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A work of original and detailed research this is the first biography to concentrate exclusively on Woolf's close and inspirational female friendships with the key women in her life. Vanessa Curtis looks both at the effect of these relationships on her emotional life and the inspiration that each woman provided for the female protagonists in her fiction. Women inspired and fascinated Woolf until the day she died, evoking not only her loyalty, love and wit, but also anger, envy and insecurity. The author begins by exposing the lesser-known details of Woolf's Victorian childhood, spent underneath the suffocating wings of the 'angels in the house' who instilled in her a lifelong battle between creativity and convention. The journey continues with a study of the other unique women in Woolf's life: her silent sister, Vanessa Bell; enigmatic artist Dora Carrington; complex writer Katherine Mansfield; aristocratic novelist Vita Sackville-West and riotous, militant composer Ethel Smyth. most important female relationships of Woolf's life, drawing on much previously unpublished archive correspondence and photography, ultimately revealing an honest portrait of Virginia Woolf as writer, daughter, sister, lover and friend.