--- title: Virginia Woolf: What You Should Know About the Writer description: Virginia Woolf's 136th birthday is celebrated with a Google Doodle illustration of the British author's profile. canonical: https://time.com/5117849/virginia-woolfs-136th-birthday/ author: Suyin Haynes article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2018-01-25T04:31:37.000Z article:modified_time: 2024-01-24T11:38:38.000Z og:title: Today Is Virginia Woolf's 136th Birthday og:description: Here's what you should know about Virginia Woolf on her birthday og:url: https://time.com/5117849/virginia-woolfs-136th-birthday/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltbe2ffe3999b109bd/6988f96922fb856302e247ca/virginia-woolfs-136th-birthday-5857012284915712-6-l.png?branch=production&width=391&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 391 og:image:height: 220 og:image:alt: virginia-woolfs-136th-birthday-5857012284915712.6-l og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Today Is Virginia Woolf's 136th Birthday twitter:description: Here's what you should know about Virginia Woolf on her birthday twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltbe2ffe3999b109bd/6988f96922fb856302e247ca/virginia-woolfs-136th-birthday-5857012284915712-6-l.png?branch=production&width=391&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Today Is Virginia Woolf's 136th Birthday. Here's What You Should Know About Her > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME The Brief: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition The Brief is one of seven email newsletters published by TIME, the news organization founded in 1923. The day's top headlines, curated by TIME editors. The Brief brings TIME's perspective to the day's most important stories, helping readers understand not just what is happening, but why it matters. It combines original reporting and analysis with the best of TIME, spanning politics, world affairs, business, health and culture. 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Every edition is assembled by TIME editors rather than generated automatically. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-brief-2026q3/newsletters?i=c9fb07de-523e-4ed5-acce-0b216f15f321&cr=time-nl-brief-2026q3-v1) ## Video: How Google Makes its Doodles [Watch (HLS stream): How Google Makes its Doodles](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/upF0qp1E.m3u8) (3:23)  _Published 2018-07-07. Our videographer went to the Googleplex in Mountain View, California to meet some of the designers and coders who create the special, clever variations on the Google.com logo known as_ by [Suyin Haynes](https://time.com/author/suyin-haynes/) ## Suyin Haynes Updated: Jan 24, 2024 11:38 AM UTCPublished: Jan 25, 2018 4:31 AM UTC  Google Doodle Google Doodle Google Doodle celebrates what would have been British novelist Virginia Woolf's 136th birthday by [Suyin Haynes](https://time.com/author/suyin-haynes/) ## Suyin Haynes Updated: Jan 24, 2024 11:38 AM UTCPublished: Jan 25, 2018 4:31 AM UTC Thursday’s Google Doodle celebrates British literary luminary [Virginia Woolf](https://www.google.com/doodles/virginia-woolfs-136th-birthday), with a portrait to mark what would have been her 136th birthday. The author of [_Mrs Dalloway_](http://entertainment.time.com/2005/10/16/all-time-100-novels/slide/mrs-dalloway-1925-by-virginia-woolf/), [_To The Lighthouse_](http://entertainment.time.com/2005/10/16/all-time-100-novels/slide/to-the-lighthouse-1927-by-virginia-woolf/)and _A Room of One’s Own_, Virginia Woolf’s life and work remains highly influential on the world of literature and beyond. Born on Jan. 25, 1882, Woolf’s early life was infused with creative connections, as both her parents were prominent figures in London’s literary and artistic circuits. Woolf, her husband Leonard and her sister, artist Vanessa Bell, would become core protagonists themselves in an intellectual circle known as the [Bloomsbury Group](http://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/b/bloomsbury/lifestyle-lives-and-legacy-bloomsbury-group); a collective of writers, artists, and thinkers who enjoyed their heyday during the first half of the 20th century. Virginia Woolf is regarded as one of the greatest authors of her time due to her exploration of modernism and feminist narratives, inspiring authors such as [Margaret Atwood](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2002/sep/07/classics.margaretatwood) and [Gabriel Garcí](http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/06/15/reviews/marquez-talk.html)[a Márquez](http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/06/15/reviews/marquez-talk.html). While Woolf’s pioneering, stream-of-consciousness novels received critical acclaim during her lifetime, she was affected by recurring bouts of mental illness, and died by suicide in 1941\. As TIME’s [obituary of Woolf](http://time.com/vault/issue/1941-04-14/page/38/) noted of her novels: --- > “” ---  English novelist and critic Virginia Woolf (1882 - 1941). (Photo by George C Beresford/Getty Images) George C. Beresford—Getty Images The Google Doodle illustration for Woolf’s birthday was created by London-based illustrator [Louise Pomeroy](http://www.louisezpomeroy.com/) and is reminiscent of a [well known photograph](http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-26869265) of Woolf in 1902 that captured her serene, thoughtful profile. Woolf’s Doodle is also surrounded by falling autumn leaves, which were a recurring image in her work. In celebration of Woolf’s birthday, the New York Public Library shared a guide to her work on Twitter, and Londonist shared a map of the locations where Woolf’s novels take place. > [](https://twitter.com/nypl/status/956527111610740736) > [](https://twitter.com/Londonist/status/956513497810132993) ## Transcript >> The Doodle team was able to meet Ira Glass from This American Life, and he was just meeting us for fun. I guess, I'm not even sure why he was here, but we talked about potentially collaborating and they thought that it'd be fun to collaborate with us on Valentine's Day, so I took the lead on this project. >> We do Valentine's Day pretty much every year, and we've done your typical like lovebirds and, you know, flowers and things like that. But Ira and his team are awesome. >> They were able to pull stories that they have collected over the years, they've recorded new stories for us, and they're all about love in all different respects of the word. They sent us maybe 8 or 10 stories and they're all really fun and really sweet. >> The stories run the [ unk ]. There is a story about middle school love. >> I was in the cafeteria, just got on a drink of root beer and she walks up to me. >> There is a story about a new bride who's in doubt that she made a mistake. >> My husband, me and I, we're just so worried, his face I could tell. I said, " Where he could be ," you know, and I-- and I called the police because I thought he got lost or something happened. >> When I first got the audio from Ira, my co- worker and I listened to it together and we wrote down bullet points of where we wanted to have a little drawing come up. >> One of my favorite stories, it involves middle schoolers. We're titling it, " Puppy Love" so true to the title, I just-- I just drew everyone as a dog. >> Each stories are-- containing a little candy heart. >> And when you click on it, the heart will flip, the audio will play and you will also see the images that we've drawn to accompany the phrases. So, now we are all going to brainstorms together because we need the creative side and we also need the technical side to tell us what is possible and what isn't possible. For this one, it's a pretty conservative on the interactive side, because we didn't want to overshadow the audio. When I first started, they were no engineers on the team, we only did static doodles, but since then, we've started doing more animated stuff, more interactive work, and for that we needed a dedicated team. >> Some of our most like ambitious to those have come from engineers that are just incredibly talented and spare similar time for our projects. >> Sometimes the illustrators will come up with an idea that is way too wacky and just not possible yet. The technology hasn't been invented, but sometimes we're too conservative and it's great to have the engineers there to tell us that we can actually be way wackier with our ideas. The relationship with my engineer on this was to just keep my files size at a reasonable capacity, I was getting a little bit ambitious with how many frames I wanted to draw and my engineers said, " Hey, you need to double it ." >> We tried to do as many doodles as we possibly can. We're a pretty small team, relative to how many audiences are out there [ unk ], but yeah, we-- you never know what you're gonna get. And, you know, we keep making more and more of these things. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/5117849/virginia-woolfs-136th-birthday/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/5117849/virginia-woolfs-136th-birthday/"},"headline":"Today Is Virginia Woolf's 136th Birthday. 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