Books by Virginia Woolf

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Book Synopsis''What do we seek through millions of pages? Still hopefully turning the pages -- oh, here is Jacob''s room.''Who is Jacob Flanders? Virginia Woolf''s third novel, published in 1922 alongside James Joyce''s Ulysses and T.S. Eliot''s The Waste Land, follows this elusive title character from a sunlit childhood on the Cornwall coast to adventures in Cambridge, London, and Athens. Women fall in love with Jacob; young men desire his company and conversation. But Woolf keeps her scornful, charming protagonist at a distance, enveloping Jacob in mystery as he enters adulthood and the Great War thunders across Europe. A daring work that reimagines every element of the traditional novel, Jacob''s Room tells a new story for a new century.In 1922, Lytton Strachey pronounced Jacob''s Room ''a most wonderful achievementmore like poetry, it seems to me, than anything else, and as such I prophesy immortal.'' One hundred years after its publication, Woolf''s first full-length work of experimental fiction pulls us into the inexhaustible mysteries of intimacy and mortality.Table of ContentsIntroduction Note on the Text Select Bibliography A Chronology of Virginia Woolf Maps Jacob's Room Explanatory Notes

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Book SynopsisThe Voyage Out (1915) is the story of a rite of passage. When Rachel Vinrace embarks for South America on her father's ship she is launched on a course of self-discovery in a modern version of the mythic voyage.Virginia Woolf knew all too well the forms that she was supposed to follow when writing of a young lady's entrance into the world, and she struggled to subvert the conventions, wittily and assiduously, rewriting and revising the novel many times. The finished work is not, on the face of it, a `portrait of the artist'. However, through The Voyage Out readers will discover Woolf as an emerging and original artist: not identified with the heroine, but present everywhere in the socialsatire and the lyricism and patterning of consciousness.Trade Review'Together these ten volumes make an attractive and reasonably priced (the volumes vary between £3.99 and £4.99) working edition of Virginia Woolf's best-known writing. One can only hope that their success will prompt World's Classics to add her other essays to the series in due course.' Elisabeth Jay, Westminster College, Oxford, Review of English Studies, Vol. XLV, No. 178, May '94

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Book SynopsisKatherine Hilbery, torn between past and present, is a figure reflecting Woolf''s own struggle with history. Both have illustrious literary ancestors: in Katherine''s case, her poet grandfather, and in Woolf''s, her father Leslie Stephen, writer, philosopher, and editor. Both desire to break away from the demands of the previous generation without disowning it altogether. Katherine must decide whether or not she loves the iconoclastic Ralph Denham; Woolf seeks a way of experimenting with the novel for that still allows her to express her affection for the literature of the past. This is the most traditional of Woolf''s novels, yet even here we can see her beginning to break free; in this, her second novel, with its strange mixture of comedy and high seriousness, Woolf had already found her own characteristic voice. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World''s Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford''s commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.Trade Review'Together these ten volumes make an attractive and reasonably priced (the volumes vary between £3.99 and £4.99) working edition of Virginia Woolf's best-known writing. One can only hope that their success will prompt World's Classics to add her other essays to the series in due course.' Elisabeth Jay, Westminster College, Oxford, Review of English Studies, Vol. XLV, No. 178, May '94

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Book SynopsisThis selection brings together thirty of Woolf's best essays across a wide range of subjects including writing and reading, the role and reputation of women writers, the art of biography, and the London scene. They are enchanting in their own right, and indispensable to an understanding of this great writer.Trade ReviewBrilliant and subtle essays. * Independent on Sunday. *Table of ContentsThe Decay of Essay-Writing ; Modern Fiction ; The Modern Essay ; How it Strikes a Contemporary ; Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown ; Character in Fiction ; Impassioned Prose ; How Should One Read a Book? ; Poetry, Fiction and the Future ; Craftsmanship ; The Feminine Note in Fiction ; Women Novelists ; Women and Fiction ; Professions for Women ; Memories of a Working Women's Guild ; Why? ; The New Biography ; On Being Ill ; The Art of Biography ; Thunder at Wembley ; The Cinema ; Street Haunting: A London Adventure ; The Sun and the Fish ; The Docks of London ; Oxford Street Tide ; Evening over Sussex: Reflections in a Motor Car ; Flying over London ; Why Art Today Follows Politics ; Thoughts on Peace in an Air Raid

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Book Synopsis''I feel the need of an escapade after these serious poetic experimental books...I want to kick up my heels & be off.''Orlando tells the tale of an extraordinary individual who lives through centuries of English history, first as a man, then as a woman; of his/her encounters with queens, kings, novelists, playwrights, and poets, and of his/her struggle to find fame and immortality not through actions, but through the written word. At its heart are the life and works of Woolf''s friend and lover, Vita Sackville-West, and Knole, the historic home of the Sackvilles. But as well as being a love letter to Vita, Orlando mocks the conventions of biography and history, teases the pretensions of contemporary men of letters, and wryly examines sexual double standards. This new edition discusses Woolf''s stylistic aims, the biographical parallels, and the work''s literary context, and includes the original illustrations. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World''s Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford''s commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.Trade ReviewIf you have always wanted to read Woolf but feel intimidated, Orlando is a good place to start. And you can't go wrong with this new Oxford edition. * Shiny New Books, Stefanie Hollmichel *

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Book SynopsisA gorgeous clothbound edition of Woolf''s fantastical and enchanting novel, designed by the acclaimed Coralie-Bickford Smith. Orlando has always been an outsider...His longing for passion, adventure and fulfilment takes him out of his own time. Chasing a dream through the centuries, he bounds from Elizabethan England and imperial Turkey to the modern world. Will he find happiness with the exotic Russian Princess Sasha? Or is the dashing explorer Shelmerdine the ideal man? And what form will Orlando take on the journey - a nobleman, traveller, writer? Man or... woman?A wry commentary on gender and history, Orlando is also, in Woolf''s own words, a light-hearted ''writer''s holiday'' which delights in ambiguity and capriciousness. This clothbound Penguin edition is edited by Brenda Lyons with an introduction and notes by Sandra M. Gilbert. ''I read this book and believed it was a hallucinogenic, interactive biography of my own life and future''Tilda SwintonTrade ReviewA fantasy, impossible but delicious...an exuberance of life and wit * The Times Literary Supplement *

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Book Synopsis''She always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day''On a June morning in 1923, Clarissa Dalloway is preparing for a party and remembering her past. Elsewhere in London, Septimus Smith is suffering from shell-shock and on the brink of madness. Their days interweave and their lives converge as the party reaches its glittering climax. Here, Virginia Woolf perfected the interior monologue and the novel''s lyricism and accessibility have made it one of her most popular works.The Penguin English Library - collectable general readers'' editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century to the end of the Second World War.Trade ReviewOne of the few genuine innovations in the history of the novel—New YorkerOne of her greatest achievements, a book whose afterlife continues to inspire new generations of writers and readers—Guardian

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Book Synopsis''One of the most moving, revolutionary artworks of the twentieth century'' Michael CunninghamClarissa Dalloway, elegant and vivacious, is preparing for a party and remembering those she once loved. In another part of London, Septimus Warren Smith is suffering from shell-shock and on the brink of madness. Smith''s day interweaves with that of Clarissa and her friends, their lives converging as the party reaches its glittering climax. Virginia Woolf''s masterly novel, in which she perfected the interior monologue, brings past, present and future together on one momentous day in June 1923.Edited by Stella McNichol with an Introduction and Notes by Elaine Showalter.Trade 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''One of the greatest elegies in the English language, a book which transcends time'' Margaret DrabbleTo the Lighthouse is at once a vivid impressionistic depiction of a family, the Ramseys, whose annual summer holiday in Scotland falls under the shadow of war, and a meditation on marriage, on parenthood and childhood, on grief, tyranny and bitterness. The novel''s use of stream of consciousness, reminiscence and shifting perspectives gives it an intimate, poetic essence, and at the time of publication in 1927 it represented an utter rejection of all that had gone before.Edited by Stella McNichol with an Introduction and Notes by Hermione Lee

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Book SynopsisTrade Review'I read this book and believed it was a hallucinogenic, interactive biography of my own life and future' -- Tilda SwintonA book that refuses all constraints: historical, fantastical, metaphysical, sociological -- Jeanette Winterson * New Statesman *A fantasy, impossible but delicious ... an exuberance of life and wit * The Times Literary Supplement *

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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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