5/27/2023 0 Comments Lily briscoe to the lighthouse![]() ![]() When Leslie Stephen died in 1904 the younger Stephens abandoned their staid home, 22 Hyde Park Gate and moved to then unfashionable, bohemian Bloomsbury. Julia died in 1895 when Virginia was just thirteen, a crucial loss that sparked an early breakdown for her, and plunged her overbearing father into bleak, demanding gloom. The family summered in Cornwall at Talland House near St. Her mother Julia Duckworth was his second wife they each brought children to the marriage, and had four more together, Vanessa, Virginia, Thoby and Adrian. ![]() Her father, Leslie Stephen (1832–1904) was one of those 19 th century intellectuals whose literary output and energy ( The Dictionary of National Biography, for one!) boggles the mind. Virginia Stephen, born in 1882, was part of a complex, blended family full of Eminent Victorians on both sides. ![]() One of my favorite opening lines in literature is Quentin Bell’s biography of his aunt that runs something like this: “Before there was a Virginia Woolf, there was a Miss Stephen.” Immediately such a line cracks the fortress of The Canon, and obliges the reader to think not of The Great Virginia, but someone quite else. ![]()
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