children and teens. This is one of the reasons she initially declined marriage proposals from her future husband, Leonard. She even went as far as to tell him that she was not attracted to him, but that she did love him and finally agreed to marriage. Woolf preferred female lovers to male lovers, for the most part, based on her aversion to sex with men. This aversion to relations with men influenced her writing especially when considering her sexual abuse as a child. Leonard became the love of her life and even though their sexual relationship was questionable, they loved each other deeply and formed a strong, supportive and prolific marriage which led to the formation of their publishing house as well as several of her writings. Neither was faithful to the other sexually, but they were faithful in their love and respect for each other. Modern scholarship and interpretations Though at least one biography of Virginia Woolf appeared in her lifetime, the first authoritative study of her life was published in 1972 by her nephew Quentin Bell. Hermione Lee's 1996 biography Virginia Woolf provides a thorough and authoritative examination of Woolf's life and work, which she discussed in an interview in 1997. In 2001, Louise DeSalvo and Mitchell A. Leaska edited The Letters of Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf. Julia Briggs's Virginia Woolf: An Inner Life (2005) focuses on Woolf's writing, including her novels and her commentary on the creative process, to illuminate her life. The sociologist Pierre Bourdieu also uses Woolf's literature to understand and analyse gender domination. Woolf biographer Gillian Gill notes that Woolf's traumatic experience of sexual abuse by her half-brothers during her childhood influenced her advocacy of protection of vulnerable children from similar experiences. Virginia Woolf and her mother The intense scrutiny of Virginia Woolf's literary output (see Bibliography) has led to speculation as to her mother's influence, including psychoanalytic studies of mother and daughter. Woolf states that, "my first memory, and in fact it is the most important of all my memories" is of her mother. Her memories of her mother are memories of an obsession, starting with her first major breakdown on her mother's death in 1895, the loss having a profound lifelong effect. In many ways, her mother's profound influence on Virginia Woolf is conveyed in the latter's recollections, "there she is; beautiful, emphatic ... closer than any of the living are,