Prolific Person of the Week:

Virginia Woolf 

"The older one grows, the more one likes indecency."

Adeline Virginia Woolf (January 25, 1882-March 28, 1941) was born in London, to Sir Leslie Stephen and Julia Prinsep Stephen. 

Sir Leslie was a prolific historian, writer, and critic--who had a great influence on Virginia's early development. Julia Stephen was an Indian-born Englishwoman with renowned beauty, and had served as a Pre-Raphaelite model to several painters. 

Woolf was born into a high-class, well-connected, and well-educated family. Both of her parents had been previously married and widowed, therefore the household contained the children of three different unions. The house bustled with the company of literary figures, painters, aristocrats, and educators. Though only the sons of the family were sent away to university, Sir Leslie offered his daughters a formal education from home--where Virginia eagerly sharpened what would become her infamous literary skills. 

Troubles first occurred when Virginia suffered first the death of her mother, at the age of thirteen, and then the death of her half-sister Stella when Virginia was fifteen. These occurrences made Virginia to suffer a series of mental breakdowns. Despite the hardships, Virginia overcame them and continued her studies in Latin, Greek, German, and history. She began writing professionally in 1900, at the age of eighteen--publishing works first in the Times Literary Supplement. 

Virginia's father died when she was twenty-two, which caused another nervous breakdown. This time, her mental state was so fragile she was briefly institutionalized. Later in life, Virginia would reveal in her essay A Sketch of the Past, that her frequent mental collapse was possibly attributed to sexual abuse she had suffered at the hands of her two older half-brothers. However alarming her mental state continued to be throughout the years, Woolf was persistent in her work as an author. 

Virginia married Leonard Woolf on August 10, 1912. The pair were an unlikely match, Virginia having come from a well-off family, and Leonard being what she would sometimes refer to as a "penniless Jew". Regardless of the differences, the two were practically inseparable. The bond was further strengthened by their common professional interests, and in 1917 they founded Hogarth Press which would publish Virginia's works, as well as the works of T.S. Eliot, Laurens van der Post, and others.
Her heterosexual marriage did not consume Virginia's nature, which was determinedly bisexual.
Virginia's first same-sex relationship came with the arrival of Vita Sackville-West, a society-woman and fellow writer, in 1922. It is not entirely known whether the women's husbands were aware of the relationship, but it was maintained for several years with relative success. Theirs was a fantastic romance, described later by Sackville-Wests' son as "the longest and most charming love letter...she [Virginia] explores Vita, weaves her in and out of the centuries, teases her, flirts with her, drops a veil of mist around her". The relationship was at it's peak in 1928, when Virginia presented Sackville-West with the novel she wrote for her, Orlando. Though Virginia and Sackville-West gradually ended their relationship in the 1930s, the two remained friends. Sackville-West continued on to have a series of high-profiled relationships with other women of society. Virginia, however, stayed private about other affairs, and preferred to speak only of Sackville-West.

After a final decline in health, and a series of more breakdowns caused most surely to the onslaught of WWII and the destruction of her London home during the Blitz, Virginia quietly committed suicide on March 28, 1941.