“The tragedy of her death was not that it made one, now and then and very intensely, unhappy. It was that it made her unreal; and us solemn, and self-conscious. We were made to act parts that we did not feel; to fumble for words that we did not know. It obscured, it dulled.”

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.