Virginia Woolf
Person Female Born 25/1/1882 Died 28/3/1941
Born as Adeline Virginia Stephen in Hyde Park Gate, London. Drowned herself in the River Ouse Rodmell, Sussex by filling pockets with stones.
Virginia and Leonard Woolf lived at no. 52 Tavistock Square (on the south side but destroyed during the Second World War) from 1924 to 1939. During this period Woolf wrote some of her most famous works, including Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, Orlando and The Waves.
Dr Jean Moorcroft, Camden New Journal, 31.3.2011, reminds us that “Apart from a period of what she regarded as “exile” in Richmond, the whole of Woolf's writing life was spent in one or other of Camden’s garden squares – Gordon Square, Fitzroy Square, Brunswick Square, Tavistock Square and, briefly, Mecklenburgh Square.”
Elsewhere we've read that the Woolfs, while their home in Tavistock Square had the builders in, lived at 37 Mecklenburgh Square, August 1939 - October 1940 (or September, depending on source), when a bomb forced them out. The site now occupied by Goodenough House.
The Virginia Woolf Society is worth a visit. There is a mosaic portrait of her as the muse Clio on the floor of the vestibule of the National Gallery.
See other memorials in this area
