Woolf began work on The Voyage Out by 1910 (perhaps as early as 1907) and had finished an early draft by 1912. The novel had a long and difficult gestation; it was not published until 1915, as it was written during a period in which Woolf was psychologically vulnerable. She suffered from periods of depression and, at one point, attempted suicide.[2] The resultant work contained the seeds of all that would blossom in her later work: the innovative narrative style, and the focus on feminine consciousness, sexuality, and death.