Virginia Woolf

Bloomsbury Group 

The Stephen siblings moved in 1905 from Kensington in the district Bloomsbury in the house at Gordon Square 46 . Here Thoby started to establish Thursday as a jour fixe for a gathering with his friends. With this custom, the foundation stone of the Bloomsbury Group was laid, which consisted in part of members of the Cambridge Apostles . In addition to Virginia writers such as Saxon Sydney Turner , David Herbert Lawrence , Lytton Strachey , Leonard Woolf, painters such as Mark Gertler , Duncan Grant , Roger Fry belonged to this circleand Virginia’s sister Vanessa, critics like Clive Bell and Desmond MacCarthy, as well as scientists like John Maynard Keynes and Bertrand Russell .

Virginia was grateful that in this intellectual circle – Vanessa and Mary MacCarthy, they were the only women – they could participate in discussions and free themselves from the moral fetters of their education. In the same year, Virginia began to write for various newspapers and magazines; her collaboration on the Times Literary Supplement lasted until the end of her life. From the end of the year until 1907, she taught English Literature and History at Morley College, a training center for working adults.

On 20 November 1906 fell ill Thoby Stephen, the elder brother of Virginia, during a trip through Greece to typhoid fever and died soon after returning at the age of 26 years – a loss in which Virginia had heavy to carry. Shortly thereafter, Vanessa became engaged to Clive Bell; They married on February 7, 1907, and stayed in the house on Gordon Square, while Virginia and Adrian Stephen moved to the house at Fitzroy Square  29, also in the Bloomsbury district.

Fitzroy Square 29 in London-Bloomsbury. The residence of Virginia and Adrian Stephen (1907 to 1911)

The jour fixe of the “Bloomsberries” thus had two bases; Vanessa Bell’s salon was initially more progressive. The tone became looser, the participants spoke to each other by their first names, the conversations not only had an intellectual character, but were carried by human warmth. English philistinism was the adversary they wanted to fight together, in literature, art and the sexual field.

Lady Ottoline Morrell, 1902

The following year, Virginia made a trip to Siena and Perugia and returned to the UK after a stay in Paris. In February 1909, Lytton Strachey offered her a marriage proposal, which Virginia accepted. But Strachey changed his mind and both agreed to forget the request.

In the summer of 1909 Virginia made the acquaintance of Lady Ottoline Morrell , an aristocrat and patron of the arts. This joined the Bloomsbury Circle and fascinated by their extravagant appearance. Their exotic lifestyle influenced the group, and members gladly accepted the invitation to come to their home on Bedford Square at ten o’clock on Thursdays , where visitors like DH Lawrence and Winston Churchill gathered in the drawing room. In 1915 her house Garsington Manor near Oxford became the meeting place of the “Bloomsberries”. Virginia put Ottoline Morrell in her novel Mrs Dallowaywhich she called “Garsington novel”, a literary monument. ^[8th]

Also in 1909, Virginia Stephen inherited 2500 pounds from her aunt Caroline Emelia Stephen (1834-1909); the inheritance made it easier for her to continue her writing career.