Virginia Woolf

From the seemingly trivial postponement of a visit to a nearby lighthouse, author Virginia Woolf constructs a remarkable and moving examination of the complex tensions and allegiances of family life, and the conflict between male and female principles. At their second home on the Isle of Skye, the Ramsay family surrounds itself with friends and colleagues. They contend with World War I, family deaths, and hardships both spoken and unspoken. All the...

In A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf imagines that Shakespeare had a sister: a sister equal to Shakespeare in talent, equal in genius, but whose legacy is radically different. This imaginary woman never writes a word and dies by her own hand, her genius unexpressed. But if only she had found the means to create, urges Woolf, she would have reached the same heights as her immortal sibling. In this classic essay, Virginia Woolf takes on the establishment,...

"Virginia Woolf's exuberant 'biography' tells the story of the cross-dressing, sex-changing Orlando who begins life as a young noble in the sixteenth century and moves through numerous historical and geographical worlds to finish as a modern woman writer in the 1920s. The book is in part a happy tribute to the 'life' that her love for Vita Sackville-West had breathed into Virginia Woolf's own day-to-day existence; it is also Woolf's light-hearted...

One of Woolf's most experimental novels, this book presents six characters in monologue against the vivid background of the sea.

In Virginia Woolf's lyrical, inventive last novel, the action takes place on one summer's day at a country house in the heart of England on the eve of World War II. "Love. Hate. Peace. Three emotions made the ply of human life." Between the Acts takes place on a June day in 1939 at Pointz Hall, the Oliver family's country house in the heart of England. In the garden, everyone from the village has gathered to present the annual pageant ??-?? scenes...

The Years is a 1937 novel by Virginia Woolf, the last she published in her lifetime. It traces the history of the genteel Pargiter family from the 1880s to the "present day" of the mid-1930s. Although spanning fifty years, the novel is not epic in scope, focusing instead on the small private details of the characters' lives. Except for the first, each section takes place on a single day of its titular year, and each year is defined by a particular...

Virginia Woolf's intention to publish her best short stories was posthumously carried out in this volume shortly after her death, this collection making available Virginia Woolf's most representative short works of fiction.

From the oval-shaped flower-bed there rose perhaps a hundred stalks spreading into heart-shaped or tongue-shaped leaves half way up and unfurling at the tip red or blue or yellow petals marked with spots of colour raised upon the surface; and from the red, blue or yellow gloom of the throat emerged a straight bar, rough with gold dust and slightly clubbed at the end. The petals were voluminous enough to be stirred by the summer breeze, and when they...

Three Guineas is written as a series of letters in which Virginia Woolf ponders the efficacy of donating to various causes to prevent war and a statement of feminine purpose. Annotated and introduced by feminist literary scholar Jane Marcus, this is an ideal edition for the college classroom and beyond. In reflecting on her situation as the "daughter of an educated man" in 1930s England, Woolf challenges liberal orthodoxies and marshals vast research...

""Where are we to begin? How are we to bring order into this multitudinous chaos and so get the deepest and widest pleasure from what we read?" Published for the first time as a standalone volume, Virginia Woolf's short, impassioned essay, How Should One Read a Book? celebrates the enduring importance of great literature. In this timeless manifesto on the written word, rediscover the joy of reading and the power of a good book to change the world....