Virginia Woolf

Born into a literate and well-connected family, Virginia was home-schooled and saw a steady stream of literary and society 'celebrities' in her home. Her parents had both been widowed so the house contained the offspring of their combined three marriages - eight including Virginia. Her mother died of influenza when she was just 13, followed by a sister two years later prompting Virginia's first nervous breakdown. When her father died in 1904, another mental collapse saw her briefly institutionalised. It is now believed her mood swings and mental instability can be attributed to the sexual abuse she, and her sister, suffered at the hands of two of her half-brothers. Considered one of the foremost literary figures of the 20th century, and a member of the famous Bloomsbury Set, she married writer Leonard Woolf, though it was rumoured her sexual preferences leaned towards women. In tune wtih the liberal social mores of the time she did have a long-term affair with Vita Sackville-West, also a poet and novelist who remained a close friend to her death. In 1941, depressed by the war and the cool reception of her biography, Woolf feared she was heading for yet another breakdown. To avoid it, she drowned herself, weighing down her pockets with stones and walking into the River Ouse, near her home. She was 59 years old. "For most of history, Anonymous was a woman." - Virginia Woolf