As Mrs Dalloway works on the preparations for a dinner party, her thoughts throughout the day wander from memories of the past to interrogations about the present and lead her to assess the choices she has made in life and love. Her monologue interweaves with the account of the distress, on that same day, of the shell-shocked veteran Septimus Warren Smith, whose trauma and hallucinations end in tragedy, as the links between the two characters unfold.
One of Virginia Woolf''s most famous novels, Mrs Dalloway is a triumph of experimentation, a cornerstone of Modernism and a subtle examination of love, freedom, mental illness and the female condition in society.>
As Katherine Hilbery is helping her mother write the biography of her grandfather, a famous man of letters buried in Poets'' Corner, she becomes engaged to William Rodney, a budding writer with an exaggerated opinion of his own poetical talent. Meanwhile, the suffragette Mary Datchet is in love with Ralph Denham, a lawyer and journalist from a lowly background, who in turn feels more attracted to Katherine. As the stories and the romantic interests of these four young people evolve and intertwine, a picture emerges of a society still obsessed with class and hung up on the social mores of the Victorian era.
By far the most accessible and traditional of all Virginia Woolf''s novels, Night and Day, is a powerful evocation of a fast-changing world and, though conventional in style, addresses many of the author''s recurring preoccupations, such as the role of women in society and the difficulties in reconciling love and marriage.>
Based on lectures given at Cambridge colleges and first published by the Hogarth Press in 1929, A Room of One''s Own is an extended essay about the predicament of female writers and a stirring call for autonomy and recognition. As well as settling scores with reactionary critics and laying the foundations of a history of women''s literature, the text is also a triumph of imagination, with a celebrated passage envisaging the fate of a fictional sister of Shakespeare''s.
A seminal, widely studied feminist polemic that touches on both literature and politics, A Room of One''s Own is essential reading for those wishing to understand the progress that has been made in women''s rights and the struggles that still lie ahead.>