The Voyage Out was first published in 1915 in the United Kingdom,
and in the United States in 1920. The present text is that of the 1915 edition.
A small number of emendations to the text have been
made to correct obvious errors.
Published in 2004 by Barnes & Noble Classics with new
Introduction, Notes, Biography, Chronology, Inspired By,
Comments & Questions, and For Further Reading.
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The Voyage Out
ISBN-13: 978-1-59308-229-1 ISBN-10:1-59308-229-0
eISBN : 978-1-411-43344-1
LC Control Number 2004110079
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VIRGINIA WOOLF
Virginia Woolf, who would become one the twentieth century’s most celebrated novelists, was born in London on January 25, 1882, to Leslie and Julia Duckworth Stephen. Virginia had access to the works in her erudite father’s extensive library, and she read them voraciously. Unlike her brothers, however, the brilliant, self-taught young woman was denied access to a university education, a fact that would inform her influential feminist works A Room of One’s Own and Three Guineas.
When Virginia was thirteen, her mother died, a traumatic event that triggered a mental breakdown, the first in a life intermittently plagued by severe depression. Virginia suffered another breakdown following the death of her father in 1904. While convalescing at the home of a family friend, she began to publish essays and reviews in the Guardian and the Times Literary Supplement.
Later that year, Virginia moved with her siblings Vanessa, Thoby, and Adrian to a house in the Bloomsbury section of London. There Thoby began holding informal gatherings of his Cambridge friends. Known as the Bloomsbury group, this legendary artistic circle included artist Clive Bell, economist John Maynard Keynes, and writers Lytton Strachey and E. M. Forster. It was within this group that Virginia met novelist Leonard Woolf, whom she married in 1912.
In 1917 Virginia and Leonard founded Hogarth Press, which they ran from their home. Hogarth would become an influential press, publishing works by Katherine Mansfield, T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, and Vita Sackville-West. Woolf wrote prolifically and in many forms: from extensive letters, diary entries, essays, and literary reviews to short stories and novels. She authored some of the most influential novels of the early twentieth century, including Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), and The Waves (1931). Her superb ear for language and her narrative conception of experience as “moments of being” earned her both renown among her contemporaries and critical and financial success.
Increasing depression and the impending atrocities of World War II proved too much for Woolf’s sensitive nature. After completing her final novel, Between the Acts, amid bomb warnings and country-wide anxiety, Woolf penned a short suicide note to Leonard, filled her pockets with stones, and drowned herself in the River Ouse on March 28, 1941.
THE WORLD OF VIRGINIA WOOLF AND THE VOYAGE OUT
1882- 1894
Adeline Virginia Stephen is born in London on January 25, 1882, the third of the four children of author and critic Leslie Stephen and Julia Duckworth Stephen. Her siblings are Vanessa (born in 1876), Thoby (1880), and Adrian (1883), and four half brothers and sisters from her parents’ previous marriages. Virginia is educated at home, where she benefits from private Greek lessons and unfettered access to her father’s extensive library. Scenes and impressions from childhood summers spent at Talland House, the seaside family home in Cornwall, will appear in her novels. Irish writer James Joyce is also born in 1882.
1895
Julia Duckworth Stephen dies from influenza, an event that devastates thirteen-year-old Virginia; she suffers the first in a series of breakdowns that will plague her throughout her life. Leslie is unable to recover from his wife’s death, and the atmosphere in the Stephen household becomes somber and melancholy. Virginia will remain haunted by memories of this time.
1897
She begins her numerous, detailed diary entries, intimate and profound observations that over the course of her life will fill volumes. Her half sister, Stella, who had looked after the Stephen children since 1895, dies.
1901
Queen Victoria dies.
1902
Leslie Stephen is knighted.
1904
Sir Leslie Stephen dies. Virginia suffers a second breakdown and attempts suicide. During her convalescence she begins writing for publication; her first published essay — about Haworth Parsonage, the Brontë family home — appears in the Guardian. She begins reviewing for the Times Literary Supplement.
American novelist Henry James publishes The Golden Bowl, which Virginia reviews.
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