WOOLF, Virginia

Mrs. Dalloway

(The Hogarth Press, London), 1925

FIRST EDITION, FIRST IMPRESSION OF A CLASSIC OF MODERN LITERATURE.

8vo, hardcover; pp. 293.

"The novel as an art form has not been the same since," writes Michael Cunningham, author of the acclaimed Mrs. Dalloway-inspired novel The Hours:

If the novel before Mrs. Dalloway aspired to immensities of scope and scale, to heroic journeys across vast landscapes, with Mrs. Dalloway Virginia Woolf insisted that it could also locate the enormous within the everyday; that a life of errands and party-giving was every bit as viable a subject as any life lived anywhere; and that should any human act in any novel seem unimportant, it has merely been inadequately observed. […] Mrs. Dalloway also contains some of the most beautiful, complex, incisive and idiosyncratic sentences ever written in English, and that alone would be reason enough to read it. It is one of the most moving, revolutionary artworks of the twentieth century.

The novel grew out of two previous short stories, 'Mrs Dalloway in Bond Street' and 'The Prime Minister'. Mrs. Dalloway was published on May 14, 1925, and is now seen as Woolf's masterpiece, at least on a par with To the Lighthouse (1927).

The novel has often been compared to James Joyce's Ulysses (1922), especially during the period when the high modernist canon was being formulated. More recent critical and popular reception has tended to treat Mrs. Dalloway on its own terms, paying special attention to its exceptionally delicate treatment of temporality, mental health, sexuality, and social structure.

For Woolf herself, "the design is more remarkable than in any of my books. I feel I can use up everything I've ever thought".

Bibliographic reference: Kirkpatrick A9a; Woolmer 82.

Very good condition: brick-coloured cloth clean and unmarked, noting only the lightly bumped corners and mild wear typical for this book; the text-block sits a few millimeters low in the binding and the first gathering just a little loose, but neither of these in any way significant and noted only for completeness; internally very good, clean and unmarked throughout. An excellent copy.