In this vivid portrait of one day in a woman's life, Clarissa Dalloway is preoccupied with the last-minute details of a 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.
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**
The Waves is an astonishingly beautiful and poetic novel. It begins with six children playing in a garden by the sea and follows their lives as they grow up and experience friendship, love and grief at the death of their beloved friend Percival. Regarded by many as her greatest work, The Waves is also seen as Virginia Woolf's response to the loss of her brother Thoby, who died when he was twenty-six.
Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) was born in London. She became a central figure in The Bloomsbury Group, an informal collective of British writers, artists and thinkers. In 1912 Virginia married Leonard Woolf, a writer and social reformer. She wrote many works of literature which are now considered masterpieces, including Mrs Dalloway , To the Lighthouse , Orlando , and The Waves .>
Rediscover Virginia Woolf's greatest works in beautiful new gift editions from Vintage Classics.
Mr and Mrs Ramsay and their eight children have always holidayed at their summer house in Skye, surrounded by family friends. The novel's opening section teems with the noise, complications, bruised emotions, joys and quiet tragedies of everyday family life that might go on forever. But time passes, bringing with it war and death, and the summer home stands empty until one day, many years later, when the family return to make the long-postponed visit to the lighthouse.
One of the great literary achievements of the twentieth century, To the Lighthouse is at once an intensely autobiographical and universally moving masterpiece.
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY SUSAN HILL The Years follows the lives of the Pargiters, a large middle-class London family, from an uncertain spring in 1880 to a party on a summer evening in the 1930s. We see them each endure and remember heart-break, loss, radical change and stifling conformity, marriage and regret. Written in 1937, this was the most popular of Virginia Woolf's novels during her lifetime, and is a powerful indictment of 'Victorianism' and its values.
Why should one half be free to live, while the other is doomed to watch silently from the sidelines? In this visionary collection, Virginia Woolf leads us on a transformative journey through the liberating powers of the mind. From an exploration of why women were barred from writing and under what conditions they might break free, to the solace derived from haunting London's streets, these essays and stories present Woolf at her most impassioned, rendering the pursuit of liberty one of life's most poetic adventures.
Selected from the books A Room of One's Own, The Waves and Street Haunting and Other Essays by Virginia Woolf VINTAGE MINIS: GREAT MINDS. BIG IDEAS. LITTLE BOOKS.
A series of short books by the world's greatest writers on the experiences that make us human Also in the Vintage Minis series:
Love by Jeanette Winterson Home by Salman Rushdie Language by Xiaolu Guo Race by Toni Morrison
''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 tragic 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 glimpse into their extraordinary lives: from Vita''s travels across the globe, to Virginia''s parties with the Bloomsbury set; from their shared love of dogs and nature, to their grief at the beginning of the Second World War. Discover a relationship that - even a hundred years later - feels radical and relatable. WITH AN ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION FROM ALISON BECHDEL, AUTHOR OF FUN HOME AND CREATOR OF THE BECHDEL TEST.