Mrs. Dalloway is the portrait of a single day in a woman's life. Mrs. Clarissa Dalloway is preoccupied with the last-minute details of party preparation--fresh flower shopping, new dress buying, and festive room decorating. As she readies her house for friends and neighbors, memories flood her mind, and she is awash in the sensations of faraway times. Clarissa blissfully relives her carefree youth and early loves, stoically witnesses the approach and retreat of war's grinding realities, carefully reexamines the solid reasons behind her practical marriage, and hesitantly looks ahead to the unfamiliar work of growing old. In this revelatory and experimental novel, the past, the present, and visions of the future melt together in each and every moment. Heralded as Virginia Woolf's greatest work of fiction, Mrs. Dalloway is not only a detailed rendering of a vivid human life, it is the outline on paper of human consciousness.
With a Foreword by Maureen Howard
Editorial Reviews
"Hers is indisputably among the most sensitive of the minds and imaginations felicitously experimenting with the English novel." --Jorge Luis Borges
"Virginia Woolf is one of the few writers who changed life for all of us. Her combination of intellectual courage and painful emotional sensitivity created a new way of perceiving and living in the world." --Margaret Drabble
About the Author
Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) was one of the major literary figures of the twentieth century. An admired literary critic, she authored many essays, letters, journals, and short stories in addition to her groundbreaking novels.
Maureen Howard is the author of Natural History, Bridgeport Bus, and Facts of Life.
