Education

The general parameters of Virginia Stephen's education are well known: no formal schooling, full access to her father's extensive library, some classes at King's College, tutoring in Greek. Woolf's biographers do not ignore her education, although some do little more than assume the reader's knowledge of the basic story. Most flesh it out with some detail and provide perceptive insights, such as Jean O. Love's suggestion that although Leslie Stephen did not censor his daughter's reading, he censored his library as he compiled it (42–3), or Panthea Reid's vivid picture of erratic lessons frequently interrupted by Julia Stephen's nursing absences (3–36). But few biographers emphasise it, and if they see a relationship between it and her work, they describe that connection in general terms. So, Quentin Bell points out that when she began to write reviews for the Guardian, she was fluent and at ease because ‘She had been training herself to be a writer for a long time. That is to say she had been reading voraciously and writing assiduously’ (1 93). Phyllis Rose discusses the effect that Virginia Stephen's exclusion from an education had on Virginia Woolf, stressing Woolf's attempts to ‘understand and sympathize’ rather than reject (92); for Rose, Woolf's modest, anti-authoritarian and feminine persona as a critic grew out of her lack of educational advantages (42).

Biographers Lyndall Gordon and John Mepham devote entire chapters of their biographies to Virginia Stephen's education, with Gordon describing Stephen's ‘extraordinary informal education between the ages of thirteen and about twenty-eight’ (68–9) and Mepham taking Stephen's early apprenticeship essays seriously (19–20). Gordon focuses on Leslie Stephen, Janet Case and Clive Bell as mentors, whereas Mepham concentrates on Annie Ritchie, Caroline Emelia Stephen and Bruce Richmond. Louise DeSalvo and Katherine Dalsimer devote full-length studies to the young Virginia Woolf, but DeSalvo focuses on the effects of childhood and adolescent trauma on her and Dalsimer traces Woolf's psychological and artistic development; both assert that writing helped Woolf survive.