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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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Virginia Woolf
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(Virginia Stephen, 1882–1941, m. Leonard Woolf 1912) Novelist, critic and central figure of the *Bloomsbury Group. The early deaths of her mother, her father (editor of the *Dictionary of National Biography) and her brother Thoby, all between 1895 and 1906, threatened her with successive nervous breakdowns and all her life she remained a manic depressive. Her growing reputation as a leading novelist in a modernist style, using the 'stream of consciousness' technique, was consolidated in 1925 with Mrs Dalloway, which follows the heroine's thoughts through one London day as she prepares for her party in the evening.
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Later books included *To the Lighthouse, Orlando (1928, a fantasy inspired by her friendship with Vita *Sackville-West) and The *Waves. In recent years her essays about the obstacles placed in the way of women's creativity (in particular A Room of One's Own 1929) have made her a heroine of the feminist movement. In a final fit of depression she drowned herself in the river Ouse near her home, Monk's House at Rodmell in Sussex, which is kept now partly as a museum.
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