VIDEO: On Virginia Woolf's Birthday, Here Is the Only Recording of Her Remarkable Speaking Voice
/Virginia Woolf was born 134 years ago today, on Jan. 25, 1882, in London. Woolf, author of Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, A Room of One's One -- and pivotal figure in the Bloomsbury literary circle -- died in 1941, before the era in which writers were expected to exhibit themselves on television and radio.
Here is the only surviving recording of Woolf's voice, from an April 29, 1937 episode of the BBC series Worlds Fail Me, in which she talks about about writerly craftsmanship -- and the words she likes to use: