From the seemingly trivial postponement of a visit to a nearby lighthouse, author Virginia Woolf constructs a remarkable and moving examination of the complex tensions and allegiances of family life, and the conflict between male and female principles. At their second home on the Isle of Skye, the Ramsay family surrounds itself with friends and colleagues. They contend with World War I, family deaths, and hardships both spoken and unspoken. All the...

In A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf imagines that Shakespeare had a sister: a sister equal to Shakespeare in talent, equal in genius, but whose legacy is radically different. This imaginary woman never writes a word and dies by her own hand, her genius unexpressed. But if only she had found the means to create, urges Woolf, she would have reached the same heights as her immortal sibling. In this classic essay, Virginia Woolf takes on the establishment,...

One of Woolf's most experimental novels, this book presents six characters in monologue against the vivid background of the sea.

Jacob Flanders, a sensitive young man raised in Edwardian England, discovers as an adult that his life is lacking, but his search for fulfillment is sidetracked by the outbreak of World War I.

Did feminism really detract from her work? Was Virginia Woolf actually a poet writing in novel form? Did her mental illness affect her writing? How much of her technique was her own and how much did she borrow from Joyce and Proust? Contributors discuss these and other questions in an effort to interpret the work of this controversial and original author. -- From publisher's description.