Virginia Woolf (Adeline Virginia Woolf, January 25, 1882 - March 28, 1941), daughter of Julia Duckworth (née Jackson) and Leslie Stephen, grew up in a house filled with books, breathing an atmosphere of intellectual aristocracy. Influenced by her scholarly father (the first editor, among others, of the Dictionary of National Biography), whom young Virginia imitated in everything, she became an avid reader from an early age.

Even at a preschool age, she began to engage in writing and concocted fantastic tales with her siblings, which they recounted in installments every night in the children's bedroom. The parental home was a hive of learning for the young Virginia - not just its great library, but also the drawing room, where rising writers such as Thomas Hardy, Robert Louis Stevenson, or George Meredith gathered, surrounded by the friendship and support of Leslie Stephen.

[...] (From the introduction of the edition)