death, Woolf's importance in the canon of literature both as a writer, feminist, and publisher has been frequently explored in popular culture. Her name is used as an intellectual joke in the play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee which was later adapted into a film starring Elizabeth Taylor for which she won an Academy Award.
Woolf married her husband, writer Leonard Woolf, in 1912, referring to him to her friends and family as a “penniless Jew.” In a letter to composer Ethel Smyth, she describes how she hated that her husband was Jewish. Though her marriage was by most accounts an incredibly happy one, the fact that even her husband was Jewish did not prevent her from speaking disparagingly about the faith in her writing.
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