Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) What if Shakespeare Had Had a Sister? LINKS Virginia Woolf Web http://www.aianet.ne.jp/~orlando/VWW/english.html This site contains several lists of links organized by category and thus serves as a good springboard to find more information about Woolf on the web. BIOGRAPHY Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)  Born in London, where she spent most of her life, Woolf, because of her frail health and her father's Victorian attitudes about the proper role of women, received little formal education (none at the university level). Nevertheless, the advantages of an upper-class family (her father, Sir Leslie Stephen, was a distinguished scholar and man of letters who hired tutors for her) and an extraordinarily powerful and inquiring mind allowed Woolf to educate herself. She began keeping a regular diary in her early teens. After moderate success with her first novels, the publication of To the Lighthouse (1927) and Orlando (1929) established her as a major novelist. While Woolf's reputation rests primarily on her novels, which helped revolutionize fictional technique, she was also a distinguished literary and social critic. A strong supporter of women's rights, she expressed her views on the subject in a series of lectures published as A Room of One's Own (1929) and in a collection of essays, Three Guineas (1938). Her reputation grew with the publication of her letters and diaries following her suicide by drowning.