Virginia Woolf was an English novelist, essayist, diarist, epistler, publisher, feminist, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century.

Adeline Virginia Woolf (née Stephen) was born in South Kensington, London, into an affluent and intellectual family. She was the seventh child of Julia Prinsep Jackson and Leslie Stephen. Educated at home in English classics and Victorian literature, Woolf later attended King’s College London, where she studied classics and history and encountered early advocates for women’s rights and education.

After the death of her father in 1904, Woolf and her family moved to the bohemian Bloomsbury district, where she became a founding member of the influential Bloomsbury Group. She married Leonard Woolf in 1912, and together they established the Hogarth Press in 1917, which published much of her work. They eventually settled in Sussex in 1940, maintaining their involvement in literary circles throughout their lives.

Woolf began publishing professionally in 1900 and rose to prominence during the interwar period with novels like Mrs Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), and Orlando (1928), as well as the feminist essay A Room of One’s Own (1929). Her work became central to 1970s feminist criticism and remains influential worldwide, having been translated into over 50 languages. Woolf’s legacy endures through extensive scholarship, cultural portrayals, and tributes such as memorials, societies, and university buildings bearing her name.