Sir Leslie Stephen

VW 's father, Sir Leslie Stephen (1832-1904), was a Victorian philosopher and historian of ideas . . . literary historian and critic, and—perhaps most important—a biographer. Mark Hussey writes that he was, after Matthew Arnold

Leslie Stephen 's daughter from his previous marriage, Laura (1868-1934), suffered from some form of mental disability and lived most of her life in institutions.Julia Stephen had three children from her first marriage...

Shortly after the death of her father in May 1904, Virginia Stephen experienced a second and more serious nervous breakdown. She was nursed for nearly three months at the home of her friend Violet Dickinson

Virginia Woolf was educated at home. As a very young girl, she was tutored by her mother in Latin, French, and history. When she was between thirteen and fifteen, her father gave her lessons for...

Allowed uncensored access to her father's library, she made rich use of it. Leslie Stephen once commented to himself that Ginia is devouring books, almost faster than I like. Her habit of voracious...

Adeline Virginia Stephen, later VW , was born at 22 Hyde Park Gate, Kensington, London, the third of the four children of Sir Leslie Stephen and Julia Prinsep Stephen .

Leslie Stephen , VW 's father, died of bowel cancer. He had become ill in 1900, and his slow decline was very hard on his children; Virginia's second serious bout of mental illness followed shortly afterwards.

As Virginia Stephen 's father was dying, Virginia's half-brother George Duckworth fondled her several times in a manner that amounted to sexual assault.

Virginia Stephen (later VW ) was reading widely and almost without restriction in her father 's library. This was to have a profound impact on her creative and critical work.