Virginia Woolf (1882 - 1941) was born into a privileged English household, where she was home-educated by her free-thinking parents. Apparently, like many girls of her age she had a happy childhood and adolescence, but as she recounted later, she had been sexually abused when she was six years old. When her mother died she went into a period of depression, which was aggravated when her sister Stella also died two years later. Despite her bouts of suffering, for four years she took classes in German, Greek and Latin at the Ladies' Department of King's College London. It was during this period that she developed her feminist stance. After some turbulent years of psychological disorders, and after being institutionalized, she committed suicide at the age of 59. About Night and Day The heroine, Katharine Hilbery, is beautiful and privileged, but clueless about her future. She must decide between becoming engaged to the mediocre poet William Rodney, and the passionate Ralph Denham. Besides being a love story, Night and Day, is a novel of manners that includes historical vignettes that provide an insight into the then incipient feminism.