How did Adeline Virginia Stephen become Virginia Woolf? Gillian Gill tells the stories of the women whose legacies—of strength, style, and creativity—shaped Woolf's path to the radical writing that inspires so many today. Here Gill casts back to Woolf's French-Anglo-Indian maternal great-grandmother Thérèse de L'Etang, an outsider whose beauty passed powerfully down the female line; and to Woolf's aunt Anne Thackeray Ritchie, who gave Woolf her first vision of a successful female writer. Here too are her mother, Julia, and sisters Stella, Laura, and Vanessa—all in conflict with their male-dominated household—and also the Bloomsbury group, a society of men in which Woolf ultimately proved her strength and originality.