Virginia Woolf

Leonard and Virginia Woolf moved to Richmond, after they married in October 1914, they occupied rooms in a house on the east side of The Green: number 17. Leonard had hoped moving to the suburbs might help ease Virginia’s nervous tensions however she was not happy living outside of Central London, her home.

“I wish, for your sake, Leonard, I could be happy in this quietness …But if it is a choice between Richmond and death, I choose death.”

Leonard describes some amusing incidents which he experienced on The Green in the volume of his autobiography called Beginning Again. (1964).

Early in March 1915 the couple moved to Hogarth House in Paradise Road. The move to Hogarth House came at an unhappy and unsettled period in their life, for Virginia was suffering from a severe attack of mental illness which was to recur at various times during her life.

In 1913 she had completed her first novel The Voyage Out (published in 1915). As was the case with each book that she wrote, the work had left her in a state of extreme physical, mental and nervous exhaustion and in September 1913 she attempted to take her own life.

By the summer of 1914 she appeared to have fully recovered. In February 1915, however, there was another, more violent recurrence of the illness which this time lasted until about 1917.

Leonard was anxious to find some hobby or occupation in which he and his wife could engage, and which would serve as a relief from her writing, with all its attendant mental stress. They were both interested, as amateurs, in the art of printing and in March 1917 they purchased a small handpress, some old typeface and the necessary accompanying implements and materials. The first book was issued from this modest equipment in July 1917. The title page bore the imprint "Hogarth Press, Richmond 1917". Thus began the life of a publishing house which was to become world famous.

Later The Hogarth Press moved permanently with the Woolfs to Sussex where they had a home.

Early in 1941, the symptoms of mental illness reasserted themselves and in April of that year Virginia drowned herself in the river near the house which she and Leonard owned in Rodmell, Sussex.

While she was alive Virginia wrote at least twelve novels, with A Room of One’s Own and Mrs Dalloway being two of the most well-known.

Virginia Woolf's statue can be found along Richmond Riverside.