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36 A Woman Must Have Money ...

Writer's picture: Dave GobleDave Goble

Updated: Feb 24, 2024

Virginia Woolf lived here at Hogarth House, Paradise Road^ In Richmond. with her husband Leonard for about nine years from 1915, (when she was 33), until 1924. They relocated there from Bloomsbury in London via a few months around the corner at No. 17 The Green, Richmond.



Born in 1882 in South Kensington Woolf grew up the seventh child in an affluent, blended family of eight in a world of inter-marrying upper-middle class educated elites. She enjoyed a privileged childhood, and after her father bought a family summer home in St. Ives in Cornwall she formed a bond with the area. This is where she first saw the Godrevy Lighthouse, which was to become central in her 1927 novel To the Lighthouse. In 1895, aged just thirteen, Woolf’s childhood came to a shuddering end with the death of her mother, and her first mental breakdown followed.

She began writing professionally in 1900, but her father died just five years later in 1905 causing another mental breakdown. Following his death, the family moved from Kensington to the more bohemian Bloomsbury. It was here, in conjunction with the brothers' intellectual friends, they formed the artistic and literary Bloomsbury Group.

In 1912, she married Leonard Woolf, and in 1917, whilst living in Paradise Road, Richmond the couple founded the Hogarth Press which published much of her work. The period of her life spent in Hogarth House was, however, largely an unhappy and unsettled one as she struggled with severe attacks of the mental illness that was to recur throughout her life.

Some of her best known novels include Mrs. Dalloway (1925), the previously mentioned To the Lighthouse (1927) and Orlando (1928). She is also known for her essays, including A Room of One’s Own (1929). She has been translated into more than 50 languages. Family and friends enjoyed a stream of letters during her lifetime.


Woolf was institutionalised several times, and attempted suicide at least twice. In 1940 she and Leonard moved to Sussex, having rented a home there. In 1941, aged 59, she filled her coat pockets with rocks and drowned herself in the River Ouse, in Lewes.

Some quotes:


"A woman must have money [she could have left it there] and a room of her own if she is to write fiction."


“Why are women... so much more interesting to men than men are to women?“


Hogarth House

How it would have looked when Woolf and her husband lived there a hundred or so years ago


Virginia Woolf


^My wife Rachel and I were married at a registry office on Paradise Road.


Red arrow: Hogarth House


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