Who Was Virginia Woolf? Born into a privileged English household in 1882, author Virginia Woolf was raised by free-thinking parents. She began writing as a young girl and published her first novel, The Voyage Out , in 1915. She wrote modernist classics including Mrs. Dallowa y, To the Lighthouse and Orlando , as well as pioneering feminist works, A Room of One's Own and Three Guineas . In her personal life, she suffered bouts of deep depression. She committed suicide in 1941, at the age of 59.