BIOGRAPHY
Virginia Woolf was born in London, daughter of a scholar. She spent the first years of her life in her father's library, in close contact with many important Victorian scholars.
In 1904 she moved to Bloomsbury and few years later, in 1907, Virginia Wolof took part at the foundation of the "Bloomsbury Group". The group was an important point of reference for several English intellectuals and no topic was considered taboo in their discussions.
The life of the group was discussed and despised by almost everyone because of bisexual relations between members. Nevertheless, exactly a lesbian relationship led Virginia Woolf to write Orlando, one of her most light-hearted and scintillating books.
Despite her lesbian relationships, she was married to Leonard Woolf, a journalist and essayist. They founded the Hogarth Press in 1917, a press that published some of the most interesting literature of the time (such as Eliot and Freud).
Virginia Woolf committed suicide in March 1941, resulting from the World War II and depression.

 

STYLE
Virginia Woolf was destined to become a writer. Since she was young she met writers and artists from the middle-class and upper-middle-class who influenced her life.
She rebelled against the traditional forms of fiction because they did not convey life as it really is. That is the reason why she developed her own style in which the stream of consciousness has a relevant role. Another peculiar feature of Virginia Woolf's style is the use of rhythm and imagery usually used in poetry displaced in novels.
The first novel written using her own style was Monday and Tuesday. The novel can be considered an experiment in which she perfected the style she would use in every following novel.
The main themes Virginia Woolf dealt with in her career were the problems of personal identity, the significance of time, change and memory for human personality and the position of women.
Nevertheless, she also published many critical essays and reviews in which she used a very personal and informal tone.