
Setelah sekolah di rumah sebagian besar masa kecilnya, kebanyakan dalam sastra Inggris dan sastra Victoria , Woolf mulai menulis secara profesional pada tahun 1900. Selama periode interwar , Woolf adalah tokoh penting dalam masyarakat sastra London dan tokoh sentral di Bloomsbury yang berpengaruh Kelompok intelektual. Dia menerbitkan novel pertamanya berjudul The Voyage Out pada tahun 1915, melalui Hogarth Press , sebuah rumah penerbitan yang didirikannya bersama suaminya, Leonard Woolf . Karya-karyanya yang paling terkenal termasuk novel Nyonya Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927) dan Orlando (1928), dan esai sepanjang buku A Room of One's Own (1929), dengan diktumnya, "Seorang wanita harus memiliki uang dan kamar sendiri jika dia menulis fiksi. "
Woolf menjadi salah satu subyek utama gerakan kritik feminis tahun 1970an, dan karyanya telah mengumpulkan banyak perhatian dan komentar luas untuk " feminisme yang inspiratif", sebuah aspek dari tulisannya yang sebelumnya tidak terdisiplin. Karya-karyanya banyak dibaca di seluruh dunia dan telah diterjemahkan ke dalam lebih dari lima puluh bahasa. Dia menderita penyakit mental parah sepanjang hidupnya dan bunuh diri dengan tenggelam pada tahun 1941 pada usia 59.

Having been home-schooled for the most part of her childhood, mostly in English classics and Victorian literature, Woolf began writing professionally in 1900. During the interwar period, Woolf was a significant figure in London literary society and a central figure in the influential Bloomsbury Group of intellectuals. She published her first novel titled The Voyage Out in 1915, through the Hogarth Press, a publishing house that she established with her husband, Leonard Woolf. Her best-known works include the novels Mrs Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927) and Orlando (1928), and the book-length essay A Room of One's Own (1929), with its dictum, "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction."
Woolf became one of the central subjects of the 1970s movement of feminist criticism, and her works have since garnered much attention and widespread commentary for "inspiring feminism", an aspect of her writing that was unheralded earlier. Her works are widely read all over the world and have been translated into more than fifty languages. She suffered from severe bouts of mental illness throughout her life and took her own life by drowning in 1941 at the age of 59.