Life and works of Walt Whitman

#8 VIRGINIA WOOLF

Virginia Adeline Stephen was born in London into privilege in 1882. Even though she was born into this privilege, she was very unhappy with her life in a patriarchal society. Her father was a visible figure in the city, and she was expected to marry well and be a good wife. Her parents were Leslie Stephen, the Oxford Dictionary of Biography founder, and his second wife, Julia Duckworth. Woolf’s father, known for his literature services, gave her the run of the library as a child. At just eight years old, she submitted her first article into a competition. Even though it didn’t win, it foreshadowed her first novel 25 years later.
At thirteen years old, Woolf got sent to a ladies finishing school in Germany. Upon her return to England at seventeen, she began to write stories and her first novel. Her writings explored the stream of consciousness technique and women’s issues.
Woolf was one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century and a significant figure in feminist thought. Her most well-known works include “Mrs. Dalloway” (1925) and “To the Lighthouse” (1927). She is an under-appreciated novelist who is widely known for her experimental writing. Before “Mrs. Dalloway,” she published three novels: “The Voyage Out” (1915), “Night and Day” (1919), and “Jacob’s Room” (1922). In her twenties, Woolf began writing professionally, supplementing her income with portrait commissions and teaching positions. In 1912, she published the controversial novel “The Voyage Out,” detailing the mental unraveling of a young woman suffering from depression. Many of her works went on to get adapted to the big screen and even an opera.
Sadly, Virginia lost her mother, father, and brother in quick succession. She struggled with poor mental health for much of her life and tragically committed suicide in 1941.

#9 TONI MORRISON

Born in Ohio in February 1931 as Chloe Anthony Wofford, Toni Morrison‘s parents were Ramah and George Wofford. Her favorite authors growing up were Jane Austen and Leo Tolstoy. She became known as a well-decorated American novelist, editor, and professor. Morrisons had the honor of becoming the first black woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature and the first black woman to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize. She is regarded as one of the most significant American writers of the twentieth century.
“The Bluest Eye” was Morrison’s first novel and was published in 1970. Her books that followed included “Sula,” “Beloved,” and “Tar Baby.” “Beloved” (1987) became her most celebrated novel and spent twenty-five weeks on The New York Times bestseller list. It shared Margaret Garner’s story — an enslaved woman who escaped only to be tracked down by slave hunters. By 1988, It didn’t get the acknowledgment it deserved, and the likes of Maya Angelou (plus forty-eight others) wrote in protest in The New York Times. Two months went by, and “Beloved” was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award.
She went on to write “Jazz” (1992) and “Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination” (1992). They were coined the “Beloved trilogy” as Morrison’s intent was for them to get read together. In 1998, Oprah brought “Beloved” to the big screen. Before the last novel of the trilogy was published, she won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993.
In 1996, Morrison got selected by the National Endowment for the Humanities for the Jefferson Lecture. This is known to be the U.S. federal government’s highest honor for “distinguished intellectual achievement in humanities.”
Morrison’s eleventh and final novel was “God Help the Child” (2015). Sadly, she passed away from pneumonia in 2019. She is praised for all her works to address the consequences of racism in the United States.