INTRODUCTION Woolf pushed the English Language, a little further against the dark. - E.M. Forster. Adeline Virginia Stephen (Baptized name) was born on January 25, 1882 at Hyde Park Gate, an ancestral mansion in Kensington gardens, London. Both her mother and father had strong family associations with literature. Virginia Woolf’s health did not permit conventional schooling, and she was educated at home by her father and grew up at the family home at Hyde Park Gate. A diary entry of 1853, indicates that Virginia Woolf, who had little formal schooling and believed that “the world [would] go on providing me with excitement whether I can use it or not”. she had the free run of her father’s library. She was unquestionably a master of technical method and a novelist. When she was nine, she started a family news bulletin, The Hyde Park Gate News (1891-1895:407). Her autobiographical novels are The Voyage Out (1915), Mrs. Dalloway (1925) and To the Lighthouse (1927). It was in 1905 that she began to write for publication in the Times Literary Supplement (viii). The art of writing was not only in her blood, but it was also a source of pleasure for her. She was an autobiographical novelist. In her autobiographical novels, she obviously presented her personal influences through her major 2 characters. She never tried to describe any of the character from outside. She brought out what was significant in her family and around. She was closely connected with the The Bloomsbury Group which helped Virginia Woolf a lot to become an essayist, a biographer, short story writer, a literary critic and a novelist later. Leonard Woolf was her husband. She was one of the most important of the British women novelists, who was so closely connected with the recollections of her family members in her ‘autobiographical’ novels. Her contributions to literature are excellent. Virginia Woolf was a feminine writer and many writers regarded her as a feminist. She wanted a good status for women in the society. So in her prose work (Criticism) A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf made her famous statement: “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction” (3). Virginia Woolf’s first two novels: The Voyage Out and Night and Day are traditional novels. Mrs. Dalloway is an unconventional novel. To the Lighthouse is an autobiographical novel. Virginia Woolf’s novels from The Voyage Out to Between the Acts are autobiographical in different degrees. She represents her views through her themes, characters, structure and philosophical approach in the major novels. In general; her novels disclose her psychological insight into the world of her times. 3 Britain played a significant role in the history of human civilization. From fourteenth century to nineteenth century, numerous eminent writers emerged in England like Geoffrey Chaucer, “Father of English Poetry;” Christopher Marlowe, “Father of English Tragedy” and creator of blank verse, William Shakespeare was called as “Big Brother” who was a dramatist, Edmund Spenser, called as the “Poet’s Poet,” John Milton, an epic writer and Charles Dickens, was a great novelist. The literary activities wonderfully reached the zenith of power in the reign of Queen Victoria. During her rule, many striking, basic changes and advances in Science, Literature, Politics, Communications, Religion and Social Life took place. So her period is called “The Golden Age of Queen Victoria.” The closing years of the eighteenth century, witnessed the appearance of a new force in English literature, by the Victorian novelists like Lord Lytton, Benjamin Disraeli, and George Elliot. There were many others of the younger generation of thinkers like George Edward Moore (1893 – 1958) and Bertrand Russell (1872 – 1970) who were to leave their impression on the world of thought and literature. The nineteenth century women novelists were Jane Austen, Frances Trollope, Mary Russell Milford, Charlotte Bronte, Emily Jane Bronte (1818 – 1848) and Anne Bronte. The twentieth century women novelists were Dorothy 4 M. Richardson, Katherine Mansfield, and Virginia Stephen who had a brief friendship with the latter. Both were conscious of experimenting with the substance and the style of prose and fiction and Virginia Stephen appeared with the aesthetic sense. Jane Austen’s famous novels are Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Persuasion and Emma. Apart from the thirteen members in Bloomsbury group, Virginia’s contemporaries were Katherine Mansfield a short story writer (A Cup of Tea), T.S. Eliot whose poems were first published in Hogarth Press and Thomas Hardy, who was a great writer and well wisher of Virginia Stephen (Virginia had a tea with him in 1926), James Joyce (Ireland), Marcel Proust (France), Miss. Dorothy Richardson (England), was her women contemporary novelists. Adeline Virginia Woolf’s literary output comprised of many novels, short fiction, biographies, non-fiction and other miscellaneous writings are her best works. A glimpse into her novels would help the readers to understand and appreciate the autobiographical novelist in a much better way. The press also commissioned the works by contemporary artist, including Vanessa Bell. The twentieth century is noted for its widespread literary activities. Every branch of literature is developing to an eminent degree. Novel reached new heights in the hands of Thomas Hardy, Henry James, Joseph Conrad and Virginia Stephen. H.G. Wells produced scientific romances 5 while Conan Doyle developed detective fiction. Virginia Stephen was arguably the major lyrical and autobiographical novelist in the English language. Virginia’s novels are highly experimental, and personal experiences are reflected in her novels. A narrative, frequently uneventful and commonplace is refracted and sometimes almost dissolved in the characters receptive consciousness. Adeline Virginia Stephen (Baptized name) was born on January 25, 1882 at 22 Hyde Park Gate, an ancestral mansion in Kensington Gardens, London (Kermod “Biographical Preface” vii). Both her mother and father had strong family associations with literature. Sir Leslie Stephen, her father was best remembered as the founding editor of the Dictionary of National Biography (Letter from Leslie Stephen and Virginia Stephen to James Russell Lowell on 20.08.1888) reveals the above statement. He was a journalist, a biographer with historical of ideas. Although Leslie Stephen had already published his History of English Thought in the eighteenth century and The Science of Ethics, he wrote daily and methodically in his study at the top of the house, books scattered around him in a circle. Virginia Stephen had the free run of her father’s library. She was an English novelist, critic, biographer and a miscellaneous writer. “Virginia Stephen was unquestionably a master of technical method and a 6 true novelist” (Seymour-Smith 402). It was in 1905 that she began to write for publication in the Times Literary Supplement, which lasted more than thirty years (Kermod “Biographical Preface” vii). She was also an important person in the history of the development of English novels. Definition of the novels: these are long stories telling about the events in the life of several different characters or people. These events may span a period of a few days, weeks or years. Many times the novel tells the story about someone’s life, over an entire lifetime. Her industry is extraordinary: nine highly wrought novels, ten short stories, two biographies, ten non-fiction (x). There are many kinds of written works that come under the category of non-fiction. Non-fiction writing is all about real people, events and ideas. Virginia’s life was filled with her writing, the activities of the Hogarth Press, occasional illness, and she showed her enthusiasm with her family members and friends. The only “interdiction” that James proposes is that “it must not appeal on Salsa pretenses.” James, The Future of The Novel (1999), Theory of Fiction: Henry James. ed. James E. Milk, Jr., (Lincoln, 1972, p.340). The proper stuff of fiction does not exist; everything is the proper stuff of fiction, every feeling, every thought; every quality of brain and spirit is drawn upon; no perception come amiss (Sharma 27). 7 In Virginia’s essay on “Modern Fiction” included in The Common Reader First Series, she wrote as follows: Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end (Woolf, 189). The researcher’s opinion about fiction is as follows: Fiction means, usually referring to the short story and the novel. The word ‘fiction’ refers to any narrative in prose or verse, that in wholly or in part the product of the imagination. The author creates imaginary people and events. Sometimes he/she gets inspired by real people or happenings but mixes them with the imaginary. The reality of fiction is not a reality of circumstance or detail. It gives an illusion of reality; a convincing reading of life. Verisimilitude in detail is means to illusion, “Willing suspension of disbelief.” It puts before readers incredible situations, which have “truth to reality.” Plays and poems that told a story could be classified as fiction, folk tales, legends, allegories, satires and romances all of which contain certain fictional elements (Pickering and Hoeper 31). 8 Virginia was a well-known theorist of fiction and she expressed her aesthetics of fiction ELEMENTS OF FICTION Fiction has three main elements: plot, character, and place or setting. Fiction includes novels, short stories, fables, fairy tales, plays, and poems, but it now also encompasses films, comic books, and video games. Fiction has been used for instructional purposes, such as fictional examples used in school textbooks. There are many kinds of written works that come under the category of non-fiction.