Search results for ""author virginia woolf""

'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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As the Pargiters, a middle-class English family, move from the oppressive confines of the Victorian home of the 1880s to the `present day' of the 1930s, they are weighed down by the pressures of war, the social strictures of patriarchy, capitalism and Empire, and the rise of Fascism. Engaging with a painful struggle between utopian hopefulness and crippled with despair, the novel is a savage indictment of Virginia Woolf's society, but its bitter sadness is relieved by the longing for some better way of life, where `freedom and justice' might really be possible. This is Virginia Woolf's longest novel, and the one she found the most difficult to write. The most popular of all her writings during her lifetime, it can now be re-read as the most challengingly political, even revolutionary, of all her books. 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.

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'The ponderous woman looked through the pattern of falling words at the flowers standing cool, firm, and upright in the earth, with a curious expression. . .So heavy the woman came to a standstill opposite the oval shaped flowerbed, and ceased even to pretend to listen to what the other woman was saying.' Virginia Woolf's short fiction has long been acknowledged as the place where she tried out some of her more experimental techniques before adopting and adapting them for use in her novel-length works. While this is certainly true, it is also the case that these short pieces are now increasingly being recognized as important works of art in their own right, rather than simply flights of experimental fancy awaiting their full actualization in the novel form. This new edition edited by Bryony Randall emphasises the startling variety in Woolf's experimentation during the most productive period of short fiction writing in Woolf's life, the late 1910s through to the end of the 1920s. It draws readers' attention to the deep political engagements evident across the range of her work and on the recent burgeoning of work in modernist print culture to set out the importance of the material context of these works' initial publication and reception.

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WITH INTRODUCTIONS BY FRANCES SPALDING AND ERICA WAGNERA party of English people board the Euphrosyne bound for South America. Among them is Rachel Vinrace, young, innocent and wholly ignorant of the world of politics and society. She is a free spirit, half-caught, momentarily and passionately, by Terence Hewet, an aspiring writer. But their engagement is to end abruptly, not in marriage but in tragedy. Published in 1915, The Voyage Out was Virginia Woolf's first novel.

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A must-have new edition of Virginia Woolf's masterpiece, featuring a cover illustrated by Alison Bechdel, The New York Times bestselling author of Fun Home, and a new foreword by Patricia LockwoodTo 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.

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With an Introduction and Notes by Merry M. Pawlowski, Professor and Chair, Department of English, California State University,Bakersfield. Virginia Woolf's singular technique in Mrs Dalloway heralds a break with the traditional novel form and reflects a genuine humanity and a concern with the experiences that both enrich and stultify existence. Society hostess, Clarissa Dalloway is giving a party. Her thoughts and sensations on that one day, and the interior monologues of others whose lives are interwoven with hers gradually reveal the characters of the central protagonists. Clarissa's life is touched by tragedy as the events in her day run parallel to those of Septimus Warren Smith, whose madness escalates as his life draws toward inevitable suicide.

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This volume brings together Virginia Woolf’s last two novels, The Years (1937) which traces the lives of members of a dispersed middle-class family between 1880 and 1937, and Between the Acts (1941), an account of a village pageant in the summer preceding the Second World War which successfully interweaves comedy, satire and disturbing observation. Rewriting the traditional family saga and the pageant, these unsettling novels provide extraordinary critiques of Englishness and English identity while pursuing compelling existentialist and psychological themes such as the nature of time, memory, personal relationships and sexual desire. Their tightly constructed narratives enable the reader to experience the fragmented lives of their characters and the difficulties that they have in communicating with each other and even understanding themselves. Read together, these novels illuminate each other in ways that will engage both the student and the general reader.

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Virginia Woolf's most unusual and fantastic creation, a funny, exuberant tale that examines the very nature of sexuality. WITH INTRODUCTIONS BY PETER ACKROYD AND MARGARET REYNOLDS As his tale begins, Orlando is a passionate young nobleman whose days are spent in rowdy revelry, filled with the colourful delights of Queen Elizabeth's court. By the close, he will have transformed into a modern, thirty-six-year-old woman and three centuries will have passed. Orlando will not only witness the making of history from its edge, but will find that his unique position as a woman who knows what it is to be a man will give him insight into matters of the heart. The Vintage Classics Virginia Woolf series has been curated by Jeanette Winterson and Margaret Reynolds, and the texts used are based on the original Hogarth Press editions published by Leonard and Virginia Woolf. **One of the BBC’s 100 Novels That Shaped Our World**

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'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.

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A pioneering work of modernist fiction, using her unique stream-of-consciousness technique to explore the inner lives of her characters, Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse is widely regarded as one of the greatest artistic achievements of the twentieth century. This Penguin Classics edition is edited by Stella McNichol, with an introduction and notes by Hermione Lee.To the Lighthouse is at once a vivid impressionistic depiction of a family holiday, and a meditation on marriage, on parenthood and childhood, on grief, tyranny and bitterness. For years now the Ramsays have spent every summer in their holiday home in Scotland, and they expect these summers will go on forever; but as the First World War looms, the integrity of family and society will be fatally challenged. With a psychologically introspective mode, the use of memory, reminiscence and shifting perspectives gives the novel an intimate, poetic essence, and at the time of publication in 1927 it represented an utter rejection of Victorian and Edwardian literary values. Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) is regarded as a major 20th century author and essayist, a key figure in literary history as a feminist and modernist, and the centre of 'The Bloomsbury Group', an informal collective of artists and writers that exerted a powerful influence over early twentieth-century British culture. Between 1925 and 1931 Virginia Woolf produced what are now regarded as her finest masterpieces, from Mrs Dalloway (1925) to the poetic and highly experimental novel The Waves (1931). She also maintained an astonishing output of literary criticism, short fiction, journalism and biography, including the playfully subversive Orlando (1928) and A Room of One's Own (1929) a passionate feminist essay.If you enjoyed To the Lighthouse, you might like James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, also available in Penguin Classics.'Bears endless re-reading ... the sea encircles the story in a brilliant ebb and flow'Rachel Billington

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Spectacular gardens are viewed from the perspective of a snail in Virginia Woolf's 'Kew Gardens' and from that of a sheltered teenage girl in Katherine Mansfield's 'The Garden Party'. The family of Doris Lessing's 'Flavours of Exile' haul succulent vegetables and fruits from the rich African soil, and Colette in 'Bygone Spring' luxuriates in extravagantly blooming flowers. Children discover their own peculiar paradises in Sandra Cisneros's 'The Monkey Garden' and Italo Calvino's 'The Enchanted Garden', while adult gardeners find things that move and haunt them in William Maxwell's 'The French Scarecrow' and Jamaica Kincaid's 'The Garden I Have in Mind'. Gardens of the mind round out the anthology: the beautiful but fatal garden of Nathaniel Hawthorne's 'Rappaccini's Daughter', the crystal buds of J. G. Ballard's 'The Garden of Time', ravenous orchids in John Collier's 'Green Thoughts', and Aoko Matsuda's 'Planting', in which a young woman plants each day whatever she has been given - roses and violets, buttons and broken cups, love and fear and sorrow. An entrancing book for everyone who loves gardens and the beauty of nature.

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WITH INTRODUCTIONS BY VALENTINE CUNNINGHAM AND CAROL ANN DUFFYIn this vivid portrait of one day in a woman's life, Clarissa Dalloway is preoccupied with the last-minute details of party she is to give that evening. As she readies her house she is flooded with memories and re-examines the choices she has made over the course of her life.

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At the age of 48, when she moved to the Isle of Wight, Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879) was given a camera by her daughter: "It might amuse you, Mother, to try to photograph during your solitude at Freshwater." The gift was to begin Cameron’s short but prolific career as one of photography’s first great artists. "From the first moment I handled my lens with a tender ardour, and it has become to me as a living thing, with voice and memory and creative vigour." The modern interest in Cameron’s photography began with the pioneering 1926 book by her great-niece Virginia Woolf and art critic Roger Fry. Their essays and the original plates are reprinted here, together with Cameron’s own account of her life in photography, Annals of My Glass House, her only surviving poem, On a Portrait, and an introduction by Tristram Powell. Thirty-nine plates and other illustrations have been added, including many of Cameron’s most famous images.

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The natural world as seen through the eyes of British artists including Eric Ravilious, Clare Leighton, and John Piper Since its publication in 1789, Gilbert White’s Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne has inspired generations of artists, writers and naturalists. From Thomas Bewick to Eric Ravilious and Clare Leighton, many artists’ depictions of animals, birds and wildlife have illustrated White’s celebrated book, together providing a microcosm of natural history illustration from the eighteenth century until today. In Drawn to Nature, Simon Martin has gathered joyful and beautiful images of the extraordinary array of wildlife described by White, providing an insight into the continuing appeal and relevance of the Natural History. This fascinating account takes us from some of the earliest published depictions of birds and animals, to pioneering nature photography, the revival of wood-engraving in the 1920s and 30s, and responses to White’s message about the natural world by contemporary illustrators such as Angie Lewin and Emily Sutton. The book also includes an introduction to the life of Gilbert White by Sir David Attenborough, an essay by Virginia Woolf, poems by modern and contemporary poets, and a jacket design by Mark Hearld. Distributed for Pallant House Gallery

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Delve into a legendary literary love affair'I am reduced to a thing that wants Virginia. I composed a beautiful letter to you in the sleepless nightmare hours of the night, and it has all gone. I just miss you...'At a dinner party in 1922, Virginia Woolf met the renowned author, aristocrat - and sapphist - Vita Sackville-West. Virginia wrote in her diary that she didn't think much of Vita's conversation, but she did think very highly of her legs. It was to be the start of almost twenty years of flirtation, friendship, and literary collaboration. Their correspondence ended only with Virginia's death in 1941.Intimate and playful, these selected letters and diary entries allow us to hear these women's constantly changing feelings for each other in their own words. Eavesdrop on the affair that inspired Virginia to write her most fantastical novel, Orlando, and discover a relationship that - even a hundred years later - feels radical and relatable.WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION FROM ALISON BECHDEL, AUTHOR OF FUN HOME AND CREATOR OF THE BECHDEL TEST.

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EDITED BY JOANNE TRAUTMANN BANKS, WITH A PREFACE BY HERMIONE LEEThe finest and most enjoyable of Virginia Woolf's letters are brought together in a single volume. It is a marvellous collection - spontaneous, witty, often flirtatious and powerfully moving. Whether bemoaning some domestic travail, commenting publicly on the state of the nation, or discussing cultural, artistic or personal concerns, Virginia Woolf is one of the great correspondents. This volume displays not only Woolf's courage and brilliance, her generosity and love of gossip, but also her genius for close and enduring friendship.

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With an Introduction and Notes by Dr Nicola Bradbury, University of Reading. This simple and haunting story captures the transcience of life and its surrounding emotions. To the Lighthouse is the most autobiographical of Virginia Woolf's novels. It is based on her own early experiences, and while it touches on childhood and children's perceptions and desires, it is at its most trenchant when exploring adult relationships, marriage and the changing class-structure in the period spanning the Great War.

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A Room of One’s Own (1929) has become a classic feminist essay and perhaps Virginia Woolf’s best known work; The Voyage Out (1915) is highly significant as her first novel. Both focus on the place of women within the power structures of modern society. The essay lays bare the woman artist’s struggle for a voice, since throughout history she has been denied the social and economic independence assumed by men. Woolf’s prescription is clear: if a woman is to find creative expression equal to a man’s, she must have an independent income, and a room of her own. This is both an acute analysis and a spirited rallying cry; it remains surprisingly resonant and relevant in the 21st century. The novel explores these issues more personally, through the character of Rachel Vinrace, a young woman whose ‘voyage out’ to South America opens up powerful encounters with her fellow-travellers, men and women. As she begins to understand her place in the world, she finds the happiness of love, but also sees its brute power. Woolf has a sharp eye for the comedy of English manners in a foreign milieu; but the final undertow of the novel is tragic as, in some of her finest writing, she calls up the essential isolation of the human spirit.

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With an Introduction and Notes by Merry M. Pawlowski, Professor and Chair, Department of English, California State University, Bakersfield. Virginia Woolf's Orlando 'The longest and most charming love letter in literature', playfully constructs the figure of Orlando as the fictional embodiment of Woolf's close friend and lover, Vita Sackville-West. Spanning three centuries, the novel opens as Orlando, a young nobleman in Elizabeth's England, awaits a visit from the Queen and traces his experience with first love as England under James I lies locked in the embrace of the Great Frost. At the midpoint of the novel, Orlando, now an ambassador in Costantinople, awakes to find that he is a woman, and the novel indulges in farce and irony to consider the roles of women in the 18th and 19th centuries. As the novel ends in 1928, a year consonant with full suffrage for women. Orlando, now a wife and mother, stands poised at the brink of a future that holds new hope and promise for women.

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Feminism is back in a big way. From Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Malala Yousafzai to Gloria Steinem and Michelle Obama, powerful, trailblazing women have captured the spotlight and captivated a whole new generation. Feminist Icon Cross-Stitch celebrates these women and their achievements with capsule biographies and stylish, graphic portraits to stitch. With an introduction on the rise of modern feminism, and instructions on the basics of cross-stitch, this book features patterns for embroidering twenty iconic women -- like suffragette Susan B. Anthony, author Virginia Woolf, political icon Hillary Rodham Clinton, and pop superstar Beyoncé -- and ten empowering feminist sayings. This charming package gives crafters of all skill levels everything they need to begin creating hip, feminist works of art.

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Speaking of the emergence of modernism, author Virginia Woolf famously said: "On or about December 1910, human character changed." But was the shift to modernism really so revolutionary? J. M. Mancini argues that it was not. She proposes that the origins of the movement can in fact be traced well into the nineteenth century. Several cultural developments after the Civil War gradually set the stage for modernism, Mancini contends. New mass art media appeared on the scene, as did a national network of museums and groundbreaking initiatives in art education.These new institutions provided support for future modernists and models for the creators of the avant-garde. Simultaneously, art critics began to embrace abstraction after the Civil War, both for aesthetic reasons and to shore up their own nascent profession. Modernism was thus linked, Mancini argues, to the emergence of cultural hierarchy. A work of impeccable scholarship and unusual breadth, the book challenges some of the basic ideas about both the origins of twentieth-century modernism and the character of Gilded-Age culture. It will appeal not only to art historians but also to scholars in American history and American studies.

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Behind every great woman… is another great woman. Here, the extraordinary achievements, relationships and secret histories of 84 pioneering women are revealed in inspirational stories which together show the indomitable strength of womankind. From ground-breaking scientist Marie Curie to political activist Malala Yousafzai, from feminist author Virginia Woolf to the game-changing Billie Jean King; Connected Women creates a gigantic web of womanhood which celebrates the relationships between the world’s most inspirational and influential women. Threading tales from across the globe and throughout history, the lives of innovative aviatrixes, gun-toting revolutionaries and women with incomparable intellects are revealed. Each woman is connected to the next, discovering the women behind the scenes; those who didn’t get the credit for scientific discoveries, sporting achievements or acts of bravery when they were alive. Some names will be familiar, some might not, but all are equally important. With compelling story-telling and beautifully illustrated portraits, Connected Women is bold and engaging with a unique purpose: to uncover the links between 84 pioneering women. Featuring Michelle Obama, Gala Dalí, Emma Watson, Nina Simone, Frida Kahlo, Coco Chanel, Greta Garbo, Eleanor Roosevelt, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and many more pioneering women who have shaped the world we live in today.

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From Camera Lens to Critical Lens: A Collection of Best Essays on Film Adaptation, edited by Rebecca Housel, takes the reader through films by directors like Alfred Hitchcock to examining the relevance of twenty-first century British politics with current film; from screenwriter Charlie Kaufman to author Virginia Woolf; and, examining new theoretical approaches to international film adaptations from China, Japan, Britain, Canada, and France, as well as films like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Daughters of the Dust. The collection is derived from the Popular Culture Association (PCA) film-adaptation-area conference papers, researched and written by fourteen diverse scholars from all over the world, who gathered together in San Diego, California in April 2005 to further their research by presenting their ideas on film adaptation, now in full text versions within this exciting new volume. Accessible, engaging and informative, any audience may read and enjoy this edited collection on film adaptation. The volume would also work well for pedagogical purposes, both in and out of the classroom. Such a volume may easily be used in courses for English, film studies, gender studies, women’s studies, fine art, psychology, political science, history, and more. A work of diverse international voices, this collection represents the very best on film adaptation today.

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