The Influential Life of Virginia Woolf

When you’re comfortably ensconced in your lovely Kensington hotel, you might be drawing up a list of things to do locally. If that’s the case, a stroll to see the birthplace of the world famous writer Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) might be high on that list. She was born and lived in the area during her relatively short but incredibly influential life.

Early days

Born very close many of the Kensington hotel locations of today, at 22 Hyde Park Gate, Virginia Woolf spent much of her early family life playing in and strolling around the suburb's leafy streets. For the most part, as far as is known, her early childhood as one of eight in a large extended family under one roof was happy. However, the comparatively early deaths, a few years apart, of her father and mother seem to have created traumas that led to emotional collapse and intense depression. Sadly, those were to continue on and off throughout the rest of her life.

Work

Woolf became an important and very influential member of the Bloomsbury Group – a group of writers, poets, artists, intellectuals and philosophers who drove forward artistic enterprise across a range of endeavours. She cemented herself into a place at the pivotal point of the development of modern 20th century British literature. Her main works – such as The Lighthouse and The Waves, plus several others - became massive landmarks in modern world literature, proving to be hugely influential for a generation of poets, playwrights and writers. If you stroll around the streets near your Kensington hotel, you’ll be able to see the locations where those early childhood years were spent and which would have influenced many themes of her later work.

Later life

Unfortunately, the tendencies towards depression that she had never shaken off since childhood continually recurred and were further fed by a succession of personal tragedies. In particular, one of her biographical works was poorly received by critics (or at best, received only lukewarm reviews) and that pushed her further into depression.

The exact nature of her mental illness is unknown, as techniques at the time weren’t developed and psychology / psychiatry were still largely embryonic sciences. As time progressed, she found it increasingly difficult to keep her problems in what would have been, for her, a meaningful life context and she therefore inevitably struggled to deal with them. In a sense, a slide towards the almost inevitable took place and she eventually took her own life in 1941, by drowning.

Her loss left an unfillable gap in the literary world of the time, and she is widely regarded as the most influential British female writer since Jane Austen or the Bronte sisters in the early 19th century.

Today, her birthplace and the surrounding areas around Hyde Park Gate are just a pleasant walk from many a Kensington hotel. Much of the area remains largely unchanged and she would readily recognise the streets. It’s an evocative stroll and one that most people enjoy immensely as part of a ‘footsteps of Virginia Woolf’ experience.

Matthew Zelinski works for the London Regency Hotel, a top Kensington hotel. This wonderful hotel embodies the true flavour of Kensington, with its traditional regency-style façade and superb facilities. Whether you're looking for accommodation in London for business or leisure, the Regency offers an effortlessly elegant experience.

Writer and Online Marketing Manager in London.