A Room of One's Own

A Room of One's Own is an extended essay by Virginia Woolf. First published on October 24, 1929, the essay was based on a series of lectures she delivered at Newnham College and Girton College, two women’s colleges at Cambridge University in October 1928. While this extended essay employs a fictional narrator and narrative to explore women both as writers of and characters in fiction, the manuscript for the delivery of the series of lectures, titled “Women and Fiction,” appearing in Forum March 1929, is considered non-fiction. The essay is generally seen as a feminist text, and is noted in its argument for both a literal and figurative space for women writers within a literary tradition dominated by men.

To the Lighthouse

To the Lighthouse is a 1927 novel by Virginia Woolf. The novel centers on the Ramsays and their visits to the Isle of Skye in Scotland between 1910 and 1920.

     Following and extending the tradition of modernist novelists like Marcel Proust and James Joyce, the plot of To the Lighthouse is secondary to its philosophical introspection. Cited as a key example of the stream-of-consciousness literary technique, the novel includes little dialogue and almost not any action; most of it is written as thoughts and observations. The novel recalls childhood emotions and highlights adult relationships. Among the book’s many tropes and themes are those of loss, subjectivity, and the problem of perception.

     In 1998 the Modern Library named To the Lighthouse No. 15 on its list of the 100 Best English-Language Novels of the Twentieth Century. In 2005 the novel was chosen by TIME Magazine as one of the 100 Best English-Language Novels from 1923 to present.

Mrs. Dalloway

Published 1925

Mrs. Dalloway (published on May 14, 1925) is a novel by Virginia Woolf detailing a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, a fictional high-society woman in post–First World War England. It is one of Woolf’s best-known novels.

     Created from two short stories, “Mrs. Dalloway in Bond Street” and the unfinished “The Prime Minister,” the novel addresses Clarissa’s preparations for a party she will host in the evening. With an interior perspective, the story travels forward and backward in time, in and out of the characters’ minds to construct an image of Clarissa’s life and of the inter-war social structure. In October 2005 Mrs. Dalloway was included on TIME Magazine's list of the 100 Best English-Language Novels written since 1923.