Virginia Woolf 1882 - 1941
Virginia Woolf was born Adeline Virginia Stephen in London and educated at home by her father, the biographer Sir Leslie Stephen. She suffered a number of early shocks, including sexual abuse by her half-brother and the death of her mother when she was in her teens. Throughout her life she was subject to mental breakdowns of varying intensity.
In 1905, after her father's death, Woolf and her artist sister, Vanessa, lived with their 2 brothers in a house in Bloomsbury which became the headquarters of the so-called Bloomsbury Group. This collection of artists, writers and intellectuals, generally modernist in outlook, were chiefly united by a strong reaction against the preceding Victorian Age. The group included, amongst others, writer E M Forster, biographer Lytton Strachey and
painters Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant.
In 1912, Woolf married a member of the group, the political theorist Leonard Woolf, with whom she founded the Hogarth Press in 1917. After publishing 2 realistic novels, she developed a more experimental approach with her third book, Jacob's Room(1922), based on the life of her brother Toby, who had died tragically in 1906.
Her next novel, Mrs Dalloway(1925), presenting the thoughts and inner lives of several groups of people in the course of a single day, broke new ground with the stream of consciousness technique pioneered by James Joyce in Ulysses (1922). To the Lighthouse(1927) showed great technical mastery, with a form tightly organized through the use of recurrent images and a restricted time frame. In The Waves (1931), she again recorded the stream of consciousness of her creations, inviting
the reader to inhabit the minds of her 6 characters from childhood to old age.
In 1928, Woolf published a historical fantasy, Orlando, an imaginative analysis of gender, identity and creativity. "In every human being," she later wrote, "a vacillation from one sex to the other takes place". Covering a huge time span, Orlando also made use of elements taken from the life and family history of her friend and lover Vita Sackville-West.
In her long essay A Room of One's Own (1929), Woolf turned her attention to the cause of women's rights, especially the obstacles that have hindered women writers. Most literature, she claimed, had been "made by men out of their own needs for their own uses".
Woolf wrote some fine criticism, notably The Common Reader(1925), and her posthumously published diaries and correspondence shed much light on her life
and work. Dogged throughout her life by a form of hypomania or manic depression, she committed suicide by drowning in 1941.
KEY WORKS INCLUDE:
Jacob's Room (1922)
Mrs Dalloway (1925)
The Common Reader (1925)
To the Lighthouse (1927)
Orlando (1928)
A Room of One's Own (1929)
The Waves (1931)
Between the Acts (1941)
弗吉尼亚·伍尔芙（Virginia Woolf，或译弗吉尼亚·伍尔夫，1882年1月25日－1941年3月28日）。英国女作家，被誉为二十世纪现代主义与女性主义的先锋。两次世界大战期间，她是伦敦文学界的核心人物，同时也是布卢姆茨伯里派（Bloomsbury Group）的成员之一。最知名的小说包括《戴洛维夫人》（Mrs. Dalloway）、《灯塔行》（To
the Lighthouse）、《雅各的房间》（Jakob's Room）。
弗吉尼亚·伍尔芙（Virginia Woolf?1882年1月25日—1941年3月28日）。英国女作家，批判家，意识流小说的代表人物之一。《墙上的斑点》是她第一篇典型的意识流作品。（被认为是二十世纪现代主义与女性主义的先锋之一。在两次世界大战期间，伍尔芙是伦敦文学界的核心人物，她同时也是布卢姆茨伯里派（Bloomsbury Group）的成员之一。其最知名的小说包括《戴洛维夫人》（Mrs. Dalloway）、《灯塔行》（To the Lighthouse）、《雅各的房间》（Jakob's Room）。复杂的家庭背景，这个9口之家、两群年龄与性格不合的子女经常发生一些矛盾与冲突。而伍尔芙同母异父的两位兄长对她的伤害给她留下了永久的精神创伤。1895年母亲去世之后，她第一次精神崩溃。后来她在自传《存在的瞬间》（Moments of Being）中道出她和姐姐瓦内萨·贝尔（Vanessa Bell）曾遭受同母异父的哥哥乔治和杰瑞德·杜克沃斯（Gerald Duckworth）
的性侵犯。昆汀贝尔认为，弗吉尼娅的神经错乱和自杀前的幻听，和弗吉尼亚少女时期遭受的精神创伤导致无法愈合的伤口有关。事实上，弗吉尼亚成人后非常厌恶性生活，更不愿生儿育女，对于同性的依恋甚至一度成为她感情世界里的重心。诚然对于布鲁姆斯伯里文化圈里复杂多变的情感关系，并不能以常人的眼光等闲看待，即便如此，弗吉尼亚的情感状态依然被认为是出格的。她不可救药地依恋着姐姐瓦奈萨，甚至采用一种最为出人意料的极端方式——和姐夫克莱夫调情，并以其作为自己的感情替身或者说傀儡。弗吉尼亚和瓦奈萨，在布鲁姆斯伯里文化圈，始终是被关注的焦点，不论生前还是死后，除了她们的艺术才华，还有她们的生活隐私。1904年她父亲莱斯利·斯蒂芬爵士（Sir Leslie Stephen，著名的编辑和文学批评家）去世之后，她和瓦内萨迁居到了布卢姆斯伯里（Bloomsbury）。后来以她们和几位朋友为中心创立了布卢姆茨伯里派文人团体。她在1905年开始职业写作生涯，刚开始是为《泰晤士报文学增刊》撰稿。在
某种程度上说，弗吉尼亚是上帝的弃儿，母亲、父亲相继病逝，是她难以承受的打击。她的小说《达洛威夫人》中即充满了对病态幻觉的真实生动的描绘，可以说是她的精神写照。弗吉尼亚不幸的生活经历，使她如含羞草一般敏感，又如玻璃般的易碎，她是优雅的，又是神经质的，一生都在优雅和疯癫之间游走。有人这样描述弗吉尼亚，准确地把握住她的精神气质：“她的记忆有着隐秘的两面——一面澄明，一面黑暗；一面寒冷，一面温热；一面是创造，一面是毁灭；一面铺洒着天堂之光，一面燃烧着地狱之火。”1915年，她的第一部小说《远航》出版，其后的作品都深受评论界和读者喜爱。大部分作品都是由自己成立的“贺加斯岀版”推岀。
伍尔夫夫妇搬到Hogarth House. 1917 伍尔夫夫妇买下一架二手的印刷机，在家中的地下室建立了霍加斯（Hogarth）出版社。（该出版社后来出版了包括艾略特、凯瑟琳·曼斯菲尔德、弗洛依德在内的作家作品，并且出版了伍尔夫的所有作品。）霍加斯第一部出版物《Two stories》出版，收
入小说《墙上的斑点》及Leonard所写的小说《Three Jews》。
伍尔夫开始持续记日记，直到去世几乎不曾间断。
伍尔芙患有严重的抑郁症，她曾在1936年写给朋友的信中提及: "....never trust a letter of mine not to exaggerate that's written after a night lying awake looking at a bottle of chloral and saying, No, no no, you shall not take it. It's odd how sleeplessness, even of a modified kind, has the power to frighten me. It's connected I think with these awful times when I couldn't control myself."
弗吉尼亚·伍尔芙把艺术看得高于一切。不过，她每完成一部作品常会出现病兆，性格多变的她经常在脸上折射出内心的痛苦。唯一值得庆幸的只是她的每一场发病，都有丈夫伦纳德在身边无微不至的照料，这无疑带给弗吉尼亚极大的鼓励和感动，“要不是为了他的缘故，我早开枪自杀了。”
当疯癫和幻听acousma等精神分裂的
症状重复来袭，最终不堪忍受时，她还是想到了自杀，在给伦纳德的遗言中她这样写到：“我不能再毁掉你的生活了。我想，两个人不可能比我们一向更开心了。”
写作于一九四一年的《幕间》，是弗吉尼亚·伍尔夫辞世之前的最后一部作品。当这部小说进展到约前五分之一的部分时，作家在让波因茨宅一个干粗活的女仆到清凉的睡莲池旁喘息片刻时顺便交待，十年前曾经有一位贵妇人在该处投水溺亡。那是一片浓绿的水，其间有无数鱼儿“遨游在以自我为中心的世界里，闪着亮光。”
这真是一个不详之兆：仅在小说完成又过了一个月之后，也就是1941年3月28日，举世无双的伍尔夫在自己的口袋里装满了石头，投入了位于罗德麦尔（Rodmell）她家附近的欧塞河（River Ouse），以悲剧形式结束自己的生命。尽管她有敏感的外表，她却写出了清晰富于洞察力的文章。她的主要著作有：风格独特的长篇“意识流小说”《达洛威夫人》、《到灯塔去》和《海浪》等。
婚姻生活
她的第一个丈夫斯特雷奇是一个同性恋，两个人结婚不久就宣布离婚，相互承诺作一生的朋友，事实上他们也是这样做的，斯特雷奇在离开伍尔芙以后，一直惦记她的状况，觉得她身边应该有一个可以照顾她一生的人。于是经过他的大力活动，介绍伍尔芙认识了另外一个男人，这个男人就是伦纳德。当时伦纳德在锡兰殖民地工作，也就是现在的斯里兰卡。为了伍尔芙，他辞去了在殖民地的工作，起身返回英国。
两人在一九一二年结婚。这是一对天作之合，伦纳德先生在伍尔芙的一生中，起到了不可替代的作用。由于伍尔芙小时候受到的家庭性侵害，在她心中留下阴影，她厌恶性行为，不愿生育，不和丈夫同房，对于这一切，伦纳德都欣然接受。伍尔夫在写作的时候，不出房门，不让任何人看她的手稿，甚至写作的内容，包括伦纳德在内。但是伦纳德先生总是她小说写成以后的第一个读者，总是能客观，公正的提出自己的意见，这给了伍尔夫的写作，带来了极大的好处。因为伍尔夫对于别人对她作品的评价极为
敏感，甚至到了神经质的状态，总是以为别人都在讥笑她，对自己的作品事实上并没有什么信心，但是伦纳德不会，这一点伍尔夫十分放心，他是唯一的可以评价其作品而不会引起她不安的人。
在生活上，伍尔芙也接受了伦纳德的安排，不会对什么问题提出异议。1913年夏天，伍尔夫精神崩溃，吞服安眠药自杀，是伦纳德的镇静和机智救了她一命，否则我们就不会看到这位意识流大师大部分的惊世之作了。伦纳德不嫌弃自己患病的妻子，而是一如既往地照顾她，爱护她。
这一对夫妻共同生活了29年，期间没有发生过争吵，可以说是相敬如宾。在此期间伍尔芙写出了自己的代表作，可以说这一段时期是他创作上的丰收时节。但是这并没有减轻伍尔芙的病情，他的精神分裂症状越来越严重，尤其是第二次世界大战，德国空军轰炸英国的那一段时间。伍尔芙一手创建的印刷厂被炸毁，紧接着自己在伦敦所住的别墅也被炸毁。这两次事件在伍尔夫的心上留下了不可排解的阴影，缩短了她拥抱死亡
的路程。1941年3月28日，伍尔芙来到乌斯河畔，在衣服口袋里面放满了石块，一步一步向河中心走去，结束了自己短暂的一生，给我们留下了一大批美轮美奂的艺术作品。伍尔夫留下了两封遗书，一封是给丈夫的，一封是给她姐姐的。她在遗书中说道，预感又要发病，而且这一次不会再度痊愈，只好自己走向生命的终点。
伍尔芙女士，容貌秀美，身材苗条，戴一副眼镜，穿一袭黑色的长裙，坐在自己的办公桌前，表情镇定，举止雍容，给人以一种大将之风的感觉，完全是一副美女教授的形象，谁也不会想到这样一位作家竟然会患上不可治愈的精神病，好在他的身边有过一位理解她的前夫，为她找到了照顾她一生，给她帮助，给他鼓励，爱护她并且保护她的丈夫，伦纳德先生，其实正是由于伦纳德先生无私无畏，勇于奉献的爱，为我们后代留下了一笔宝贵的文学遗产，让我们受用终身。
Edward Morgan Forster OM(Order of Merit)
(1 January 1879 – 7 June 1970) was an English novelist, short story writer, essayist and librettist. He is known best for his ironic and well-plotted novels examining class difference and hypocrisy in early
20th-century British society. Forster's humanistic impulse toward understanding and sympathy may be aptly summed up in the epigraph to his 1910 novel Howards End: "Only connect."
Forster was a humanist, homosexual, lifelong bachelor. Forster developed a long-term loving relationship with Bob Buckingham, a married policeman (his wife's name was May), and included the couple in his circle, which also included the writer and arts editor of The Listener, J.R. Ackerley, the psychologist W. J. H. Sprott, and, for a time, the composer Benjamin Britten. Other writers with whom Forster associated included the poet Siegfried Sassoon and the Belfast-based novelist Forrest Reid.
From 1925 until Forster's mother's death at age 90 on 11 March 1945, he lived with her at West Hackhurst, Abinger Hammer, finally leaving on or around 23
September 1946. His London base was 26 Brunswick Square from 1930 to 1939, after which he rented 9 Arlington Park Mansions in Chiswick until at least 1961.
Forster was elected an honorary fellow of King's College, Cambridge in January 1946, and lived for the most part in the college, doing relatively little. He declined a knighthood in 1949 and was made a Companion of Honour in 1953. In 1969 he was made a member of the Order of Merit. Forster died of a stroke in Coventry on 7 June 1970 at the age of 91, at the home of the Buckinghams.
Novels
Forster had five novels published in his lifetime. Although Maurice appeared shortly after his death, it had been written nearly sixty years earlier. A seventh novel, Arctic Summer, was never finished.
His first novel, Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905), is the story of Lilia, a young
English widow who falls in love with an Italian man, and of the efforts of her bourgeois relatives to get her back from Monteriano (based on San Gimignano). The mission of Philip Herriton to retrieve her from Italy has features in common with that of Lambert Strether in Henry James's The Ambassadors, a work Forster discussed ironically and somewhat disapprovingly in his book Aspects of the Novel (1927). Where Angels Fear to Tread was adapted into a film by Charles Sturridge in 1991.
Next, Forster published The Longest Journey (1907), an inverted bildungsroman following the lame Rickie Elliott from Cambridge to a career as a struggling writer and then to a post as a schoolmaster, married to the unappetising Agnes Pembroke. In a series of scenes on the hills of Wiltshire which introduce Rickie's wild half-brother Stephen Wonham, Forster attempts a kind of sublime related to those
of Thomas Hardy and D. H. Lawrence.
Forster's third novel, A Room with a View(1908), is his lightest and most optimistic. It was started before any of his others, as early as 1901, and exists in earlier forms referred to as "Lucy". The book is the story of young Lucy Honeychurch's trip to Italy with her cousin, and the choice she must make between the free-thinking George Emerson and the repressed aesthete Cecil Vyse. George's father Mr Emerson quotes thinkers who influenced Forster, including Samuel Butler. A Room with a View was filmed by Merchant-Ivory in 1985.
Where Angels Fear to Tread and A Room with a View can be seen collectively as Forster's Italian novels. Both include references to the famous Baedeker guidebooks and concern narrow-minded middle-class English tourists abroad. The books share many themes with short stories collected in The Celestial Omnibus and The
Eternal Moment.
Howards End(1910) is an ambitious "condition-of-England" novel concerned with different groups within the Edwardian middle classes represented by the Schlegels (bohemian intellectuals), the Wilcoxes (thoughtless plutocrats) and the Basts (struggling lower-middle-class aspirants).
It is observed that characters in Forster's novels die suddenly. This is true of Where Angels Fear to Tread, Howards End and, most particularly, The Longest Journey.
Forster achieved his greatest success with A Passage to India (1924). The novel takes as its subject the relationship between East and West, seen through the lens of India in the later days of the British Raj. Forster connects personal relationships with the politics of colonialism through the story of the Englishwoman Adela Quested, the Indian Dr. Aziz, and the question of what
did or did not happen between them in the Marabar Caves. Forster makes special mention of Ahmed Ali and his Twilight in Delhi in his Preface to its Everyman's Library Edition.
Maurice (1971) was published posthumously. It is a homosexual love story which also returns to matters familiar from Forster's first three novels, such as the suburbs of London in the English home counties, the experience of attending Cambridge, and the wild landscape of Wiltshire. The novel was controversial, given that Forster's sexuality had not been previously known or widely acknowledged. Today's critics continue to argue over the extent to which Forster's sexuality, even his personal activities, influenced his writing.
爱德华·摩根·福斯特
（Edward Morgan Forster，通称E.M.Forster，１８７９～１９７０）是本世
纪英国著名的作家，其作品包括六部小说，两集短篇小说集，几部传记和一些评论文章。他的长篇小说几乎都是反映英国中上层阶级的精神贫困，在每部作品中主人公都试图通过挣脱社会与习俗的约束来求得个人解放。福斯特的作品语风清新淡雅，虽然人物的个性很容易被把握，但命运安排往往令人不可预测却又铺叙自然。八十年代以来《印度之行》、《看得见风景的房间》、《天使不敢驻足的地方》、《莫利斯》和《霍华德庄园》都被成功地搬上银幕，使福斯特的作品得到了更为广泛的流传。虽然这些作品反映的都是二十世纪初英国的社会状况，但其间表达的自由、平等与人道的精神对正在走入二十一世纪的人类社会仍有实际的借鉴意义。
福斯特出身于伦敦的一位建筑师家庭，父亲早亡。少年时就读肯特郡唐布利奇学校的不尽愉快的经历促成了他对英国中上层社会的反感。１８９７年福斯特入学剑桥大学，加入了门徒社（The Apostle），结识了后来成为经济学家的约翰·凯恩斯（John