Julia Stephen dies; Leslie Stephen goes into deep mourning; Virginia has a severe mental breakdown. Household run by Julia's daughter Stella Duckworth, who postpones her marriage until Vanessa is old enough to take over.
Death of Sir Leslie Stephen in 1904. Virginia has a second mental breakdown, and tries to commit suicide by jumping out of a window. Vanessa, Thoby, Virginia and Adrian move to Bloomsbury. Virginia publishes first essays; soon becomes a regular book reviewer for the Times Literary Supplement. She also teaches at an evening college for working men and women.
1906
The four Stephens travel to Greece, where Vanessa and Thoby become ill; Thoby dies of typhoid fever at age of 26.
Virginia Stephen marries Leonard Woolf on August 10, 1912. she has third mental breakdown, which lasts for three years. During this time she completes novel, The Voyage Out (originally titled Melymbrosia), but its publication is delayed by
breakdown, and the war which is declared on August 4, 1914. Finally published in 1915 by her half-brother, Gerald Duckworth. Woolf begins diary.
1917
The Woolfs buy a secondhand printing press, and set up the Hogarth Press in the basement. Later, the press will publish T.S.Eliot, Katherine Mansfield, Freud, Gorky and all of Woolf's novels and writings.
At the onset of another mental breakdown, which she fears will be permanent, Virginia Woolf fills her pockets with stones and drowns herself in the River Ouse on March 28, leaving suicide notes for her husband and sister. Her husband Leonard publishes various essays, short stories, letters and diaries of hers, as well as several autobiographies which detail their life together.
begun in March 1917 by Leonard Woolf to provide his wife with a therapeutic interest. The name was taken from the Woolf's home at that time in Richmond. The first printing was done on a small hand-press*, the Woolfs buying a mechanical press before they undertook the production of works by Katherine Mansfield and T.S. Eliot. The press was moved to 52 Tavistock Square in 1924, to 37 Mecklenburgh Square in 1939 and, after the bombing of 1940, to Letchworth. R. Partiridge (1920-3), G. Rylands (1924), A. Davidson (1924-7), J.Lehmann (1931-2 and 1938-46) all sought to work with Woolf, but found him a difficult colleague. Chatto and Windus absorbed Hogarth in 1946. ( from Who' who in Bloomsbury, by Alan & Veronica Palmer)
* You can see this commemorable machine at the Tower of Sissinghurst Castle now.