Showing results for "Virginia Woolf" in Literature & Fiction

Fantasy, love and an exuberant celebration of English life and literature, Orlando is a uniquely entertaining story. Originally conceived by Virginia Woolf as a playful tribute to the family of her friend and lover, Vita Sackville-West, Orlando's central character, a fictional embodiment of Sackville-West, changes sex from a man to a woman and lives throughout the centuries, whilst meeting historical figures of English literature.

To the Lighthouse is a landmark work of English fiction. Virginia Woolf explores perception and meaning in some of the most beautiful prose ever written, minutely detailing the characters thoughts and impressions. This unabridged version is read by Juliet Stevenson.

It is a June day in London in 1923, and the lovely Clarissa Dalloway is having a party. Whom will she see? Her friend Peter, back from India, who has never really stopped loving her? What about Sally, with whom Clarissa had her life’s happiest moment? Meanwhile, the shell-shocked Septimus Smith is struggling with his life on the same London day.

A treasure chest of timeless short stories by some of the world's greatest authors.

Brought to you by Penguin. This Penguin Classic is performed by Natalie Dormer, best known for her standout role as Queen Margaery in Game of Thrones, as well as her roles in The Hunger Games and Captain America: The First Avenger. A Room of One's Own, based on a lecture given at Girton College...

On a June morning in 1923, Clarissa Dalloway is preparing for a party and remembering her past. Elsewhere in London, Septimus Smith is suffering from shell-shock and on the brink of madness. Their days interweave and their lives converge as the party reaches its glittering climax. Here, Virginia Woolf perfected the interior monologue and the novel's lyricism and accessibility have made it one of her most popular works.

What if the everyday world hides whispers of mystery, fleeting moments of wonder, and shadows you almost don’t notice? Step into the hauntingly beautiful and lyrical world of A Haunted House and Other Short Stories—a mesmerizing collection of tales that reveal the hidden currents of life, memory, and imagination. Each story offers a glimpse into Woolf’s keen observations of human emotion: from the ghostly reflections in "A Haunted House" to the fleeting impressions and fragmented lives in "Monday or Tuesday", where the ordinary becomes quietly extraordinary.

The principal theme of this ambitious book is time, threading together three generations of the Pargiter family. The story begins on a day in 1880 in the household of Colonel Abel Pargiter, his dying wife, and their seven children, and it ends in the 1930s with a brilliantly depicted party at which the Pargiters, young and old, pass in review. Important events - births, deaths, marriages, wars - occur in the wings; it is the commonplace moments that are captured here in a sequence of perfectly drawn scenes.

Six children - Bernard, Susan, Rhoda, Neville, Jinny and Louis - meet in a garden close to the sea, their voices sounding over the constant echo of the waves that roll back and forth from the shore. The book follows them as they develop from childhood to maturity and follow different passions and ambitions; their voices are interspersed with interludes from the timeless and unifying chorus of nature.

This is the remarkable story of a day in the life of one woman, Clarissa Dalloway, the people in her circle, and those touching upon her friends and acquaintances.

Jacob’s Room is Virginia Woolf’s own modernist manifesto. Jacob Flanders is a mere point of contact between a crowd of people, appearing and disappearing in a tableau in which all is flux, without certainty and without a controlling viewpoint. But it seems that the author could not maintain this rigorous impersonality, and the radical technique breaks down, so that we finally see Jacob as a person, just as his world is blown apart.

Una habitación propia (A Room of One’s Own) es un ensayo fundamental de Virginia Woolf, publicado en 1929. En este texto, la autora reflexiona sobre el papel de las mujeres en la literatura y en la sociedad de su tiempo. A partir de unas conferencias que ofreció en 1928, Woolf plantea que, para que una mujer pueda escribir y desarrollar todo su potencial creativo, necesita independencia económica y un espacio propio, libre de interrupciones.

In this series we look at short stories from many of our most accomplished writers. Miniature masterpieces with a lot to say. In this volume we examine some of the short stories of Virginia Woolf. Adeline Virginia Woolf was born in 1882 and was to become a founder of modernist writing. Her background is filled with elements of tragedy that she somehow overcame to become a revered writer. Her mother died when she was 13, her half sister Stella two years later and with that came her first of several nervous breakdowns.

As his tale begins, Orlando is a passionate young nobleman whose days are spent in rowdy revelry, filled with the colourful delights of Queen Elizabeth's court. By the close, he will have transformed into a modern, thirty-six-year-old woman and three centuries will have passed. Orlando will not only witness the making of history from its edge, but will find that his unique position as a woman who knows what it is to be a man will give him insight into matters of the heart.

Based on two lectures Woolf delivered at the University of Cambridge, A Room of One’s Own compellingly argues for women’s intellectual freedom and the importance of financial independence. It is still considered one of the most powerful pieces of feminist writing to this day. Published in 1929, A Room of One’s Own asserts a simple message: in order for women to reach their full creative potential, they must have their own money and space with which to do it with.

For years now the Ramsays have spent every summer in their holiday home in Scotland, and they expect these summers will go on forever; but as the First World War looms, the integrity of family and society will be fatally challenged. The novel's use of stream of consciousness, reminiscence and shifting perspectives gives it an intimate, poetic essence, and at the time of publication in 1927 it represented an utter rejection of Victorian and Edwardian literary values.

This is Virginia Woolf’s first collection of essays, published in 1925. In them, she attempts to see literature from the point of view of the ‘common reader’ - someone whom she, with Dr Johnson, distinguished from the critic and the scholar. She read, and wrote, as an outsider: a woman set to school in her father’s library, denied the educational privileges of her male siblings - and with no fixed view of what constitutes ‘English literature’. What she produced is an eccentric and unofficial literary and social history from the 14th to the 20th centuries.

Meet Orlando: a young nobleman in Elizabethan England, poet, lover, adventurer—and, after a transformational sleep, a woman. Spanning over 300 years of British history, Orlando bends the rules of time, gender, and narrative as its protagonist navigates shifting societies, identities, and expectations, all while seeking something elusive: the truth of the self. Playful, profound, and radically ahead of its time, Virginia Woolf's groundbreaking novel is part love letter, part satire, and part meditation on the fluid nature of existence.

Championing the everyday, ‘common’ reader, Woolf emphasises the importance of reading for curiosity and interest, as opposed to academic analysis. In a delightfully conversational tone and with personal flair, Woolf explores the works of classical and contemporary authors alike; from Chaucer and Austen to Defoe and Montaigne. Effortlessly blending biography, criticism and philosophy, these brilliantly written essays showcase Woolf’s passion for literature, and particularly its ability to shape life as we know it.

Published in 1928, Orlando is a fictional biography that spans several centuries and follows the protagonist, Orlando, an Elizabethan nobleman who undergoes a mysterious gender transformation. The novel explores themes of gender identity, fluidity and the constraints imposed by societal norms. It challenges traditional notions of gender roles and raises questions about the nature of identity and the passage of time.