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years]( Loren_Evans, 25 years [View profile](   This letter was sent to {EMAIL}. If you do not want to receive notifications from Spdate, go to [notification settings](. Spdate, Trust Company Complex, Ajeltake Road, Ajeltake Island, Majuro, Republic of the Marshall Islands MH 96960 Virginia Woolf was born Adeline Virginia Stephen on 25 January 1882 at 22 Hyde Park Gate in South Kensington, London,[4] to Julia (née Jackson) (1846–1895) and Sir Leslie Stephen (1832–1904), writer, historian, essayist, biographer, and mountaineer.[4] Julia Jackson was born in 1846 in Calcutta, British India, to John Jackson and Maria "Mia" Theodosia Pattle, from two Anglo-Indian families.[5] John Jackson FRCS was the third son of George Jackson and Mary Howard of Bengal, a physician who spent 25 years with the Bengal Medical Service and East India Company and a professor at the fledgling Calcutta Medical College. While John Jackson was an almost invisible presence, the Pattle family were famous beauties, and moved in the upper circles of Bengali society.[6] The seven Pattle sisters married into important families. Julia Margaret Cameron was a celebrated photographer, while Virginia married Earl Somers, and their daughter, Julia Jackson's cousin, was Lady Henry Somerset, the temperance leader. Julia moved to England with her mother at the age of two and spent much of her early life with another of her mother's sisters, Sarah Monckton Pattle. Sarah and her husband Henry Thoby Prinsep, conducted an artistic and literary salon at Little Holland House where she came into contact with a number of Pre-Raphaelite painters such as Edward Burne-Jones, for whom she modelled.[7] Julia was the youngest of three sisters, and Adeline Virginia was named after her mother's eldest sister Adeline Maria Jackson (1837–1881)[8] and her mother's aunt Virginia Pattle (see Pattle family tree). Because of the tragedy of her aunt Adeline's death the previous year, the family never used Virginia's first name. The Jacksons were a well educated, literary and artistic proconsular middle-class family.[9][10] In 1867, Julia Jackson married Herbert Duckworth, a barrister,[11] but within three years was left a widow with three infant children. She was devastated and entered a prolonged period of mourning, abandoning her faith and turning to nursing and philanthropy. Julia and Herbert Duckworth had three children:[12] George (5 March 1868 – 27 April 1934), a senior civil servant, married Lady Margaret Herbert in 1904 Stella (30 May 1869 – 19 July 1897), died aged 28[a] Gerald (29 October 1870 – 28 September 1937), founder of Duckworth Publishing, married Cecil Alice Scott-Chad in 1921 Photo of Julia Stephen with Virginia on her lap in 1884 Julia Stephen and Virginia, 1884[b] Leslie Stephen was born in 1832 in South Kensington to Sir James and Lady Jane Catherine Stephen (née Venn), daughter of John Venn, rector of Clapham. The Venns were the centre of the evangelical Clapham Sect. Sir James Stephen was the under secretary at the Colonial Office, and with another Clapham member, William Wilberforce, was responsible for the passage of the Slavery Abolition Bill in 1833.[4][15] In 1849 he was appointed Regius Professor of Modern History at the University of Cambridge.[16] As a family of educators, lawyers, and writers the Stephens represented the elite intellectual aristocracy. While his family were distinguished and intellectual, they were less colourful and aristocratic than Julia Jackson's. A graduate and fellow of Cambridge University he renounced his faith and position to move to London where he became a notable man of letters.[17] In addition, he was a rambler and mountaineer, described as a "gaunt figure with the ragged red brown beard...a formidable man, with an immensely high forehead, steely-blue eyes, and a long pointed nose."[c][16] In the same year as Julia Jackson's marriage, he wed Harriet Marian (Minny) Thackeray (1840–1875), youngest daughter of William Makepeace Thackeray, who bore him a daughter, Laura (1870–1945),[d][19] but died in childbirth in 1875. Laura was developmentally disabled and eventually institutionalized.[20][21][incomplete short citation] The widowed Julia Duckworth knew Leslie Stephen through her friendship with Minny's elder sister Anne (Anny) Isabella Ritchie and had developed an interest in his agnostic writings. She was present the night Minny died[22] and later, tended to Leslie Stephen and helped him move next door to her on Hyde Park Gate so Laura could have some companionship with her own children.[23][24][25][26] Both were preoccupied with mourning and although they developed a close friendship and intense correspondence, agreed it would go no further.[e][27][28] Leslie Stephen proposed to her in 1877, an offer she declined, but when Anny married later that year she accepted him and they were married on 26 March 1878. He and Laura then moved next door into Julia's house, where they lived till his death in 1904. Julia was 32 and Leslie was 46.[21][incomplete short citation][29] Their first child, Vanessa, was born on 30 May 1879. Julia, having presented her husband with a child and now having five children to care for, decided to limit her family's growth.[30] However, despite the fact that the couple took "precautions,"[30] "contraception was a very imperfect art in the nineteenth century:"[31] it resulted in the birth of three more children over the next four years.[f][32][9][33] 22 Hyde Park Gate (1882–1904) 1882–1895 Virginia Woolf provides insight into her early life in her autobiographical essays, including Reminiscences (1908),[34] 22 Hyde Park Gate (1921),[35] and A Sketch of the Past (1940).[36] Other essays that provide insight into this period include Leslie Stephen (1932).[37][g] She also alludes to her childhood in her fictional writing. In To the Lighthouse (1927),[39] her depiction of the life of the Ramsays in the Hebrides is an only thinly disguised account of the Stephens in Cornwall and the Godrevy Lighthouse they would visit there.[40][27][41] However, Woolf's understanding of her mother and family evolved considerably between 1907 and 1940, in which the somewhat distant, yet revered figure of her mother becomes more nuanced and filled in.[42] Duckworth Stephen Family c. 1892. Back row: Gerald Duckworth, Virginia, Thoby and Vanessa Stephen, George Duckworth. Front row: Adrian, Julia, Leslie Stephen. Absent: Stella Duckworth, Laura Stephen. In February 1891, with her sister Vanessa, Woolf began the Hyde Park Gate News,[43] chronicling life and events within the Stephen family,[44][33] and modelled on the popular magazine Tit-Bits. Initially, this was mainly Vanessa's and Thoby's articles, but very soon Virginia became the main contributor, with Vanessa as editor. Their mother's response when it first appeared was "Rather clever I think."[45] Virginia would run the Hyde Park Gate News until 1895, the time of her mother's death.[46] The following year the Stephen sisters also used photography to supplement their insights, as did Stella Duckworth.[47] Vanessa Bell's 1892 portrait of her sister and parents in the Library at Talland House (see image) was one of the family's favourites and was written about lovingly in Leslie Stephen's memoir.[48] In 1897 ("the first really lived year of my life)"[49] Virginia began her first diary, which she kept for the next twelve years,[50] and a notebook in 1909.[51] Virginia was, as she describes it, "born into a large connection, born not of rich parents, but of well-to-do parents, born into a very communicative, literate, letter writing, visiting, articulate, late nineteenth century world."[52] It was a well-connected family consisting of six children, with two half brothers and a half sister (the Duckworths, from her mother's first marriage), another half sister, Laura (from her father's first marriage), and an older sister, Vanessa, and brother Thoby. The following year, another brother Adrian followed. The disabled Laura Stephen lived with the family until she was institutionalized in 1891.[53] Julia and Leslie had four children together:[12] Vanessa "Nessa" (30 May 1879 – 1961), married Clive Bell in 1907 Thoby (9 September 1880 – 1906), founded Bloomsbury Group Virginia "Jinny"/"Ginia" (25 January 1882 – 1941), married Leonard Woolf in 1912 Adrian (27 October 1883 – 1948), married Karin Costelloe in 1914 Photograph of 22 Hyde Park Gate with commemorative plaques for the Stephen family 22 Hyde Park Gate, 2015[h] Virginia was born at 22 Hyde Park Gate and lived there until her father's death in 1904. Number 22 Hyde Park Gate, South Kensington, lay at the south-east end of Hyde Park Gate, a narrow cul-de-sac running south from Kensington Road, just west of the Royal Albert Hall, and opposite Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park,[54] where the family regularly took their walks (see Map; Street plan). Built in 1846 by Henry Payne of Hammersmith as one of a row of single-family townhouses for the upper middle class,[55] it soon became too small for their expanding family. At the time of their marriage, it consisted of a basement, two storeys, and an attic. In July 1886 Leslie Stephen obtained the services of J. W. Penfold, an architect, to add additional living space above and behind the existing structure. The substantial renovations added a new top floor (see image of red brick extension), with three bedrooms and a study for himself, converted the original attic into rooms, and added the first bathroom.[45][i] It was a tall but narrow townhouse, that at that time had no running water. Virginia would later describe it as "a very tall house on the left-hand side near the bottom which begins by being stucco and ends by being red brick; which is so high and yet—as I can say now that we have sold it—so rickety that it seems as if a very high wind would topple it over."[56]