Follow English aristocrat, Clarissa Dalloway, in a single day of post-Great War life as she battles haunting recollections of the past. From the pioneer of stream-of-consciousness novels, Mrs. Dalloway is one of Virginia Woolf's most famous works.
Originally published in 1925, Virginia Woolf's fourth novel, Mrs. Dalloway, is a short lyrical work that entwines the stories of three characters who are struggling to cope with life after World War I. Written in her trademark stream of consciousness, Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway is largely plotless and examines characters in a dreamlike style. Taking place over the course of a single day, the novel is set in London and explores the perspectives of three different characters living in the city. The raw intimate feelings of Clarissa Dalloway are exposed, alongside that of her husband, Richard Dalloway, a Conservative MP, and Septimus Warren Smith, a war veteran who is suffering from PTSD.
Embedded with themes of existentialism, feminism, and mental illness, the book largely takes place in Clarissa's memories. Her one talent is organising events, but while she busies herself in the planning of her latest party, her mind slips into distant recollections and Woolf allows her reader to delve into the past.
Read & Co. Classics has proudly republished this much-loved Virginia Woolf novel in a new edition, complete with a specially commissioned author biography. Not to be missed by collectors of Woolf's work, Mrs. Dalloway is a classic of English literature that would be the perfect addition to any bookshelf.
Industry Reviews
""The book is a satire, it encloses a raw and jagged tragedy, it flays a sentimentalist and exposes a professional incapacity as it gathers momentum for the evanescent thrill of the party which is its climax. But all these things are accomplished in an atmosphere of sunlit retrospect, prosperous and intelligent enjoyment of the moment, laughter, and the clear beauty of an ordered household, and inherited culture, a gay, considerate civilisation; and they combine a coalesce in a whole the completed effect of which is the most finished Mrs. Woolf's individual and careful art has yet so far achieved."" - N.G. Royde Smith, 1926
""It is possible to admire Mrs. Woolf because she has the skill to arrange her material in some unusual patter of time and space, but if she gave us instead a perfectly simple sequence of impressions the language would still remain and that quality of imagination which makes her... the most delightful of living novelists."" - A. Blanco White, 1927