Mrs Dalloway: Broadview Edition (Broadview Editions) - Softcover

Virginia Woolf

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1551117231 ISBN 13: 9781551117232

Publisher: Broadview Press, 2012

Synopsis

Mrs. Dalloway takes place on one day in the middle of June 1923. Its plot is seemingly thin: a middle-aged society hostess is having a party; she hopes the Prime Minister will attend; she reconnects with old friends from her youth. From these slimmest of premises a whole world unfolds. Of all of Virginia Woolf's novels, it is Mrs. Dalloway that appears to speak most intimately to our own time.

Selected contemporary reviews, both positive and negative, are included in the appendices of this edition, as are materials on the literary, political, medical, and educational contexts of the novel.

About this title

Review

Clarissa Dalloway is civilised--without the ostentation of a socialite, but with enough distinction to attract them to her parties. She finds excess offensive, but surrounds herself with the highest quality and has an abhorrence for anything ugly or awkward. Mrs. Dalloway is as much a character study as it is a commentary on the ills and benefits society gleans from class. Through Virginia Woolf, we spend a day with Clarissa as she interacts with servants, her children, her husband, and even an ex-lover. As she plans and executes one of her celebrated parties, she reveals inner machinations incongruous with her class-defined behaviors, that ultimately enable her to transcend them.

Review

"With its annotated contemporary reviews, newspaper articles, and historical and medical documents, Broadview's Mrs Dalloway is an ideal student text." - Maggie Humm, University of East London, editor of The Edinburgh Companion to Virginia Woolf and the Arts

"Jo-Ann Wallace's superb edition of Mrs. Dalloway offers students, scholars, and common readers a richly contextualized framework for Woolf's fourth novel. Brief, clear, and unobtrusive annotations cover geographical, historical, economic, social, and literary allusions. A thorough yet readable introduction covers Woolf's biography and reputation, her novel's modernist and experimental features, and its status as a war novel. Excellent appendices capture a wide range of contemporary reactions, locate the novel within Woolf's fictional and nonfictional canon, and give readers entry into the lived experience of the time through political, medical, educational, and social documents. The select bibliography and brief chronology are also helpful." - Beth Rigel Daugherty, Otterbein University

Edition details

• Publisher: Broadview Press
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1551117231
• ISBN 13: 9781551117232
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 282