Virginia Woolf was born Adeline Virginia Stephen in on January 25th, 1882 at 22 Hyde Park Gate, London. She was the third of Leslie Stephen and Julia Jackson Duckworth's four children, who married in 1878. It was a second marriage for both. Leslie Stephen began his career as a clergyman but soon became agnostic and became a biographer, journalist, critic, and historian. He and Julia provided their children with a home of wealth and comfort.
Though denied the formal education allowed to males, Virginia was able to take advantage of her father's abundant library and observe his writing, and she was surrounded by intellectual conversation. The same year Virginia was born, her father began...
