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Virginia Woolf featured in Google Doodle
English novelist and feminist icon Virginia Woolf was featured in Google Doodle on Jan. 25. The doodle was created by London-based illustrator Louise Pomeroy as a tribute to Ms. Woolf. Google said it intended to reflect her “minimalistic style."
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A screenshot of Google Doodle shows an artist's depiction of English novelist Virginia Woolf. (File/-)
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nglish novelist and feminist icon Virginia Woolf was featured in Google Doodle on Jan. 25. The doodle was created by London-based illustrator Louise Pomeroy as a tribute to Ms. Woolf. Google said it intended to reflect her “minimalistic style.”
Woolf was widely regarded as a prominent literary figure in the early 20th century. Her works include “Mrs. Dalloway” (1925), “To the Lighthouse” (1927) as well as feminist essays “A Room of One’s Own” (1929) and “Three Guineas” (1938). Due to her work, Virginia Woolf is also regarded as a pioneer of the early feminist movement in the 20th century.
Woolf was born as Adeline Virginia Stephen in Kensington into an upper-class family. Her father was a historian and her mother was a renowned beauty. Woolf was educated by her parents in their literate and well-connected household. Woolf's parents had each married previously and widowed. Her father’s first wife was the daughter of William Makepeace Thackeray (Vanity Fair, 1848), and her mother’s aunt was Julia Margaret Cameron, one of the greatest portrait photographers of the 19th century.
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Despite her privileged childhood, Woolf was known for her bouts of depression. The death of her mother in 1895 led her to a nervous breakdown, and her father’s death in 1904 plunged her into deep depression; she tried to commit suicide and was institutionalized.
Woolf started writing professionally following her recovery. She actively contributed to Times Literary working as a journalist. She published her first novel The Voyage Out in 1915. It was after this that she established herself as a female thinker.
On March 28th, 1941, Woolf drowned herself in the River Ouse in Sussex after an episodic nervous breakdown. She left a suicide note for her husband, and her body was found three weeks afterward.
Virginia Woolf undoubtedly left her mark on literary worlds and her line in “A Room of One’s Own”—“A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction”—was famously written as a call for female independence. (rzf/asw)
