Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) is regarded as a major twentieth-century author and essayist, a key figure in literary history as a feminist and modernist, and the centre of 'The Bloomsbury Group'. Between 1925 and 1931 Woolf produced what are now regarded as her finest masterpieces, from Mrs Dalloway (1925) to the poetic and highly experimental novel The Waves (1931). She also maintained an astonishing output of literary criticism, short fiction, journalism and biography, including the playfully subversive Orlando (1928) and A Room of One's Own (1929).