Virginia Woolf

HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics. The only advice, indeed, that one person can give another about reading is to take no advice, to follow your own instincts, to use your own reason, to come to your own conclusions. In her second volume of essays, Virginia Woolf delves deeper into the delights of reading. Here, she explores the novels of Thomas Hardy and Daniel Defoe, and recounts the fascinating lives of Christina Rossetti and Mary Wollstonecraft. In ‘ How Should One Read a Book?’ she offers sage advice for the common reader, and sheds light on the lessons and pleasures literature can provide. Published in 1932, The Common Reader: Second Series is a wise and illuminating companion collection to her 1925 First Series. Woolf’s enduring appeal and ideas continue to resonate with readers in the twenty-first century.

Virginia Woolf's fantastical novel about an Elizabethan nobleman who lives for three centuries and transitions into a woman, with a new introduction by Carmen Maria Machado. The long-lived protagonist of Orlando begins as a passionate teenage aristocrat, whose days are spent in rowdy revelry at the colorful Tudor court of Queen Elizabeth and his nights in writing earnest poetry. A favorite of the elderly queen, he falls in love with and is jilted by a wayward Russian princess. Two kings later, now in his thirties, Orlando is sent to serve as ambassador to Constantinople, where he awakens one day to find himself in the body of a woman. The Lady Orlando takes this circumstance in stride. She returns to England, engages in love affairs with both men and women, consorts with the famous poets of each age, finds happiness with a gender-nonconforming husband, and at last achieves publication of her own epic poem in the year 1928. A playful and exuberant romp through history, Orlando is Woolf's most lighthearted and unusual novel. VINTAGE CLASSICS.

New editions of the complete diaries of Virginia Woolf, with introductions by a stellar line-up of contemporary novelists

New editions of the complete diaries of Virginia Woolf, with introductions by a stellar line-up of contemporary novelists

From English writer Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse explores the relationships and inner thoughts of a family on their visits to the Isle of Sky in Scotland. Considered a benchmark of the modernist tradition, the novel makes experimental use of third-person narration and subjective language. Woolf uses the postponement of a family trip to a nearby lighthouse to flush out the characters and the everyday discomforts and joys of existence. The novel explores the themes of time, memory, and the passage of life, as well as the inner conflicts in relationships and families. To the Lighthouse is often ranked as one of the greatest English-language books ever written.

A beautiful edition of the groundbreaking classic novel, with a new introduction by award-winning writer Susan Choi The enduring power of this iconic classic flows from the brilliance of its narrative technique and the impressionistic beauty of its prose. Though the novel turns on the death of its central figure, Mrs. Ramsay, her presence pervades every page in a poetic evocation of loss and memory that is also a celebration of domestic life and its most intimate details. Observed across the years at their vacation house on the Isle of Skye, Mrs. Ramsay and her family seek to recapture meaning from the flux of things and the passage of time. To the Lighthouse enacts a moving allegory of the creative consciousness and its momentary triumphs over fleeting material life.

To the Lighthouse is a book of interrelationships among people. Those who reject To the Lighthouse as inferior to Mrs. Dalloway because it offers no one with half the memorable lucidity of Clarissa Dalloway must fail to perceive its larger and, artistically, more difficult aims. They must fail to notice the richer qualities of mind and imagination and emotion which Mrs. Woolf, perhaps not wanting them, omitted from Mrs. Dalloway the story which opens brilliantly and carries on through a magnificent interlude ends with too little force and expressiveness. At any rate the rest of the book has its excellencies . . . Mrs. Woolf makes use of her remarkable method of characterization, a method not based on observation or personal experience, but purely synthetic, purely creational Neither Clarissa nor Mrs. Ramsay has anything autobiographical about her. It is, I think, in the superb interlude called Time Passes that Mrs. Woolf reaches the most impressive height of the book . . . It is inferior to Mrs. Dalloway in the degree to which its aims are achieved; it is superior in the magnitude of the aims themselves

To the Lighthouse is a book of interrelationships among people. Those who reject To the Lighthouse as inferior to Mrs. Dalloway because it offers no one with half the memorable lucidity of Clarissa Dalloway must fail to perceive its larger and, artistically, more difficult aims. They must fail to notice the richer qualities of mind and imagination and emotion which Mrs. Woolf, perhaps not wanting them, omitted from Mrs. Dalloway the story which opens brilliantly and carries on through a magnificent interlude ends with too little force and expressiveness. At any rate the rest of the book has its excellencies . . . Mrs. Woolf makes use of her remarkable method of characterization, a method not based on observation or personal experience, but purely synthetic, purely creational Neither Clarissa nor Mrs. Ramsay has anything autobiographical about her. It is, I think, in the superb interlude called Time Passes that Mrs. Woolf reaches the most impressive height of the book . . . It is inferior to Mrs. Dalloway in the degree to which its aims are achieved; it is superior in the magnitude of the aims themselves

A far cry from her wistful and introspective fiction, Woolf's essays on literature read as lively, droll, and conversational. These essays focus on famous literary figures as well as the craft of fiction; written in confident but inviting prose designed specifically for what Woolf called the common reader, they interweave biography, wit, social commentary, and literary analysis. Woolf typically seems disinterested in offering definitive arguments or reaching grand conclusions. She instead concerns herself with viewing a given writer or topic from several interpretive angles so that she might reveal as much about her subject as she can in a single essay, to a broad audience consisting of non-academic readers. Favorite essays included "Notes on an Elizabethan Play," "Modern Fiction," "Outlines," and "How it Strikes a Contemporary." (Michael)

Adeline Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) was an English writer. She is widely hailed as being among the most influential modernist authors of the 20th century and a pioneer of stream of consciousness narration. Woolf was a central figure in the feminist criticism movement of the 1970s, her works having inspired countless women to take up the cause. She suffered numerous nervous breakdowns during her life primarily as a result of the deaths of family members, and it is now believed that she may have suffered from bipolar disorder. In 1941, Woolf drowned herself in the River Ouse at Lewes, aged 59. This book contains volume II of her collected works, her famous novels "Between the Acts", "Mrs. Dalloway", and "Orlando". Her last novel, "Between the Acts" is set just before the onset of World War II and describes a play at an English Village festival. The chief portion of the book is written in verse, representing one of Woolf's most lyrical works. First published in 1925, "Mrs Dalloway" is a novel by Virginia Woolf that chronicles a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, an English aristocrat living after the Great War. Amongst her most famous works, "Mrs Dalloway" deals with such themes as mental illness, existentialism, feminism, and bisexuality. "Orlando" is another of Woolf's more popular novels and revolves around a transgender poet who meets important literary figures from throughout history. This novel has been hugely influential stylistically and is still an important moment in literary history and particularly in women's writing and gender studies. Read & Co. Classics is proudly publishing this brand new collection of classic novels now complete with a specially-commissioned biography of the author.