Room at Last : Virginia Woolf

Adeline Virginia Stephen

25 January 1882 – 28 March 1941

English novelist, publisher, feminist Woolf was one of the foremost literary figures of the twentieth century. Her control and use of language are what sets her apart from others, but it was the fragility of her psyche and her personal life that has captured our interest.

Woolf created Orlando, a fictional biography that covers 400 years and a protagonist who changes gender and ages only 36 years, dedicated to her long-time companion Vita Sackville-West.

But it is in A Room of One’s Own, that she lays out the need for a women’s independence and basic standard of living if they are to gain the ability to create works of their own. Luckily, she had that, and her legacy is the strength her work has given other women and men searching for a voice with which to communicate.

Virginia’s manic-depressive personality greatly influenced her life, but she lived it the way that she wanted, and when she grew tired of it, she ended it on her own terms.