Books by Virginia Woolf

Book Synopsis''A brilliant fantasia of all Time''s problems, age and youth, change and permanence, truth and illusion'' The Times Literary SupplementThe Years is the story of the Pargiter family - their intimacies and estrangements, anxieties and triumphs - mapped out against the bustling rhythms of London''s streets during the first decades of the twentieth century, as their Victorian upbringing gives way to a new world, where the rules of etiquette have shifted from the drawing room to the air-raid shelter. Virginia Woolf''s penultimate novel is a celebration of the resilience of the individual amid time, change, life, death and renewal.Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Jeri JohnsonTrade Review'Inspired ... a brilliant fantasia of all Time's problems, age and youth, change and performance, truth and illusion' * The Times Literary Supplement *Her richest and most beautiful novel * The New York Times *

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Book Synopsis''Clear, bright, burnished ... the moods that it expresses are a true kind of poetry'' The New York TimesTracing the lives of a group of friends, The Waves follows their development from childhood to middle age. While social events, individual achievements and disappointments form its narrative, the novel is most remarkable for the rich poetic language that expresses the inner life of its characters: their aspirations, their triumphs and regrets, their awareness of unity and isolation, and their questioning of the meaning of life itself. Perhaps more than any of Woolf''s novels, The Waves conveys the endless complexities of human experience.Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Kate Flint

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Book Synopsis''One of the great writers of the twentieth century'' GuardianIt is June in 1939, and the inhabitants of a country house prepare to host the annual village pageant in its grounds. It will tell the stories of English history, as it does every year. Yet the coming of war broods over the whole community, changing the meaning of past and present, and heralding a new act. Through her characters'' passionate musings and private dramas, and through the enigmatic figure of the pageant''s author, Miss La Trobe, Virginia Woolf''s playful final novel both celebrates and mocks Englishness, and re-creates the elusive role of the artist.Edited by Stella McNichol with an Introduction and Notes by Gillian Beer

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Book Synopsis''Woolf is modern ... With Joyce and Eliot she has shaped a literary century'' Jeanette WintersonVirginia Woolf tested the boundaries of fiction in these short stories, developing a new language of sensation, feeling and thought, and recreating in words the ''swarm and confusion of life''. Defying categorization, the stories range from the more traditional narrative style of ''Solid Objects'' through the fragile impressionism of ''Kew Gardens'' to the abstract exploration of consciousness in ''The Mark on the Wall''.Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Sandra KempTrade ReviewWoolf is modern ... With Joyce and Eliot she has shaped a literary century -- Jeanette Winterson * The Times *

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewOne of the few genuine innovations in the history of the novel * New Yorker *One of her greatest achievements, a book whose afterlife continues to inspire new generations of writers and readers * Guardian *

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Book Synopsis''A fantasy, impossible but delicious ... an exuberance of life and wit'' The Times Literary SupplementFirst masculine, then feminine, Orlando begins life as a young sixteenth-century nobleman, then gallops through the centuries to end up as a woman writer in Virginia Woolf''s own time. Written for the charismatic, bisexual writer Vita Sackville-West, this playful mock biography of a chameleon-like historical figure is both a wry commentary on gender and, in Woolf''s own words, a ''writer''s holiday'' which delights in its ambiguity and capriciousness.Edited by Brenda Lyons with an Introduction and Notes by Sandra M. GilbertTrade ReviewA fantasy, impossible but delicious...an exuberance of life and wit * The Time Literary Supplement *

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Book SynopsisIn Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf explores the events of one day, impression by impression, minute by minute, as Clarissa Dalloway''s and Septimus Smith''s worlds look set to collide - this classic novel is beautifully repackaged as part of the Penguin Essentials range.''She had a perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day.''On a June morning in 1923, Clarissa Dalloway, the glittering wife of a Member of Parliament, is preparing for a party she is giving that evening. As she walks through London, buying flowers, observing life, her thoughts are of the past and she remembers the time when she was as young as her own daughter Elizabeth, her romance with Peter Walsh, now recently returned from India; and the friends of her youth. Elsewhere in London Septimus Smith is being driven mad by shell shock. As the day draws to its end, hiTrade ReviewOne of the most moving, revolutionary artworks of the twentieth century -- Michael CunninghamWoolf is Modern. She feels close to us. -- Jeanette Winterson

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Book SynopsisThe Modern Library is proud to include Virginia Woolf's first novel, The Voyage Out--together with a new Introduction by Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Michael Cunningham. Published to acclaim in England in 1915 and in America five years later, The Voyage Out marks Woolf's beginning as one of the twentieth century's most brilliant and prolific writers.Less formally experimental than her later novels, The Voyage Out none-theless clearly lays bare the poetic style and innovative technique--with its multiple figures of consciousness, its detailed portraits of characters' inner lives, and its constant shifting between the quotidian and the profound--that are the signature of Woolf's fiction. Rachel Vinrace, Woolf's first heroine, is a motherless young woman who, at twenty-four, embarks on a sea voyage with a party of other English folk to South America. Guileless, and with only a smattering of education, Rachel is taken under the wing of her aunt Helen

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Book Synopsis“Illuminating and original combination of biographical, historical, literary, and critical sources for Mrs. Dalloway by the leading Woolf scholar who edited the annotated edition of the novel. Diary and letter selections provide fresh contexts. Superb resource for teachers and students!”—Susan Stanford Friedman, University of Wisconsin, Madison

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Book SynopsisJacob’s Room is Virginia Woolf’s experimental third novel, set in England during the halcyon days before World War I. The text reprinted here is the first British edition, which Woolf approved, and which retains her original layout, including paragraph spacing.

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Book SynopsisVirginia Woolf unveils the societal barriers faced by women and explores the crucial link between women''s financial independence and creative freedom in this extraordinary collection of essays. Initially presented as lectures in 1928 at Newnham College and Girton College, the University of Cambridge''s women''s colleges, this seminal work argues for a literal and figurative space for women writers within a patriarchal literary tradition. Woolf''s essays constitute a foundational feminist text, highlighting the historical marginalization of women, advocating for equality, and emphasizing the importance of women''s contributions to literature and beyond. Essential reading for anyone interested in feminism, literature, and women''s history,A Room of One''s Ownresonates profoundly in today''s ongoing gender discussions.

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Book SynopsisThis first scholarly edition of The Years provides a fully collated and annotated text. It includes a substantial introduction, explanatory notes and detailed textual apparatus tracking Woolf's extensive revisions.Trade Review'An astonishing editorial achievement.' The Times Literary SupplementTable of ContentsGeneral editors' preface; Notes on the edition; Acknowledgements; Chronology; Introduction; Chronology of composition; The Years; Explanatory notes; Textual apparatus; Textual notes; Appendix; Bibliography.

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Book SynopsisThe Waves is one of the greatest achievements in modern literature. Commonly considered the most important, challenging and ravishingly poetic of Virginia Woolf''s novels, it was in her own estimation ''the most complex and difficult of all my books''. This edition will be the most authoritative, most fully collated and annotated text available to scholars to date, and for considerable time to come. It maps the text of The Waves from the first British edition to all other editions published in Woolf''s lifetime, as well as to all extant proofs. The text is presented in clearly readable form, with page-by-page direction to emendation, variants, and notes. The substantial introduction includes a detailed account of the novel''s composition, publication and early critical reception. There are extensive explanatory notes on the text, a full chronology of composition and publication and a more general chronology covering Woolf''s life and works.Trade ReviewReview of the series: 'The new collection [The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Virginia Woolf] will prove itself indispensable to serious Woolfians.' The Times Literary Supplement'Readers will find this edition of The Waves to be a highly valuable resource with which to form their own readings … The rich groundwork laid by this new edition of The Waves places readers in the midst of this novel's astonishing complexity, helping us unlock its many mysteries while revealing new ones.' Women: A Cultural Review'I am grateful for the care, intelligence, and scholarship that have produced this edition.' Morris Beja, Woolf Studies AnnualTable of ContentsGeneral editors' preface; Chronology; Introduction; Chronology of composition; The Waves; Explanatory notes; Textual apparatus; Textual notes.

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Book SynopsisA young woman learns about life, and love found and lost, in this thought-provoking debut novel by one of the twentieth century’s most brilliant and prolific writers—with an introduction by Elisa Gabbert, author of The Unreality of Memory   “Absolutely unafraid . . . Here at last is a book which attains unity as surely as Wuthering Heights, though by a different path.”—E. M. ForsterLondon, 1905: Twenty-four-year-old Rachel Vinrace is a free spirited but painfully naïve young woman when she embarks on a sea voyage with her family to South America. Arriving in Santa Marina, a town on the South American coast, Rachel and her aunt Helen are introduced to a group of English expatriates, among them the sensitive Terence Hewet, an aspiring writer who is drawn to Rachel’s unusual and dreamy nature. The two fall in love, unaware of the tragedy that lies ahead. With hints of Jane Austen, The

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Book SynopsisThis new edition of one of Virginia Woolf’s most celebrated novels features an introduction by Michael Cunningham, acclaimed bestselling author of The Hours.Mrs. Dalloway chronicles a June day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway–a day that is taken up with running minor errands in preparation for a party and that is punctuated, toward the end, by the death of a young man she has never met. In giving an apparently ordinary day such immense resonance and significance–infusing it with the elemental conflict between death and life–Virginia Woolf triumphantly discovers her distinctive style as a novelist. Originally published in 1925, Mrs. Dalloway is Woolf’s first complete rendering of what she described as the “luminous envelope” of consciousness: a dazzling display of the mind’s inside as it plays over the brilliant surface and darker depths of reality.This edition uses the text of the original Briti

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Book SynopsisA beautiful edition of the groundbreaking classic novel, with a new introduction by award-winning writer Susan Choi“Without question one of the two or three finest novels of the twentieth century. Woolf comments on the most pressing dramas of our human predicament: war, mortality, family, love.” –Rick Moody, bestselling author of The Ice StormThe enduring power of this iconic classic flows from the brilliance of its narrative technique and the impressionistic beauty of its prose. Though the novel turns on the death of its central figure, Mrs. Ramsay, her presence pervades every page in a poetic evocation of loss and memory that is also a celebration of domestic life and its most intimate details. Observed across the years at their vacation house on the Isle of Skye, Mrs. Ramsay and her family seek to recapture meaning from the flux of things and the passage of time. To the Lighthouse enacts a moving allegory of the creative consciousness and its momentary triumphs over fleeting material life.

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Book SynopsisFirst published in 1922, Jacob's Room was Virginia Woolf's third novel and the first in her more experimental mode. Set in the years leading up to the First World War, the work is an elegy, not just for an individual character, but for a generation lost in and affected by the war. This Shakespeare Head Press edition restores the text to its original form, notably recreating the space breaks on the page with which Woolf deliberately fragmented her narrative. The editor provides an extensive introduction, discussing the genesis of the novel, its biographical elements, the process of composition and revision, and the history of its early critical reception. A series of notes helps the reader to identify references and allusions, from sponge-bag trousers and gold beater's skin to Tonks and Steer, and the Hampstead Garden Suburbs; while an appendix lists variants between the first UK and first US editions of the work.Table of ContentsAcknowledgements. Introduction. Frontispiece. JACOB’S ROOM. NOTES AND APPENDICES. Notes. Appendix A: Emendations. Appendix B: Textual Variants. Appendix C: Chronology

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Book SynopsisThe controversial Three Guineas was Virginia Woolf's most explicit statement of her feminism. Forming part of the Shakespeare Head Press series of Woolf's works, this new edition includes her carefully considered selection of photographs, her discursive endnotes and annotations.Table of ContentsAcknowledgements. Introduction. Abbreviations. Frontispiece. List of Illustrations. THREE GUINEAS. Editor's Notes. Appendix A: Emendations. Appendix B: Textual Variants. Appendix C: Passages Found Only in the First American Edition of Three Guineas. Appendix D: Books Cited or Referred to by Virginia Woolf in Three Guineas. Appendix E: Periodical Sources Cited or Referred to by Virginia Woolf in Three Guineas.

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Book SynopsisA beautiful hardcover edition of Virginia Woolf's groundbreaking novel. Though its fame as an icon of twentieth-century literature rests primarily on the brilliance of its narrative technique and the impressionistic beauty of its prose, To the Lighthouse is above all the story of a quest, and as such it possesses a brave and magical universality.Observed across the years at their vacation house facing the gales of the North Atlantic, Mrs. Ramsay and her family seek to recapture meaning from the flux of things and the passage of time. Though it is the death of Mrs. Ramsay on which the novel turns, her presence pervades every page in a poetic evocation of loss and memory that is also a celebration of domestic life and its most intimate details. Virginia Woolf’s great book enacts a powerful allegory of the creative consciousness and its momentary triumphs over fleeting material life.

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Book Synopsis Mrs. Dalloway chronicles a June day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway–a day that is taken up with running minor errands in preparation for a party and that is punctuated, toward the end, by the suicide of a young man she has never met. In giving an apparently ordinary day such immense resonance and significance–infusing it with the elemental conflict between death and life–Virginia Woolf triumphantly discovers her distinctive style as a novelist. Originally published in 1925, Mrs. Dalloway is Woolf’s first complete rendering of what she described as the “luminous envelope” of consciousness: a dazzling display of the mind’s inside as it plays over the brilliant surface and darker depths of reality. This edition uses the text of the original British publication of Mrs. Dalloway, which includes changes Woolf made that never appeared in the first or subsequent American editions.

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Book SynopsisVirginia Woolf was born in London in 1882, the daughter of Sir Leslie Stephen, first editor of The Dictionary of National Biography. After his death in 1904 Virginia and her sister, the painter Vanessa Bell, moved to Bloomsbury and became the centre of 'The Bloomsbury Group'. This informal collective of artists and writers which included Lytton Strachey and Roger Fry, exerted a powerful influence over early twentieth-century British culture. In 1912 Virginia married Leonard Woolf, a writer and social reformer. Three years later, her first novel The Voyage Out was published, followed by Night and Day (1919) and Jacob's Room (1922). These first novels show the development of Virginia Woolf's distinctive and innovative narrative style. It was during this time that she and Leonard Woolf founded The Hogarth Press with the publication of the co-authored Two Stories in 1917, hand-printed in the dining room of their house in Surrey. BetweenTrade ReviewOne might think, from the heaps of books, that the bones of Bloomsbury had been by now well and truly disinterred...But one would be wrong, for Moments of Being is a real delight -- Jan Marsh * Daily Telegraph *Of fascinating importance, because they are Virginia's only known autobiographical writings -- John Lehmann * Sunday Telegraph *The book must appeal to anyone interested in Virginia Woolf and her circle -- Derek Parker * The Times *Her manner of recall contains all those surprises and felicities of language we have come to expect when she writes, as it were, with her elbows on the table -- Richard Shone * Spectator *

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Book SynopsisTable of ContentsAn Introduction by Jessica Gildersleeve vii About Jessica Gildersleeve xxiii About Tom Butler-Bowdon xxv A Room of One’s Own xxvii

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Book SynopsisA Contemporary Classics hardcover edition of Virginia Woolf’s classic plea for a world in which women are free to use their gifts.In this influential extended essay, Woolf outlines what women need in order to fully make use of their innate abilities. Using provocative images and memorable thought experiments—including the fictional Judith Shakespeare, who is as talented as her brother William but limited in ways he was not—Woolf decries the means by which women have been held back throughout history and in her own time.Woolf urges both men and women to break free of the limitations of their roles and develop new traditions in which they can explore the depths and peaks of human experience through writing about ordinary things and ordinary people—a process in which she herself was a pioneer. A Room of One's Own, first published in 1929, has been a rallying cry for generations of women and continues to be an inspiration in our own century.Everyman's Library pursues the highest production standards, printing on acid-free cream-colored paper, with full-cloth cases with two-color foil stamping, decorative endpapers, silk ribbon markers, European-style half-round spines, and a full-color illustrated jacket. Contemporary Classics include an introduction, a select bibliography, and a chronology of the author's life and times.

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Book SynopsisThis edition of Mrs Dalloway includes substantial explanatory notes compiling past scholarship while identifying new allusions, and a list of textual variants among all editions in Woolf's lifetime. It also features a composition history, documenting how Woolf's reading, friendships, and culture contributed to the book, and Woolf's seldom-reprinted 1928 introduction.Table of ContentsGeneral editors' preface; Notes on the edition; Acknowledgements; Chronology of Virginia Woolf's life and work; Introduction; Chronology of the composition of Mrs Dalloway; Mrs Dalloway; Explanatory notes; Textual apparatus; Textual notes; Appendix; Bibliography.

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Book SynopsisInspired by the life of Woolf''s lover, Vita Sackville-West, Orlando is the stunning tale of a 300-year-old poet and nobleman who never ages. Against the backdrop of some of the most important moments of history, the titular character begins his life as a rowdy nobleman who delights in enjoying the privileges his status affords him. When he wakes one morning to discover that he is now a woman, he retains his joie de vivre. A wildly entertaining commentary on gender and history, this book acts as a magic mirror revealing how life and art constantly change but forever remain the same. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Arcturus Classics series brings together high-quality paperback editions of classics works, presented with contemporary graphic cover designs. Together they make a wonderful collection which is perfect for any home library.

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Book SynopsisVirginia Woolf, who was to become a major figure in the Bloomsbury Group of intellectuals, was born into an intellectual family in 1882. Her mother died when she was 13 and the death of her half-sister Stella two years later led to her first nervous breakdown. Woolf suffered from fragile mental health all her life and on 28 March 1941, after filling the pockets of her overcoat with stones, she walked into the River Ouse near her home and drowned herself.

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Book SynopsisVirginia Woolf, who was to become a major figure in the Bloomsbury Group of intellectuals, was born into an intellectual family in 1882. Her mother died when she was 13 and the death of her half-sister Stella two years later led to her first nervous breakdown. Woolf suffered from fragile mental health all her life and on 28 March 1941, after filling the pockets of her overcoat with stones, she walked into the River Ouse near her home and drowned herself.

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Book SynopsisIn the wake of World War I and the 1918 flu pandemic, Clarissa Dalloway, elegant and vivacious, is preparing for a party and remembering those she once loved. In another part of London, Septimus Smith is suffering from shell shock and is on the brink of madness.

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Book SynopsisThe Ramsays spend their summers on the Isle of Skye, where they happily entertain friends and family and make idle plans to visit the nearby lighthouse. Over the course of the book, the lighthouse becomes a silent witness to the ebbs and flows, the births and deaths, that punctuate the individual lives of the Ramsays.

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Book SynopsisThe Ramsays spend their summers on the Isle of Skye, where they happily entertain friends and family and make idle plans to visit the nearby lighthouse. Over the course of the book, the lighthouse becomes a silent witness to the ebbs and flows, the births and deaths, that punctuate the individual lives of the Ramsays.

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