Virginia Woolf

Acquisition of Monk’s House 

In July 1919, the Woolf couple bought a simple cottage in Rodmell ( Sussex ) called Monk’s House ; they had bought it for £ 700 since Asheham had been terminated. In the garden stood two huge elms called by all visitors and friends of the house Virginia & Leonard . The Woolfs expanded Monk’s House with extensions, and over the years they fancied it with carpets, wallpaper, fabrics, mirrors, tiles, and screens by Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant. A model for the decoration was the interiors planned by Vanessa and Duncan together by Charleston Farmhousenear Firle, six miles from Monk’s House, which they had rented in 1916. In both houses regular meetings of the “Bloomsberries” took place.

In the same year Virginia Woolf’s stories Kew Gardens (In the Botanical Garden) were published in their own publishing house and their second novel Night and Day (Day and Night) at Duckworth.

1922 appeared almost simultaneously with the Ulysses by James Joyce , her novel Jacob’s Room ( Jacobs rooms ) . In this novel, she worked, similar to Joyce, with the technique of the inner monologue and broke with this concept, the conventional narrative technique. The protagonist Jacob is very similar to her late brother Thoby. The book became a sales success, brought the author recognition in the literary avant-garde scene and invitations from eminent personalities. Leonard Woolf became editor-in-chief of the weekly Nation and was thus able to contribute to the common income.