Woolf, Leonard, 1880-1969

Leonard Woolf was born on November 25, 1880, in London, England.

He was a British essayist, author, political activist, and publisher. He was educated at St. Paul's School (1894-1899) and Trinity College, Cambridge (B.A., 1902), where he was elected to the Cambridge Apostles. He joined the civil service in 1904 and spent seven years in Ceylon, an experience that deeply influenced not only his political views but also his fictional writing. With his wife, the novelist Virginia Woolf, he began the Hogarth Press, a vanguard publishing house of the period. They both became influential in the Bloomsbury Group, and, in 1917, Woolf co-founded the 1917 Club. He became editor of the International Review (1919), the international section of the Contemporary Review (1920-1922), The Nation (later The New Statesman), and Athenaeum (1923-1930). He also co-founded and edited The Political Quarterly (1931-1959). Woolf was a committed socialist and member of the Fabian Society and Labour Party and served as a secretary for the Labour Party’s advisory committees on international and imperial affairs (1919-1945). An expert on international affairs, he wrote numerous volumes of political analysis. He was a founding member of the League of Nations Society. Woolf received an honorary doctorate from the University of Sussex in 1964. In 1965, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. The Hogarth Press’ first publication, “Two Stories”, comprised his “Three Jews” and Virginia Woolf’s “The Mark on the Wall”. He wrote five volumes of autobiography, “Sowing” (1960), “Growing” (1961), “Beginning Again” (1964), “Downhill All the Way” (1967), and “The Journey Not the Arrival Matters” (1969). His late loving relationship with the artist Marjorie Tulip (Trekkie) Parsons (1902–1996) was revealed in their published letters.

In 1912, he married the writer Adeline Virginia Stephen (1882–1941). He died on August 14, 1969, in Rodmell, England.