Updated
Created July 7, 1997
All but The Voyage
Out and Night and Day are from the Hogarth Press in
The Voyage Out (26 March 1915, Duckworth;
Woolf's
first novel, begun in 1908 and heavily revised after about 1912.
Manuscript editions of the earlier version (1909-12) have been compiled
and published by Louise DeSalvo as Melymbrosia (1982), Woolf's working title for
the book.
Two Stories (1917)
"The Mark on the Wall" by VW and "a story" by
Leonard Woolf. The book was published by
subscription only, mainly to friends and acquaintances, and was the Hogarth
Press’s first publication.
Ten
pages of text by VW, with illustrations by her sister, Vanessa Bell.
Night
and Day (20 Oct 1919, Duckworth;
VW
considered this her "traditional" novel, in the manner of the
nineteenth-century novelists she admired.
Monday
or Tuesday (7 April 1921;
Includes "
Jacob’s
Room (27 Oct 1922;
Her
first truly experimental novel and the Hogarth Press’s first large-scale work, Jacob's
Room begins Woolf's reputation as "difficult" or
"highbrow." Critics compare her to James Joyce and Dorothy
Richardson. Jacob is based on Woolf's older brother Thoby
Stephen, who died of a fever in 1906, when he was in his mid-twenties.
Mr. Bennett and Mrs.
Brown (1923)
A
response to Arnold Bennett’s criticism that she "can’t create or didn’t in
Jacob’s Room, characters that survive" (Woolf paraphrasing Bennett,
Writer’s Diary). First version was published in
the
The Common Reader (First Series, 23 Apr 1925)
The
Common Reader was Woolf's title for two series of critical essays she
published (the second series was published in 1932), mostly focused on her
responses to reading and literature. It includes biographical sketches of
many writers and such now-famous essays as "On Not Knowing Greek" and
"How it Strikes a Contemporary."
Mrs. Dalloway (14 May 1925; simultaneously in
A
novel that takes place entirely in the space of one day in the life of Clarissa
Dalloway, with a parallel plot about a shell-shocked World War I veteran, Septimus Smith. The setting is
To the Lighthouse (5 May 1927)
Woolf's most famous and most autobiographical novel. The
novel takes place chiefly at a family summer house based on Woolf's own
family's house in Cornwall (though the novel is set in the Hebrides), during
two visits, seven years apart, with events in between described abstractly in a
middle section called "Time Passes." The "Time
Passes" section had been published in French in Dec. 1926.
See
also the original holograph draft / transcribed and edited by Susan Dick
(Toronto; Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1982).
Her
most successful novel up to then, in terms of sales (even though publishing it
as a "biography" confused booksellers), Orlando
traces the life of an English nobleman, Orlando, from
the Renaissance to the very moment of publication.
A Room of One’s Own (24 Oct 1929)
Woolf's first major feminist criticism, originating in two lectures
given in October 1928 to students at the two women's colleges of
See
also a study of extant manuscripts edited by S.P. Rosenbaum, Virginia
Woolf/Women & Fiction: The Manuscript Versions of A Room of One's Own (Oxford : Blackwell, 1992).
The Waves (October 1931)
This
novel is generally considered Woolf's masterpiece, though it is also her most
experimental (some say most difficult) work.
NOTE: The first
book-length criticism of VW appeared in 1932, Winifrid
Holtby’s biography and Floris
Delattre’s Le Roman psychologique
de Virginia Woolf. Delattre writes on VW’s use of
time (quality vs. quantity).
The Common Reader (Second Series, 1932)
This
collection includes both new and revised critical essays, including
biographical sketches of Mary Wollstonecraft and Dorothy Wordsworth, and the
now-famous essay "How Should One Read a Book?"
Flush (5 Oct 1933)
A
comic novel written from the point of view of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's cocker spaniel Flush.
The Years (13 March 1937]
A
bestseller, popular with critics and readers, this novel traces the life of a
Victorian family, the Pargiters, from 1880 to the
"Present Day." Begun as a sequel to A Room of One's Own,
Woolf originally intended to alternate nonfiction essays with the Pargiter's story (which illustrates the essays).
Woolf ultimately extracted the nonfiction and changed the working title
from "The Pargiters" to The Years.
Mitchell A. Leaska has edited the extracted
portions and published them as The Pargiters: The
Novel-Essay Portion of The Years (1977), which
also includes the earlier version of the 1880 section of the novel.
Three
These feminist essays function as a sequel to A Room of One's Own,
including a critique of patriarchy (illustrated with photographs of public
figures) and an argument for pacifism in the face of the growing threat of
another world war. The illustrations are
not printed in modern editions.
Roger Fry (25 July 1940)
A biography of Woolf's friend, the art critic and painter
(1866-1934), who had introduced post-impressionism (Picasso, Cezanne) to
Between the Acts (17 July 1941)
Woolf's
last novel, published after her death. She had changed her mind about
publishing it just days before her death (see letter to John Lehmann).
Like Mrs. Dalloway, the action takes place in a short span
of time in June and is focused on a social event, here a community pageant
rather than a party. The setting is June 1939 in
the English countryside at a house called Pointz Hall
(the working title of the book), home of the Olivers,
and in the nearby village, where Miss LaTrobe is in
charge of the pageant. The pageant concerns English history, and
parts of it are part of the narrative.
A Writer’s Diary (
The
public's first access to Woolf's diaries came in this heavily edited selection
of diary entries concerning writing or particular works Woolf was writing.
The selections were prepared by her husband, Leonard Woolf.
The more complete 5-volume edition of Woolf's diaries was published 1977-1984,
edited by her nephew Quentin Bell's wife, Anne Olivier Bell. Six volumes
of Woolf's letters have also been published (ed. Nigel Nicolson and Joanne Trautmann, 1975-1980).
Moments of Being (US 1976, ed. Jeanne
Schulkind)
Woolf often
spoke of writing her autobiography, but these unpublished autobiographical
writings are as close as we have to formal autobiography. The earliest,
"Reminiscences," was written at the birth of her first nephew, Julian
Bell, supposedly as a biography of her sister Vanessa. The latest, "A Sketch
of the Past," was written near the end of her life, apparently as the
beginning of a formal autobiography. The rest are sketches she read to members
of the Memoir Club, who met regularly to read such essays.
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