'Fear no more the heat of the sun.'
Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf's fourth novel, offers the reader an impression of a single June day in London in 1923. Clarissa Dalloway, the wife of a Conservative member of parliament, is preparing to give an evening party, while the shell-shocked Septimus Warren Smith hears the birds in Regent's Park chattering in Greek. There seems to be nothing, except perhaps London, to link Clarissa and Septimus. She is middle-aged and prosperous, with a sheltered happy life behind her; Smith is young, poor, and driven to hatred of himself and the whole human race. Yet both share a terror of existence, and sense the pull of death.
The world of Mrs Dalloway is evoked in Woolf's famous stream of consciousness style, in a lyrical and haunting language which has made this, from its publication in 1925, one of her most popular novels.
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Set on a hot London day in June 1923, Mrs Dalloway explores both the raw hold of the past and the brighter potential of the future. Clarissa Dalloway is the wife of an MP and an assured socialite, yet as she prepares for her party the links between her and the shell-shocked Septimus Warren Smith become ever more apparent. Mrs Dalloway is a book that is both highly experimental and deeply involving, deftly impressionistic yet firmly embedded in thecrowded world of London. This new edition based on original research offers fresh insights into the context and meanings of one of Woolf's most popular and enduring works.
Virginia Woolf's writing takes considered reading but the reader is richly rewarded, the prose is wonderfully lyrical and she explores her characters brilliantly.
