Violet Dickinson was a friend, mentor, and most likely one of Virginia Woolf’s first great loves
Long before Virginia Woolf wrote *A Room of One’s Own* and linked a woman’s freedom to financial independence and the existence of a space of her own, one woman had already shown the young writer that such a life was possible. That woman was Violet Dickinson, a friend, mentor, and one of the most significant figures in the early years of her adult life.
An article in El País English highlights Dickinson’s story and the influence she had on Woolf, on the occasion of the publication of *The Life of Violet: Three Early Stories,” published by Princeton in 2025, which brings to light three early stories by the British author.
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I know what you read this summer
Violet Dickinson was born in 1865 into a wealthy family of landowners in the Somerset aristocracy. She did not need to work, and, like other girls of her social class, she was expected to follow the path leading to marriage. However, at age 17, she was nearly 1.90 m tall—something extremely unusual for the time—and she did not fit the standards of the Victorian “marriage market.”
She never married. Instead, she traveled, wrote, researched her family history, and cultivated an exceptionally diverse social circle. For one year, she served as mayor of Bath, while also visiting the Farmfield Reformatory for Inebriate Women to talk with the women living there.
Her Acquaintance with Virginia
Her relationship with Virginia Woolf began when the latter was still Virginia Stephen. In fact, at first, the young writer had described her in a letter as a “dangerous woman,” because she believed she did not exert the “proper influence” on young women.
That distrust, however, evolved into deep intimacy and admiration. Quentin Bell, Woolf’s nephew and biographer, later wrote that it was clear to a modern reader that Virginia was in love with Dickinson and that her feelings were reciprocated. Vanessa Curtis, author of *Virginia Woolf’s Women*, has also described Violet as the first true emotional and physical love of Woolf’s early adult life.
Whatever the exact nature of their relationship may have been, Dickinson played a significant role in shaping the writer. Biographer Hermione Lee notes that Woolf tested on her friend the ideas she was developing about life, writing, and modes of expression. At the same time, Dickinson recognized her talent early on and helped her establish contacts with important literary publications.
Her Own Home
Her influence, however, was not limited to literature. Dickinson possessed something exceptionally important for an unmarried woman in the early 20th century: her own home.
She had built Burnham Wood in Hertfordshire, and there she hosted Woolf for about eight months following the nervous breakdown she suffered in 1904, around the time of her father’s death.
The image of a woman who could have a space of her own, live without a husband, and organize her life on her own terms seems to have left a deep impression on Woolf.
Urmila Sesagiri, a professor at the University of Tennessee, points out in El País English that home ownership and the ability to define one’s own home were defining themes in the author’s work. For Woolf, the true integration of women into society also depended on equal legal rights to property and inheritance.
Three Unknown Stories
This relationship was also reflected in her fiction. In 1907, at the age of 25, Woolf wrote three stories featuring Violet as the protagonist: “Friendships Gallery,” “The Magic Garden,” and “A Story to Make You Sleep.”
The first drafts were kept at the New York Public Library. In 2022, however, Sesagiri discovered an unpublished manuscript from 1908 in the archives of Longleat House containing the same stories, typed in purple ink and hand-corrected by Woolf.
The texts were finally published in 2025 in *The Life of Violet: Three Early Stories*. In them, the real Dickinson is transformed into an almost mythical heroine: a towering woman who travels, defies constraints, and refuses to conform to society’s expectations of her.
At one telling moment, Violet decides she would rather build her own home with her own hands than live in one created by others. And she concludes with a statement that, according to Sesagiri, was extremely radical for the early 20th century: “No one wants me, but I am very happy on my own.”
According to the researcher, these early stories can be read as the “workshop” in which the world of the mature Woolf began to take shape. Years before *Orlando* and *A Room of One’s Own*, the author had already found in her friend a real-life example of a woman who defied the rules and claimed her life as her own.
Source: in.gr
