Adeline Virginia Stephen
was born on 25 January 1882. Her father, Leslie Stephen, son of the
historian Sir James Stephen, was a man of letters. He began work
later that year as editor of the Dictionary of National
Biography, a typically enormous Victorian undertaking that
contributed to his insomnia, ill health and depression until he
gave it up in 1891. He was a notable intellectual, who both as
writer and editor made significant contributions in the history of
ideas, literary criticism and biography. He was, as his own
biographer was later to call him, a “godless Victorian”, who lived
a life of mental torment and high moral …
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