Virginia Woolf’s Bust
The only likeness taken from life
Virginia and Leonard Woolf lived at number 52 from 1924 to 1939 – the years, the inscription below records, in which most of her greatest novels were written and published. She thought out To the Lighthouse walking round these gardens. The bust is a bronze cast of a head modelled from life by Stephen Tomlin in 1931, the only three-dimensional likeness of Woolf taken from life; the original is in the National Portrait Gallery. The Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain paid for the cast and erected it here on 26 June 2004, on a Portland stone plinth designed by Stephen Barkway. Number 52 was destroyed by bombing in October 1940, after the Woolfs had left. The Tavistock Hotel stands on the site.