Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English writer and one of the most influential 20th-century modernist authors. She helped to pioneer the use of stream of consciousness narration as a literary device.

A bisexual woman who pursued relationships with women, she was an early feminist writer and helped expand access to the (male-dominated) literary world. She actively spoke out about the disadvantages female artists face and inspired many other women in her wake. All this is even more impressive, considering Woolf was also a survivor of early sexual abuse, and it’s speculated she may have had what we now call bipolar disorder.

• Her feet were her favorite mode of transport.
• Virginia and her husband had a pet marmoset monkey that they named Mitzi. 
• Virginia Woolf aimed to create her novels in the same way that an artist paints a picture. She would write standing up at a tall desk, as if she was working at an easel. This allowed her to step back ‘to get a better look’, much like an artist appraising their painting while they’re working on it. From being only 11 years old, she experimented with different types of pens while she was writing, just like an artist would use a variety of brushes. She most liked using her mother’s pen, filled with purple ink. She claimed to enjoy the sensation of writing and holding the ‘perfect pen’ helped her words to flow onto the page.
• As a teenager she had enjoyed bookbinding as a stress-relieving hobby and when she married Leonard, they decided to set up their own printing house. It was a true ‘cottage industry’ – the couple bought a hand-press and set it up on their dining room table. They named the business ‘Hogarth Press’ after their home and it was at the forefront of publishing books on psychoanalysis and translations of foreign works in the early 20^th century.
• In 1933 Virginia Woolf published Flush, a lighthearted and experimental book that tells a story from the perspective of poet Elizabeth Barret Browning’s dog who loyally stays by her side through illness and romance and adventure alike.
• Adeline was Virginia Woolf’s birthname, abandoned in favor of the more sophisticated middle name Virginia later in the author’s life.
  

Linked to April Blogging from A to Z Challenge

View more “Notable Women A to Z” here