Virginia Woolf, maybe the most notorious member of the Bloomsbury circle, is known for both her ground breaking novels and troubled lifetime. Even though her work now carries influence worldwide, it was Roger Fry, Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant’s modern developments in painting that are thought to have transformed her creative approach.
In 1941, after completing her final novel, Woolf took her own life, leaving behind two deeply moving suicide notes, one for her husband Leonard and the second for her sister Vanessa Bell. Bell was deeply affected by the loss, and completed a design for ‘The Death of the Moth’ in the months that followed which depicts the tree under which Virginia’s ashes were buried. Quentin Bell noted that this book cover was never intended for publication, and should instead be seen as a touching tribute to Virginia.