Mrs. Dalloway: Biography of a Novel

The first book in the ‘Biography of a Novel’ series offers a compelling account of Virginia Woolf’s masterpiece.

The fourth and best-known of Virginia Woolf’s novels, Mrs. Dalloway is a modernist masterpiece that has remained popular since its publication in 1925. Its dual narratives follow a day in the life of wealthy housewife Clarissa Dalloway and shell-shocked war veteran Septimus Warren Smith, capturing their inner worlds with a vividness that has rarely been equaled.

Mrs. Dalloway: Biography of a Novel offers new readers a lively introduction to this enduring classic, while providing Woolf lovers with a wealth of information about the novel’s writing, publication and reception. It follows Woolf’s process from the first stirrings in her diary through her struggles to create what was quickly recognized as a major advance in prose fiction. It then traces the novel’s remarkable legacy to the present day.

Woolf wrote in her diary that she wanted her novel "to give life & death, sanity & insanity… to criticize the social system, & to show it at work, at its most intense." Mrs. Dalloway: Biography of a Novel reveals how she achieved this ambition, creating a book that will be read by generations to come.

Register for our discussion with Mark Hussey on July 17 here!