Helen and Ridley Ambrose are preparing to set off for an exotic resort off the coast of South America on the Euphrosyne, a ship belonging to Helen's brother-in-law Willoughby Vinacre. Also travelling with them is his daughter Rachel - a quiet, unremarkable girl raised in the London suburbs by her spinster aunts after the death of her mother. Along the way other people join on board, such as the upper-class Clarissa and Richard Dalloway and the scholar William Pepper. As Rachel interacts with the other passengers, intrigued by their different personalities, it becomes clear that what started for her as a mere sea voyage is turning into a journey of self-discovery and a rite of passage that will change her for ever, transforming her into a fully fledged woman.
Published in 1915 after a long period of gestation and several drafts, The Voyage Out marks Virginia Woolf's debut as a novelist. Perhaps the most conventional and accessible of her major works, it is essential both for understanding the early development of her style and for the light it sheds into her own biography and artistic vision.
About the Author
Virginia Woolf was born in London in 1882. After her father's 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 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). Between 1925 and 1931 Virginia Woolf produced what are now regarded as her finest masterpieces, from Mrs Dalloway (1925) to The Waves (1931).
She also maintained an astonishing output of literary criticism, short fiction, journalism and biography. On 28 March 1941, a few months before the publication of her final novel, Between the Acts, Virginia Woolf committed suicide.