A trio of early stories by Virginia Woolf which together form a spoof biography of a family friend have been rediscovered and are set to be published next month. “No no, we have an original document by Virginia Woolf,” they responded. Photograph: Neil Lang/ShutterstockIn this way, The Life of Violet “shows us a Woolf who might have been”, suggests Seshagiri. In 1955, Dickinson’s family offered the early, unrevised NYPL versions to Leonard Woolf, whom Virginia married in 1912. He showed them to Francis Wyndham (who would go on to edit VS Naipaul and Jean Rhys), who pointed out what Maschler had failed to realise: the author “Virginia Stephen” was Virginia Woolf.