Virginia Woolf (née Stephen) (1882-1941), Novelist and critic; sister of Vanessa Bell

Sitter associated with 61 portraits
Novelist, essayist, biographer and critic. The third child of Leslie and Julia Stephen, and sister of Vanessa (later Bell) she was a central figure in Bloomsbury. With Vanessa, in 1905 she acted as hostess for the Thursday evening gatherings held at 46 Gordon Square that formed the nucleus of Old Bloomsbury. Despite intermittent bouts of mental illness her many novels, notably Night and Day (1919) and Jacob's Room (1922), Mrs Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), and The Waves (1931), transformed ideas about structure, plot and characterisation, and are an important literary legacy. She committed suicide in 1941.