Virginia Woolf

Marriage and novel debut 

In 1911, Virginia rented a house in the village of Firle near Lewes in Sussex and baptized it in memory of happy childhood days in Cornwall’s Little Talland House . However, it was only a stopgap , and a short time later, Virginia and Vanessa leased the nearby Ashehamhouse , which loved Virginia very much and spent much of her time between 1912 and 1919. From the London apartment on Fitzroy Square, whose lease expired, Virginia and Adrian Stephen moved into the house at Brunswick Square 38. John Maynard Keynes, his friend Duncan Grant and Leonard Woolf occupied there as a subtenant also rooms, much to the displeasure of the relationship: ” A young unmarried woman surrounded by a horde of young men! “^[12]

In January 1912 Leonard Woolf proposed to Lytton Stracheys Virginia a marriage proposal. He had been granted leave from colonial service and returned to England in June 1911. She hesitated and again suffered a depressive episode of illness requiring admission to Twickenham Hospital. Leonard was not allowed to visit her. Four months later, she agreed, though, as she wrote to Leonard, he had no physical attraction for her. She loves him to the best of his ability. His love for her was the key to her consent. The girlfriend Violet Dickinson wrote to Virginia on June 5, 1912: “I will marry Leonard Woolf. He is a Jew and does not have a penny. I’m happier than anyone ever thought possible – […] “, and the next day, she and Leonard sent a joint postcard to Lytton Strachey saying, “Ha! Ha! “, Followed by their signatures.^[13]

The wedding took place on August 10, 1912 in the registry office St Pancras . Leonard retired from colonial service and pursued various odd jobs; For example, he was the secretary of his Bloomsbury friend, the painter Roger Fry, and organized for him the second post-Impressionist exhibition in the “Grafton Galleries”. He then found employment with the Charity Organization Society and worked as a reviewer of political books at The New Statesman. In 1913 he published his first novel, The Village and the Jungle , in which he processed his experiences in the colonial service.

A doctor advised young spouses of children – the health of Virginia was too weak. Her depression became stronger, and on September 9, 1913, Virginia made her first attempted suicide with sleeping pills. Still, she described her marriage as happy – in Leonard she had found a sympathetic and educated husband, who could see her affectionate relationships with other women with serenity and endure her frigidity to him.

The outbreak of the First World War in August 1914, in addition to a shortage of food brought no burden for the young couple, life went on, as if nothing had happened. Virginia felt confirmed in her doubts about the male world, since Leonard found the war “meaningless and useless,” but would not resist a convocation; he was not drafted for military service due to a congenital limb shiver. ^[14]

In 1915, Virginia and Leonard moved to Hogarth House in Richmond, near London. In the same year Virginia debuted with her novel The Voyage Out (The trip out) , which was published in Duckworth & Co., the publisher of her half-brother Gerald. The Voyage Out has clear autobiographical traces.