A ROOM OF ONE'S OWN

BETWEEN THE ACTS

Seemingly a novel about English country-house life, the action takes place in the grounds where there is to be a pageant in the month leading up to World War 2. Using dialogue and humour Woolf explores how a community is formed, and scattered. Content warning: This book contains language and attitudes which reflect the time in which it was written.

FLUSH

Flush was Elizabeth Barrett Browning's aristocratic pet cocker spaniel. In his biography, Virginia Woolf follows Flush's career from his birth in Berkshire and early years with the invalid, Miss Barrett, through to his kidnapping by London vagabonds and his dotage in Italy.

JACOB'S ROOM

The tale of Jacob Flanders, a lonely young man unable to reconcile his love of classical culture with the chaotic reality of World War I society, unfolds in a series of brief impressions and conversations, internal monologues, and letters. A sensitive examination of character development and the meaning of life, this 1922 novel features first-rate examples of Woolf's influential techniques.

MRS DALLOWAY

Past, present and future are brought together one day in June 1923. Clarissa Dalloway prepares for her party, remembering those she once loved. In another part of London, Septimus Smith is on the brink of madness. His day interweaves with Clarissa's. The film ‘The Hour’ is based on this novel.

ORLANDO

In this strange novel dedicated to her friend and lover, Vita Sackville-West, Virginia Woolf's hero-cum-heroine lives through five centuries of English life.

TO THE LIGHTHOUSE

This is the story of the Ramsays, based on Virginia Woolf's own family. Their desire to row to the lighthouse is the subject of much self-conscious and deliberate discussion for Mrs. Ramsey and her family, and the lighthouse itself is a symbol carrying different meanings for all the members of the party…

THE VOYAGE OUT

A journey aboard a ship to South America releases a young woman from the strictures of life in Edwardian London. Through her encounters with her fellow passengers, Rachel Vinrace is exposed to new ways of thinking, and is encouraged to explore what her life could be if she set aside her rigorous and cloistered upbringing.

THE WAVES

Tracing the lives of a group of friends, this novel follows their development from childhood to youth and middle age. Separately and together, they query the relationship of past to present, and the meaning of life itself.

THE YEARS

Written in 1937, this was the most popular of Virginia Woolf's novels. It follows the lives of the Pargiters, a middle-class London family, from an uncertain spring in 1880 to a party on a summer evening in the 1930s. We see them each endure and remember heart-break, loss, radical change and stifling conformity, marriage and regret.