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by: Virginia Woolf
List Price: $13.00Amazon.com's Price: $10.40 You Save: $2.60 (20%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.912
EAN: 9780156628709
ISBN: 0156628708
Label: Harvest Books
Manufacturer: Harvest Books
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 216
Publication Date: September 24, 1990
Publisher: Harvest Books
Sales Rank: 10799
Studio: Harvest Books
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
This brilliant novel explores the hidden springs of thought and action in one day of a woman’s life. Direct and vivid in her account of the details of Clarissa Dalloway’s preparations for a party she is to give that evening, Woolf ultimately managed to reveal much more. For it is the feeling behind these daily events that gives Mrs. Dalloway its texture and richness and makes it so memorable. Foreword by Maureen Howard.
'Mrs. Dalloway was the first novel to split the atom. If the novel before Mrs. Dalloway aspired to immensities of scope and scale, to heroic journeys across vast landscapes, with Mrs. Dalloway Virginia Woolf insisted that it could also locate the enormous within the everyday; that a life of errands and party-giving was every bit as viable a subject as any life lived anywhere; and that should any human act in any novel seem unimportant, it has merely been inadequately observed. The novel as an art form has not been the same since.
'Mrs. Dalloway also contains some of the most beautiful, complex, incisive and idiosyncratic sentences ever written in English, and that alone would be reason enough to read it. It is one of the most moving, revolutionary artworks of the twentieth century.'
--Michael Cunningham, author of The Hours
Amazon.com Review:
As Clarissa Dalloway walks through London on a fine June morning, a sky-writing plane captures her attention. Crowds stare upwards to decipher the message while the plane turns and loops, leaving off one letter, picking up another. Like the airplane's swooping path, Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway follows Clarissa and those whose lives brush hers--from Peter Walsh, whom she spurned years ago, to her daughter Elizabeth, the girl's angry teacher, Doris Kilman, and war-shocked Septimus Warren Smith, who is sinking into madness.
As Mrs. Dalloway prepares for the party she is giving that evening, a series of events intrudes on her composure. Her husband is invited, without her, to lunch with Lady Bruton (who, Clarissa notes anxiously, gives the most amusing luncheons). Meanwhile, Peter Walsh appears, recently from India, to criticize and confide in her. His sudden arrival evokes memories of a distant past, the choices she made then, and her wistful friendship with Sally Seton.
Woolf then explores the relationships between women and men, and between women, as Clarissa muses, 'It was something central which permeated; something warm which broke up surfaces and rippled the cold contact of man and woman, or of women together.... Her relation in the old days with Sally Seton. Had not that, after all, been love?' While Clarissa is transported to past afternoons with Sally, and as she sits mending her green dress, Warren Smith catapults desperately into his delusions. Although his troubles form a tangent to Clarissa's web, they undeniably touch it, and the strands connecting all these characters draw tighter as evening deepens. As she immerses us in each inner life, Virginia Woolf offers exquisite, painful images of the past bleeding into the present, of desire overwhelmed by society's demands. --Joannie Kervran Stangeland
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Perfect in every way
In my opinion, this is a perfect book. Woolf captures the characters flawlessly and depicts their relationships with pitch-perfect accuracy. The plot centers around a day in the life of Mrs. Dalloway, who is preparing for a party. However, the overall scope of the novel is much broader.
Rating: - Clarissa's Day
It is only a single London day in June, 1923, after World War I, and Mrs. Dalloway is out shopping for flowers for her big party to be given that evening. Even the Prime Minister will be coming because Clarissa Dalloway's husband, Richard, is a minor cog in the government. Virginia Woolf was originally going to call her breakthrough novel The Hours, a title Michael Cunningham used in his tribute novel to Mrs. Dalloway. The pealing of Big Ben and other chimes striking the hours segue this chapterless ... Read More
Rating: - Woolf' Best
For the longest time, I thought I disliked Virginia Woolf's work. Typically, I am not a fan of "stream of consciousness," and being that "To the Lighthouse" was my first read, Woolf left me not wanting for more. However, in a Queer Theory course in my graduate studies, "Mrs. Dalloway" was assigned and I absolutely loved it. In fact, upon finishing this work, I ordered all of Woolf's works.
Not only is the work hauntingly beautiful and melancholy, but also rather daring. The book takes place in the ... Read More
Rating: - Better the second time around
This was the first Woolf novel that I read and i am glad that it was. I was a college freshman who had just seen The Hours. I was immediately drawn to this author. After reading it the first time, it is possible to know what the basic story is about: a woman giving a party and wondering about the choices she has made in the past. But each reading helps bring out so many details that are easy to miss. People may claim this is a hard read, but Mrs. Woolf's books were NEVER meant to be read quickly. The word ... Read More
Rating: - Woolf in Her Prime
Virginia Woolf (1882 - 1941) was a well known writer, critic, feminist, and publisher. This was her fourth novel.
I read her first novel "The Voyage Out" before buying the present book, then skipped her second novel - which is considered to be a flop - then read "Jacob's Room," her third, then "Mrs. Dalloway," her fourth, and then "To The Lighthouse."
"The Voyage Out" is simple and straightforward work and it might remind the reader of a Jane Austen novel, but it set on a ... Read More
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