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.

Virginia Woolf’s daring essay on how illness transforms our perception, plus an essay by Woolf’s mother from the caregiver’s perspective: “Revelatory.” —Booklist This new publication of “On Being Ill” with “Notes from Sick Rooms” presents Virginia Woolf and her mother, Julia Stephen, in textual conversation for the first time in literary history. In the poignant and humorous essay “On Being Ill,” Woolf observes that though illness is part of every human being’s experience, it is not celebrated as a subject of great literature in the way that love and war are embraced by writers and readers. We must, Woolf says, invent a new language to describe pain. Illness, she observes, enhances our perceptions and reduces self-consciousness; it is “the great confessional.” Woolf discusses the taboos associated with illness, and she explores how it changes our relationship to the world around us. “Notes from Sick Rooms,” meanwhile, addresses illness from the caregiver’s perspective. With clarity, humor, and pathos, Julia Stephen offers concrete information that remains useful to nurses and caregivers today. This edition also includes an introduction to “Notes from Sick Rooms” by Mark Hussey, founding editor of Woolf Studies Annual, and a poignant afterword by Rita Charon, MD, founder of the field of Narrative Medicine. In addition, Hermione Lee’s brilliant introduction to “On Being Ill” offers a superb overview of Woolf’s life and writing. “Woolf’s inquiry into illness and its impact on the mind is paired with her mother’s observations about caring for the body. Julia Stephen . . . had no professional training but took to heart Florence Nightingale’s precept that every woman is a nurse and emulated Nightingale’s best-selling Notes on Nursing with her own “Notes from Sick Rooms.” In this long-overlooked, precise, and piquant little manual, Stephen is compassionate and ironic, observing that everyone deserves to be tenderly nursed while addressing the small evil of crumbs in bed. This unprecedented literary reunion of mother and daughter is stunning on many fronts, but physician and literary scholar Rita Charon focuses on the essentials in her astute afterword, writing that Woolf’s perspective as a patient and Stephen’s as a nurse together illuminate the goal of care—to listen, to recognize, to imagine, to honor.” —Booklist “Woolf and Stephen will certainly change the way readers think of illness.” —Publishers Weekly

"Slater's pins have no points--don't you always find that?" said Miss Craye, turning round as the rose fell out of Fanny Wilmot's dress, and Fanny stooped, with her ears full of the music, to look for the pin on the floor.The words gave her an extraordinary shock, as Miss Craye struck the last chord of the Bach fugue. Did Miss Craye actually go to Slater's and buy pins then, Fanny Wilmot asked herself, transfixed for a moment. Did she stand at the counter waiting like anybody else, and was she given a bill with coppers wrapped in it, and did she slip them into her purse and then, an hour later, stand by her dressing table and take out the pins? What need had she of pins? For she was not so much dressed as cased, like a beetle compactly in its sheath, blue in winter, green in summer. What need had she of pins--Julia Craye--who lived, it seemed in the cool glassy world of Bach fugues, playing to herself what she liked, to take one or two pupils at the one and only consenting Archer Street College of Music (so the Principal, Miss Kingston, said) as a special favour to herself, who had "the greatest admiration for her in every way." Miss Craye was left badly off, Miss Kingston was afraid, at her brother's death. Oh, they used to have such lovely things, when they lived at Salisbury, and her brother Julius was, of course, a very well-known man: a famous archaeologist. It was a great privilege to stay with them, Miss Kingston said ("My family had always known them--they were regular Canterbury people," Miss Kingston said), but a little frightening for a child; one had to be careful not to slam the door or bounce into the room unexpectedly.

Virginia Woolf's only play-a hilarious farce taken from the life of her great-aunt, Julia Margaret Cameron, the famous Victorian photographer. It was first performed at Vanessa Bell's London studio in 1935 as one of Bloomsbury's theatrical evenings and later, in New York, in a star-studded French production. Edited and with a Preface by Lucio P. Ruotolo; drawings by Edward Gorey.

FOREWORD BY ALI SMITH WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY FRANCESCA WADE Who better to serve as a guide to great books and their authors than Virginia Woolf?

This carefully crafted ebook: "A Haunted House and Other Short Stories (The Original Unabridged Posthumous Edition of 18 Short Stories)" is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents. A Haunted House is a 1944 collection of 18 short stories by Virginia Woolf. It was produced by her husband Leonard Woolf after her death. The first six stories appeared in her only previous collection Monday or Tuesday in 1921: "A Haunted House" "Monday or Tuesday" "An Unwritten Novel" "The String Quartet" "Kew Gardens" "The Mark on the Wall" The next six appeared in magazines between 1922 and 1941 : "The New Dress" "The Shooting Party" "Lappin and Lappinova" "Solid Objects" "The Lady in the Looking-Glass" "The Duchess and the Jeweller" The final six were unpublished, although only "Moments of Being" and "The Searchlight" were finally revised by Virginia Woolf herself : "Moments of Being" "The Man who Loved his Kind" "The Searchlight" "The Legacy" "Together and Apart" "A Summing Up"

"It might be possible that the world itself is without meaning." Adeline Virginia Woolf ( 1882 - 28th March 1941) is one of Britain's leading literary talents and a pioneer of modernist writing especially 'stream of consciousness' which provides the reader with the flow of thoughts from the naked inner voice without any filter, order or arrangement. She overcame sexual abuse from her brothers, the death of her mother and then sister in her childhood but it was the death of her father as a young adult that institutionalised her. These dark emotional episodes were to reappear at different times throughout her life but did not prevent her prolific output of some of the most poignant and poetic prose ever written. Mrs Dalloway is often thought of as one of Woolf's most brilliant novels and was the basis of the award winning film The Hours. It takes place on a June day in post WWI London where wealthy socialite Clarissa Dalloway is preoccupied with the finishing touches to her party. She considers those that will be attending her party that evening, past loves, people who have touched her life, a re-evaluation of her practical marriage and her hesitancy in growing old. These flashbacks, reminiscences and memories conjure up a vivid and insightful portrait that make this a riveting read and a classic work by a brilliant author at the top of her game.