And the Rest Is History by Marlene Wagman-Geller Page A

Henry James and George Henry Lewes. Adeline (who preferred the name Virginia) described it as a place of “books, writers and literary gossip.” The Stephens summered in Cornwall, where their dwelling overlooked the Godrevy Lighthouse.
    Virginia’s happy and literate childhood did not presage the tragedies that were to shadow her life. Her mother passed away in 1895, followed by her sister, who died two years later. Always psychologically fragile, she was shattered at the specter of death. Before she could recover, her father succumbed to his illness and she lost him in 1904. Her grief culminated with her first mental breakdown at age twenty-two. She was briefly institutionalized and would struggle for the rest of her years to maintain mental and emotional equilibrium. A further contributing influence to her psychological instability was the sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of her half-brothers George and Gerald Duckworth. Upon the passing of her parents, the siblings moved to a new home in Bloomsbury, close to the British Museum. It was to become the meeting place of London’s intellectuals, and where Virginia fell in love.
    Virginia’s destiny, Leonard Sidney Woolf, was born in London, the third of ten children of a barrister, Solomon Rees Sydney and Marie (de Jongh) Woolf. As a Jew in anti-Semitic England he developed what he called his “carapace,” a hard shell, to shield himself from the “outside and usually hostile world.” A brilliant student, he won a scholarship to Cambridge, where he met some of the great thinkers of the era: Lytton Strachey, Rupert Brook, Clive Bell, John Maynard Keynes, Bertrand Russell, and E. M. Forster. He also became friendly with Virginia’s brother Thoby, whose nickname was “the Goth.” Upon graduation Woolf took a position in the Ceylon Civil Service; accompanying him were seventy volumes of Voltaire and a fox terrier, Charles.
    The first time Virginia met Leonard was when she and her sister Vanessa went to Cambridge to visit Thoby. Leonard later recalled, “She was a vision in white—resplendent in a summery dress, large hat and parasol. Her beauty literally took one’s breath away.”
    After graduation he would see them again every Thursday evening when he attended their literary salon. Enraptured with her beauty and intellect, Leonard proposed twice; however, she rejected him with the comment that he was a “penniless Jew.” Undeterred, he wrote her, “If I try to say what I feel, I become stupid & stammering: it’s like a wall of words rising up in front of me & there on the other side you’re sitting so clear & beautiful & your dear face that I’d give everything in the world to see now.” Upon his third proposal, she accepted, and Virginia and Leonard were married on August 10, 1912, at a registry office in London. The newlyweds honeymooned in France, Spain, and Italy.
    Leonard greatly encouraged his wife to write, as both a form of therapy and something to engage her interest. She had already penned a piece on Hayworth, the Brontës’ parsonage, and had contributed to the Sunday Literary Supplement . She said of her passion, “I am ashamed, or perhaps proud, to say how much of my time is spent in thinking thinking, thinking about literature.” Cognizant of his wife’s ever-fragile psyche, Leonard suggested starting their own printing press. He felt this would not only give his wife a project; it would also promote controversial literary works that otherwise would not have made it into print.
    In 1917 the Woolfs founded the Hogarth Press, named after their London home. The original machine, small enough to fit on their kitchen table, published Virginia’s novels as well as Katherine Mansfield’s short stories and T. S. Eliot’s Waste Land . They also printed nonfiction, such as the complete twenty-four-volume translation of the works of Sigmund Freud. When