To The Lighthouse

Product Description

A pioneering work of modernist fiction using her unique stream-of-consciousness technique to explore the inner lives of her characters Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse" is widely regarded as one of the greatest artistic achievements of the twentieth century. This " Penguin Classics" edition is edited by Stella Mc Nichol with an introduction & notes by Hermione Lee. " To the Lighthouse" is at once a vivid impressionistic depiction of a family holiday & a meditation on marriage on parenthood & childhood on grief tyranny & bitterness. For years now the Ramsays have spent every summer in their holiday home in Scotland & they expect these summers will go on forever; but as the First World War looms the integrity of family & society will be fatally challenged. With a psychologically introspective mode the use of memory reminiscence & shifting perspectives gives the novel an intimate poetic essence & at the time of publication in 1927 it represented an utter rejection of Victorian & Edwardian literary values. 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' an informal collective of artists & writers that 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 " To the Lighthouse" you might like James Joyce's "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" also available in " Penguin Classics". " Bears endless re-reading.. .the sea encircles the story in a brilliant ebb & flow". (Rachel Billington)."