Google Doodle celebrates Virginia Woolf's 136th birthday

Woolf was one of 20th century's foremost authors who harnessed a poetic vision that elevated mundane settings while examining the complex lives of her characters.

Born in London in 1882, Woolf was home-schooled in the English classics and Victorian literature for a greater part of her childhood. She began writing professionally in 1900, thus becoming a significant member of London's literary society and the Bloomsbury Group, a collective of prominent contemporary intellectuals and artists.

Woolf's best known non-fiction works are, 'A Room of One's Own' (1929) and 'Three Guineas' (1938), which examined the challenges female writers and intellectuals faced due to the disproportionate legal and economic power held by men.


Her literary reputation declined after World War II, but her works attracted renewed focus thanks to the 1970s feminist criticism movement.

Woolf suffered from mental illness for much of her life, and took her own life by drowning in 1941 at the age of 59.