Woolf, Virginia

The English author Virginia Woolf, born Stephen, grew up in an educated higher middle-class family in Hyde Park in London. Her mother was from a well-known publishing family, and her father was a literary critic and the founder of the comprehensive Dictionary of National Biography. Woolf had four half-siblings and three full siblings, of which her sister Vanessa (later a famous artist, married name Bell) remained her close friend throughout her life. Woolf and her sisters were not given any formal education but were taught by the father in the home. Her childhood was marked by difficulties, and several of her siblings suffered from psychological instability.