Woolf, Leonard (Sidney)

Woolf, Leonard (Sidney) (1880–1969), author, Fabian, and social reformer, educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he became a member of the Apostles. He entered the colonial service and in 1904 went to Ceylon, which was to form the background for his first novel, The Village in the Jungle (1913); it was followed by The Wise Virgins (1914). Woolf left the colonial service in 1912 to marry Virginia Stephen (see below); he and his wife shared a close intellectual comradeship and a commitment to the Hogarth Press. He wrote on the Co-operative movement, socialism, imperialism, the League of Nations, and international affairs, was literary editor of the Nation (1923–30), and co-founder and joint editor of the Political Quarterly (1931–59). After the Deluge (2 vols, 1931 and 1939) and Principia Politica (1953) were his most sustained attempt to formulate a political philosophy, but the five volumes of his autobiography, written after his wife's death, have reached a much wider audience: Sowing (1960), Growing (1961), Beginning Again (1964), Downhill All the Way (1967), and The Journey not the Arrival Matters (1969) together constitute a clear-sighted view of a life devoted to social progress and rich in intellectual friendships.