Mrs Dalloway Virginia Woolf (Wordsworth Classics) - Softcover

Woolf, Virginia

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1853261912 ISBN 13: 9781853261916

Publisher: Wordsworth Editions, 1996

Synopsis

With an Introduction and Notes by Merry M. Pawlowski, Professor and Chair, Department of English, California State University,Bakersfield.

Virginia Woolf's singular technique in Mrs Dalloway heralds a break with the traditional novel form and reflects a genuine humanity and a concern with the experiences that both enrich and stultify existence.

Society hostess, Clarissa Dalloway is giving a party. Her thoughts and sensations on that one day, and the interior monologues of others whose lives are interwoven with hers gradually reveal the characters of the central protagonists. Clarissa's life is touched by tragedy as the events in her day run parallel to those of Septimus Warren Smith, whose madness escalates as his life draws toward inevitable suicide.

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

About this edition

• Publisher: Wordsworth Editions
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 1853261912
• ISBN 13: 9781853261916
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 176