A formally innovative work of modernist fiction Virginia Woolf's The Waves is edited with an introduction by Kate Flint in Penguin Modern Classics More than any of Virginia Woolf's other novels The Waves conveys the full complexity & richness of human experience Tracing the lives of a group of friends The Waves follows their development from childhood to youth & middle age While social events individual achievements & disappointments form its narrative the novel is most remarkable for the rich poetic language that expresses the inner life of its characters their aspirations their triumphs & regrets their awareness of unity & isolation Separately & together they query the relationship of past to present & the meaning of life itself Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) is regarded as a major 20th century author & essayist a key figure in literary history as a feminist & modernist & the centre of ' The Bloomsbury Group' This informal collective of artists & writers which included Lytton Strachey & Roger Fry exerted a powerful influence over early twentieth-century British culture Between 1925 & 1931 Virginia Woolf produced what are now regarded as her finest masterpieces from Mrs Dalloway (1925) to the poetic & highly experimental novel The Waves (1931) She also maintained an astonishing output of literary criticism short fiction journalism & biography including the playfully subversive Orlando (1928) & A Room of One's Own (1929) a passionate feminist essay If you enjoyed The Waves you might like Woolf's Mrs Dalloway also available in Penguin Classics'A book of great beauty & a prose poem of genius' Stephen Spender' Full of sensuous touches the sounds of her words can be velvet on the page' Maggie Gee Daily Telegraph