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 seriousne

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First published 16 March 2001

Citation: Mepham, John. "Virginia Woolf". The Literary Encyclopedia. 16 March 2001.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=4799, accessed 9 February 2010.]