{"id":848,"date":"2021-10-13T20:52:14","date_gmt":"2021-10-14T00:52:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/?p=848"},"modified":"2021-10-13T20:52:14","modified_gmt":"2021-10-14T00:52:14","slug":"virginia-woolf-a-brief-biography","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/2021\/10\/13\/virginia-woolf-a-brief-biography\/","title":{"rendered":"Virginia Woolf: a Brief Biography"},"content":{"rendered":"

After some initial biographical research on the life of Virginia Woolf, who is one of my options for primary texts, it became clear that she had grown up with a fascination for natural history and the taxonomic ecology of the time. In his biography of her, Nigel Nicholson mentions that, \u201c<\/span>Virginia Woolf was a keen hunter of butterflies and moths. With her brothers and sister she would smear tree trunks with treacle to attract and capture the insects, and then pin their lifelike corpses to cork boards, their wings outspread.\u201d Later, with the transition in scientific thought, Woolf\u2019s eco-consciousness shifted as well to reflect a culture turning away from taxonomic classification to holistic ecology (Alt). This consciousness of the natural world comes through in her writings, as well as an emphasis on space\/place as a whole. <\/span>The historical context in which Woolf was writing also contributes to her feminist writings, with the growing suffrage movement and her interactions with \u201cradical\u201d feminists throughout her education at King\u2019s College.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Woolf\u2019s childhood also greatly informs her passion for the natural world. She grew up summering in natural locations in England, when her family wanted to get away from Kensington. For example, since she was born in 1895, her family would summer in St. Ives in Cornwall, a retreat from city life and the blooming industrialization and modernization of the turn of the century (\u201cVirginia Woolf\u201d). These early memories of the pastoral escape and summers by the sea informed her later novel <\/span>To the Lighthouse<\/span><\/i>. <\/span>Woolf <\/span>experienced a long list of childhood traumatic events, from losing a parent, dealing with deadly infectious diseases, and sexual assault from her two half-brothers. These tragedies within the home and struggles with mental health may also contribute to her interest in writing and the outside\/natural world as a place of literary imagination and perhaps safety.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Alt, Christina. Virginia Woolf and the Study of Nature. Cambridge University Press, 2010, doi:10.1017\/CBO9780511762178. <\/span>https:\/\/dickinson.primo.exlibrisgroup.com\/permalink\/01DICKINSON_INST\/1d86qtd\/cdi_proquest_ebookcentral_EBC554749<\/span><\/a>\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Nicolson, Nigel. \u201cVirginia Woolf.\u201d <\/span>The New York Times: on the Web<\/span><\/i>, The New York Times, 2000, <\/span>archive.nytimes.com\/www.nytimes.com\/books\/first\/n\/nicolson-woolf.html?scp=4&sq=virginia%2520woolf&st=cse<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cVirginia Woolf.\u201d <\/span>Biography.com<\/span><\/i>, A&E Networks Television, 27 Mar. 2020, www.biography.com\/writer\/virginia-woolf.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After some initial biographical research on the life of Virginia Woolf, who is one of my options for primary texts, it became clear that she had grown up with a fascination for natural history and the taxonomic ecology of the time. In his biography of her, Nigel Nicholson mentions that, \u201cVirginia Woolf was a keen … Continue reading Virginia Woolf: a Brief Biography<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4679,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[145909],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2021-blog-posts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4679"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/848\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}