A pink passport page with a torn ragged edge shows a black-and-white photograph of a woman with short hair wearing a coat with a fur collar, a slip of paper signed "Virginia Woolf," and a stamp reading "Foreign Office, 22 Mar 1923."

A handwritten page of text with underlined heading "Chapter Twenty One".

The Voyage Out draft

A diary entry with a green label at the top of the page in which is written "Wednesday, January 27," above two paragraphs written in dark blue ink.

Diary entry for January 27, 1915

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)

Diary entry

January 27, 1915

Woolf suffered a period of illness after she finished drafting The Voyage Out, and on September 9, 1913, she attempted suicide by taking an excessive dose of Veronal, a powerful barbiturate. Work on the book abruptly stopped.

In the months leading up to publication of the novel in March 1915, Woolf went about her days hosting dinners, making visits, reading, and writing. On January 27, she visited her friend Janet Case to gossip, talk about poetry, and discuss The Voyage Out, which gave her some anxiety: “We talked about my novel (which everyone, so I predict will assure me is the most brilliant thing they’ve ever read; & privately condemn, as indeed it deserves to be condemned).” This diary ended shortly after the entry seen here, when she experienced another dark period around the time the novel was published.

Holding Division: Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature

Catalog Record: Virginia Woolf collection of papers

Users of the website may make copies of the Work under general copyright exceptions, but may not further copy, share or adapt the Work. You may not use the material for commercial purposes. Please credit the copyright holder when reusing this work.