WITH INTROUCTIONS BY EAVAN BOLAND AND MAUD ELLMAN The serene and maternal Mrs Ramsay, the tragic yet absurd Mr Ramsay, together with their children and assorted guests, are holidaying on the Isle of Skye. From the seemingly trivial postponement of a visit to a nearby lighthouse Virginia Woolf constructs a remarkable and moving examination of the complex tensions and allegiances of family life. … family life. One of the great literary achievements of the twentieth century, To the Lighthouse is often cited as Virginia Woolf’s most popular novel.
The Vintage Classics Virginia Woolf series has been curated by Jeanette Winterson, and the texts used are based on the original Hogarth Press editions published by Leonard and Virginia Woolf.
more
Before WWI and books like this one, we didn’t really have the truly close or subjective third-person point of view. This point of view completely erased the writer or storyteller from the equation so that the reader could have total intimacy with the character. With no mediator in between, we as readers were suddenly free to become the people in …
To the Lighthouse is Woolf’s autobiographical memoir of time spent with her family. Lily Briscoe, the character said to be Woolf, is told by a man that women can’t paint, women can’t write. Mrs. Ramsay humors her husband and makes excuses for his domineering behavior, attributing it to insecurity, and the stress of the war. This powerful novel is …