Brief Lives

A mad woman, a snob, a feminist, a recluse, a socialite, a genius, many of these terms are contradictory and Virginia has been represented as all of these, but these epithets, though true in part, suit only specific moments in her life and are individual facets of her complex character

Virginia Woolf's experimental fic-lion such as Mrs Dalloway (1925), To the lighthouse (1927) and The Waves (1931) earned her a position as one of the major authors of twentieth-century British and European fiction. She was also a prolific essayist, publishing hundreds of articles and reflective reviews; her longer essays, `A Room of One's Own' (1929) and `Three Guineas' (1938), stand as some of the most convincing and influential feminist tracts ever written.

However, her well-publicised struggle with mental illness, her fluid approach to sexuality and eventual suicide have all contributed to building up a mythology surrounding her life. Woolf's colourful circle of family and friends, The Bloomsbury Group, consisted of leading writers, thinkers, artists and performers, Elizabeth Wright scours their correspondence, along with Woolf's diaries and memoir papers to illuminate the mind of a literary genius and explode some of the commonly held myths.