Virginia Woolf was an English writer and one of the most influential 20th-century authors. Test your knowledge of her life and work with our Virginia Woolf Book Quiz.
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The Virginia Woolf Book Quiz
Results
#1. To The Lighthouse featured which Scottish island?
Unlucky! The Ramsey family visited Skye
#2. In what year was Mrs Dalloway published?
Unlucky! Mrs Dalloway was published on 14 May 1925.
#3. A Room of One’s Own, is based on two lectures given by Woolf at which University?
Unlucky! The work is based on two lectures Woolf delivered in October 1928Â at the University of Cambridge
#4. Her only play, written in 1935, was titled…..?
Unlucky! Freshwater: A Comedy is the title
#5. What was Woolf’s first published novel?
Unlucky! Published in 1915, A Voyage Out was her first novel
#6. The Pargiter family saga is told in which novel?
Unlucky! The Years tells the story of the Pargiter family
#7. Two Stories, published in 1917, featured which Virginia Woolf short story?
Unlucky! The Mark on the Wall was Virginia’s part of Two Stories. Her husband Leonard wrote the other.
#8. Orlando was inspired by which important figure in Woolf’s life?
Unlucky! Vita Sackville-West, her close friend and lover, was the inspiration for Orlando
#9. Woolf’s 1921 short story collection was titled….?
Unlucky! It was titled Monday or Tuesday
#10. Woolf, in partnership with S. S. Koteliansky, translated work by which famous Russian author?
Unlucky! They translated work by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Best Virginia Woolf Books to Read
Orlando
As his tale begins, Orlando is a passionate young nobleman whose days are spent in rowdy revelry, filled with the colourful delights of Queen Elizabeth’s court. By the close, he will have transformed into a modern, 36-year-old woman and three centuries will have passed.
Orlando will not only witness the making of history from its edge, but will find that his unique position as a woman who knows what it is to be a man will give him insight into matters of the heart.
A Room of One’s Own
A Room of One’s Own grew out of a lecture that Virginia Woolf had been invited to give at Girton College, Cambridge in 1928 and became a landmark work of feminist thought.
Covering everything from why a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write, to authors such as Jane Austen, Aphra Behn and the Bronte sisters, and the tragic story of Shakespeare’s fictional sister Judith, it remains a passionate assertion for female creativity and independence in a world dominated by men.
The Waves
The Waves is an astonishingly beautiful and poetic novel. It begins with six children playing in a garden by the sea and follows their lives as they grow up and experience friendship, love and grief at the death of their beloved friend Percival.
Weaving together soliloquies from the novel’s six characters, Woolf delicately and expertly explores universal concepts such as individuality, the self, and community. A novel still as poignant today as it was when written.
To the Lighthouse
Mr and Mrs Ramsay and their eight children have always holidayed at their summer house in Skye, surrounded by family friends. The novel’s opening section teems with the noise, complications, bruised emotions, joys and quiet tragedies of everyday family life that might go on forever. But time passes, bringing with it war and death, and the summer home stands empty until one day, many years later, the family return to make the long-postponed visit to the lighthouse.
One of the great literary achievements of the 20th century, To the Lighthouse, is at once an intensely autobiographical and universally moving masterpiece about changing relationships and attitudes amongst the early 20th-century middle class.
Mrs Dalloway
In this vivid portrait of one day in a woman’s life, Clarissa Dalloway is preoccupied with the last-minute details of party she is to give that evening. As she readies her house she is flooded with memories and re-examines the choices she has made over the course of her life.
Mrs Dalloway contains some of the most beautiful, complex, incisive and idiosyncratic sentences ever written in English, and that alone would be reason enough to read it. It is one of the most moving, revolutionary artworks of the twentieth century.
You can read and listen to a couple of Virginia Woolf Short Stories right here on Quizlit.
