“It was a miserable machine, an inefficient machine, she thought, the human apparatus for painting or for feeling; it always broke down at the critical moment; heroically, one must force it on.”

English writer, 20th-century modernist author

Virginia Woolf was an English writer and a major modernist author of the 20th century. She is especially known for helping to pioneer stream of consciousness narration in fiction. Her work helped shape modern literature through its formal experimentation and attention to inner thought. She is remembered above all for the narrative technique she helped develop, which became influential in later writing.