Mrs Dalloway, the society hostess Clarissa, is giving a party and her thoughts on that one day, and the interior monologues of others with interwoven lives reveal the characters of the central protagonists. To the Lighthouse is the most autobiographical of Virginia Woolf's novels. Based on her early experiences, it touches on childhood and children's perceptions and desires. It is at its most trenchant when exploring adult relationships and the changing class-structure in the period spanning the Great War. Virginia Woolf's Orlando, 'the longest and most charming love letter in literature,' playfully constructs the figure of Orlando as the fictional embodiment of Woolf's close friend and lover, Vita Sackville-West. 'I am writing to a rhythm and not to a plot', said Woolf of The Waves. Regarded as one of her greatest and most original works, it conveys the rhythms of life in synchrony with the cycle of nature and the passage of time. In these, as in A Room of One's Own, Between the Acts, Three Guineas,The Years and Jacob's Room, Virginia Woolf displays her genuine humanity and concern for the experiences that enrich and stultify existence. Her delicate artistry and lyrical prose have established her as a writer of sensitivity and profound talent.

Hide more