While Virginia Woolf is known primarily for her contributions to feminist rhetoric, she first gained notoriety as a writer for her novels, which in part made up the Modernist movement in literature in the early 1900s. Woolf, along with other writers such as James Joyce and T.S. Eliot, transformed the largely external, stuffy Romantic and Victorian literature into an inward examination of self against the outside world. Like the other Modernist writers, Woolf experimented with “stream-of-consciousness,” a literary style of narration that is marked by a character’s inward thought process, or “interior monologue,” whereas the audience gets to know the character by his/her own thoughts.
Virginia Woolf was born in London in 1882 to Leslie and Julia Stephen, and was one of eight children (four of whom came from the previous marriages of Virginia’s parents). She never went to university, and married Leonard Woolf in 1912, which was a perfect union because both Leonard and Virginia were writers (and publishers), and where Virginia was fragile with mental illness, Leonard was strong in his love and respect for her. Their marriage lasted until 1941, when Virginia drowned herself in the River Ouse near her Sussex home.
During her lifetime, Virginia wrote nine novels: To the Lighthouse, The Voyage Out, Mrs. Dalloway, Orlando, Night and Day, Jacob’s Room, The Waves, Between the Acts, and The Years. Inward contemplation, homoeroticism, patriarchal oppression, and suicide were common themes in many of Virginia’s novels. In addition to publishing novels, Virginia wrote many non-fiction pieces, most notable, A Room of One’s Own, The Death of the Moth and Other Essays, and Women and Writing.
Not only did Woolf transform the novel, and was one of the founders of the Modernist literary movement in Europe, she made many contributions to feminist rhetoric, and was, I would argue, a forerunner to feminist revolution we seen in the United States in the 1960s. She challenged society and the literary world on its conventions concerning women writers, and for this, as well as her witty intellect and self-discipline, she will remain my favorite novelist. I highly recommend any of her pieces.
Source:
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/647786/Virginia-Woolf