New Delhi: On January 25, Google is celebrating the 136th birthday of famous English novelist and feminist icon Virginia Woolf with a doodle. Google used an image by London-based illustrator Louise Pomeroy.
Her early life:
She was born in London's Adeline Virginia Stephen in Kensington on January 25, 1882. She was surrounded by a well-connected household in her childhood. Her father, Sir Leslie Stephen was a historian and her mother, Julia Jackson was a known beauty of her time.
The death of her mother in 1895, her half-sister Stella in 1898 and father in 1904 affected her mental health very deeply. After recovering from depression, she married her husband Leonard Woolf in 1912.
Her achievements:
She started writing a family newspaper, Hyde Park Gate News at the age of nine.
After the death of her father in 1904, she recovered from the shock and started contributing weekly articles for the Times Literary Supplement and published her first novel 'The Voyage Out' in 1915.
Some of her famous works include modernist classics such as 'Mrs. Dalloway' (1925) and 'To the Lighthouse' (1927) as well as feminist texts like 'A Room of One's Own' and 'Three Guineas.'
In 2014, The National Portrait Gallery ran an exhibition in her honor, in which she was referred as an influence on writers such as Margaret Atwood and Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
Her death:
Her final novel 'Between The Acts' was released just after her death in 1941.
During her last days, she fell into depression.
On March 28, 1941, at the age of 59, she drowned herself in the River Ouse and left a suicide note for her husband.