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Birth of Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Stephen is born. She is the third of four children. Virginia's parents are fixtures on the London literary and intellectual scene and she grows up in a home full of books. -
Death of Virginia Woolf's Mother
Virginia Woolf's mother, Julia Prinsep Stephen, dies. The family is plunged into mourning, and Virginia has her first major depressive episode. -
Death of Virginia Woolf's Father
Leslie Stephen dies of stomach cancer. The loss of her father prompts a major mental breakdown during which Virginia tries to commit suicide by jumping out of a window. She is briefly institutionalized. Following their father's death, the Stephen children sell their childhood home and buy a house together in the hip Bloomsbury neighborhood of London. -
Contributor to Times Literary Supplement
At the age of 23, Virginia begins her professional writing career as a contributor to the Times Literary Supplement. She also takes on several jobs of the sort available to women at the time, such as teaching and reading to elderly ladies. -
Bloomsbury Group
The Bloomsbury Group—a circle of writers, artists and intellectuals that eventually includes Virginia Woolf, novelist E.M. Forster, economist John Maynard Keynes and others among its members—begins meeting informally at the Bells' home. -
Marriage to Leonard Woolf
Virginia Stephen marries Leonard Woolf, a Jewish intellectual who had served in the foreign service. The couple enjoy a happy, if unconventional, marriage that lasts until Virginia's death. -
Affair with Vita Sackville-West
Virginia Woolf publishes Jacob's Room, a novel based on her brother Thoby's death. In this same year she meets Vita Sackville-West, a married writer. The two women begin a love affair—with Leonard Woolf's knowledge and permission—that lasts through the 1920s. After their romantic relationship ends, they remain close friends until Woolf's death. -
Move to Bloomsbury
The Woolfs move to Bloomsbury, the bohemian neighborhood of London. The Bloomsbury Group continues to meet informally. -
Mrs. Dalloway
Virginia Woolf publishes Mrs. Dalloway, a modernist novel that follows protagonist Clarissa Dalloway through a single day of her life. -
To the Lighthouse
Virginia Woolf publishes To the Lighthouse, a portrayal of the fictional Ramsay family as they vacation in Scotland. Both Virginia and Leonard Woolf believe it to be the best of her novels so far. It is definitely the bestselling, surpassing sales of all her other books.What makes To the Lighthouse important in literary terms is Woolf’s ambitious formal experimentation. -
Orlando
Woolf publishes the novel Orlando, a book inspired by Vita Sackville-West. Orlando has been popularly read as an example of lesbian or bisexual fiction. -
A Room of One's Own
After giving a lecture series on women's literary abilities and obstacles, Virginia Woolf publishes the book A Room of One's Own. In it she argues that in order to write, a woman must have independence, manifested in material form as an income of £500 per year and a private room where she can write. -
Virginia Woolf Commits Suicide
Convinced she will not recover from her current battle with mental illness, Virginia Woolf fills the pockets of her coat with stones and drowns herself in the Ouse River near Monk's House. Her body is discovered three weeks later. Leonard Woolf chooses to have the body cremated, and the ashes are scattered at Monk's House.
