Virginia Woolf was born Adeline Virginia Stephen in London on January 25, 1882, the third of four children of Julia Duckworth and Sir Leslie Stephen, a noted historian and biographer. As a child, Woolf received no formal education but made use of her father's library and literary friendships to educate herself. After her mother's death in 1895, Woolf experienced a nervous breakdown, the first in a series of four debilitating emotional traumas. When her father died nine years later, Woolf had her second mental breakdown. Upon her recovery, she moved with her sister, Vanessa, and her brothers, Thoby and Adrian, to the Bloomsbury district of London.

She, her siblings, and their friends made up the famous Bloomsbury Group, which included such notable figures as E. M. Forster, Lytton Strachey, Roger Fry, and John Maynard Keynes. As the group's reputation spread among London art and literary circles, Woolf grew intellectually...