Other editions of book To the Lighthouse

[Read by Phyllida Law]To the Lighthouse is at once a vivid impressionist depiction of a family holiday, and a meditation on a marriage, on parenthood and childhood, on grief, tyranny, and bitterness. Its use of stream of consciousness, reminiscence, and shifting perspectives gives the novel an intimate, poetic essence, and at the time of publication in 1927 it represented an utter rejection of Victorian and Edwardian literary values.

To the Lighthouse is at once a vivid impressionist depiction of a family holiday, and a meditation on a marriage, on parenthood and childhood, on grief, tyranny, and bitterness. Its use of stream of consciousness, reminiscence, and shifting perspectives gives the novel an intimate, poetic essence, and at the time of publication in 1927 it represented an utter rejection of Victorian and Edwardian literary values.

Virginia Woolf's most popular novel, first published in 1927, is one of the most widely studied modernist texts. In this new edition, Sandra Kemp provides a fresh reading of the work, an introduction to Woolf and a survey of the novel's critical reception. Significant textual variants are included, along with notes and bibliography, making this an ideal edition for students of literary modernism and women's writing.

Virginia Woolf's lyrical, nostalgic novel centres at first on a family holiday in Skye where the subtle shifts of tension and affection between the Ramsays and their guests are delicately explored. James, the youngest son of Mr and Mrs Ramsay, has a devout wish to visit the lighthouse but his father, a rather pompous, philosophical man, seems determined to disappoint him. It is only many years later, when the war has brought dramatic changes to society and to the Ramsay family in particular, that the journey is made under very different circumstances.