‘One of the most moving, revolutionary artworks of the twentieth century’ Michael Cunningham. Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway — now beautifully repackaged as part of the Penguin Essentials range — traces the events of a single June day in 1923, rendered impression by impression, minute by minute, until two very different lives collide in ways neither character could have foreseen. Clarissa Dalloway, the polished wife of a Member of Parliament, moves through London buying flowers and preparing for the party she will host that evening. As she walks, memory overtakes her: the friends of her youth, her romance with Peter Walsh — lately returned from India — and the girl she was when her own daughter Elizabeth’s age. Across the city, Septimus Smith is being consumed by shell shock, his grip on reality loosening by the hour. As evening approaches, his world and Clarissa’s meet in unexpected and unforgettable ways. ‘Woolf is Modern. She feels close to us.’ Jeanette Winterson. Born in 1882, Virginia Woolf was the daughter of editor and critic Leslie Stephen, and suffered a traumatic adolescence following the deaths of her mother in 1895 and her step-sister Stella in 1897 — losses that left her vulnerable to breakdowns throughout her life. With her sister, the painter Vanessa Bell, she became part of the circle later known as the Bloomsbury Group, which included Lytton Strachey and Roger Fry. She met Leonard Woolf among them, married him in 1912, and together they founded the Hogarth Press in 1917. Her major novels include The Voyage Out (1915), the historical fantasy Orlando (1928) — written for Vita Sackville-West — the intensely poetic The Waves (1931), and Between the Acts (1941). In 1941, fearing the onset of another breakdown, Woolf drowned herself.
ISBN 13: 9780241956793
Author: Virginia Woolf
