Mrs Dalloway Virginia Woolf (Wordsworth Classics) (Wordsworth Collection) Paperback,176 pages

Virginia Woolf's singular technique in Mrs Dalloway heralds a break with the traditional novel form and reflects a genuine humanity and a concern with the experiences that both enrich and stultify existence. Society hostess, Clarissa Dalloway is giving a party. Her thoughts and sensations on that one day, and the interior monologues of others whose lives are interwoven with hers gradually reveal the characters of the central protagonists. Clarissa's life is touched by tragedy as the events in her day run parallel to those of Septimus Warren Smith, whose madness escalates as his life draws about inevitable suicide.

Virginia Woolf was born in London on January 25, 1882 and grew up in the upper middle class milieu of Victorian England. The death of her mother in 1895 and her older sister led to a severe psychological crisis, the shadow of which they should never let go. In 1912 she married Leonard Woolf. Together they founded The Hogarth Press in 1917. At an early age, she and her brother formed the center of the intellectual "Bloomsbury Group". Her home was one of the centers of Bloomsbury Group's artists and writers. Her novels are among the milestones of modern literature. At the same time, she was one of the most influential essayists of her time. Fearing to mentally kill her, she committed suicide on March 28, 1941, after a bomb attack.