Virginia Woolf's great niece has suggested that her great aunt suffered from anorexia nervosa. Emma Woolf, who has written a memoir of her own recovery from the eating disorder, says she experienced a "painful moment of recognition" when she saw a photograph of Virginia Woolf in 1932, standing between TS Eliot and his wife Vivienne. "The image of Virginia is of someone suffering from anorexia," she wrote in tÍhe Mail on Sunday.

Emma Woolf went on to read many of her forbear's letters and diaries, finding that during her third breakdown in 1913, the novelist's "signs of anorexia become apparent".

Her husband Leonard Woolf wrote at the time that "the most difficult and distressing problem was to get Virginia to eat", points out Emma Woolf. He refers to "this excruciating business of food", and says that their arguments boiled down to resting and eating: "If left to herself, she would gradually have starved to death," wrote Leonard Woolf.

Acknowledging that Leonard never called his wife anorexic – the term was coined in 1873 but "was not in common usage during her lifetime", says Emma Woolf – the author's great niece nonetheless highlights his comment that "there was always something strange, something slightly irrational in her [Virginia's] attitude towards food. It was extraordinarily difficult to get her to eat enough to keep her strong and well. Superficially, I suppose, it might have been said that she had a (quite unnecessary) fear of becoming fat."

"Leonard recalled meal times when Virginia was unwell: 'I could usually induce her to eat a certain amount, but it was a terrible process. Every meal took an hour or two; I had to sit by her side, put a spoon or fork in her hand, and every now and again ask her very quietly to eat … ", writes Emma Woolf. "This reminds me of an evening with my big sister around seven years ago, at the height of my anorexia. I had agreed to eat a baked potato, as long as she agreed not to add butter or cheese. We sat at the table for hours as I cut the small potato into halves, and then quarters, unable to countenance that first mouthful. Looking back, I can see that I was severely ill – and massively irrational – and yet my sister didn't leave my side until I had eaten every bite."

In her biography of Virginia Woolf, Hermione Lee writes how the author's "states of mind could manifest themselves physically as exhaustion or a rapid pulse rate", and that "a reluctance to eat and severe weight loss was one of the most extreme of these physical manifestations". "This sounds like anorexia nervosa," writes Lee. "But anorexia arises from an obsession with one's body. That does not seem to be the case here. She simply could not eat."

Julia Briggs, however, in her biography of Woolf, finds that "anorexia … was one of Virginia's main symptoms", and that "for several months in 1910, she was ill, suffering from headaches, sleeplessness and anorexia".

Emma Woolf, meanwhile, says that anorexia "is 12 times more likely to occur if a relative has the illness" and that "looking at that photograph of Virginia makes me wonder if it really does run in families".

"Lee is right, Virginia wasn't obsessed with her body. But neither was I, and I had anorexia. Over and over again, at times of intense emotion in my life, I have found myself unable to eat," writes Emma Woolf in the Mail. "The cause is anxiety or emotional turmoil, not the desire to be thin. I believe that this is what Virginia experienced: when life got too much, she stopped eating."