The Waves: Virginia Woolf: xviii (Vintage classics)

by Virginia Woolf (Author), Jeanette Winterson (Introduction)

• Used

  Paperback
  2008

  $4.21

  Set on the English coast against the vivid backdrop of the sea, The Waves introduces six characters who are grappling with the death of a beloved friend, Percival. The characters are almost imperceptibly revealed through the kaleidoscopic accumulation of their reflections on themselves and each other. Regarded by many as Virginia Woolf's masterpiece, The Waves was partially written in order to exorcise her private ghosts as the central, yet absent, character of Percival represents her brother Thoby, who died in 1906. It is a poetic dreamscape, visual, experimental and thrilling. With introductions by Jeanette Winterson and Gillian Beer.

• Used

  Paperback
  2006

  $3.35

  MY PENGUIN BOOKS BY THE GREATS, COVERS BY YOU. Tracing the lives of a group of six friends, The Waves follows their development from childhood to youth and middle age. While their individual achievements and disappointments form its narrative, this novel is most remarkable for the rich poetic language that conveys the inner lives of its characters: their aspirations, their triumphs and regrets, their awareness of unity and isolation. Separately and together, they query the relationship of past to present and the meaning of life itself, in a haunting, atmospheric and sensuous exploration of the complexities of human experience.

• New

  Paperback
  2000

  $10.28

  A formally innovative work of modernist fiction, Virginia Woolf's The Waves is edited with an introduction by Kate Flint in Penguin Modern Classics . More than any of Virginia Woolf's other novels, The Waves conveys the full complexity and richness of human experience. Tracing the lives of a group of friends, The Waves follows their development from childhood to youth and middle age. While social events, individual achievements and disappointments form its narrative, the novel is most remarkable for the rich poetic language that expresses the inner life of its characters: their aspirations, their triumphs and regrets, their awareness of unity and isolation. Separately and together, they query the relationship of past to present, and the meaning of life itself. Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) is regarded as a major 20th century author and essayist, a key figure in literary history as a feminist and modernist, and the centre of The Bloomsbury Group . This informal collective of artists and writers, which included Lytton Strachey and Roger Fry , exerted a powerful influence over early twentieth-century British culture. Between 1925 and 1931 Virginia Woolf produced what are now regarded as her finest masterpieces, from Mrs Dalloway (1925) to the poetic and highly experimental novel The Waves (1931). She also maintained an astonishing output of literary criticism, short fiction, journalism and biography, including the playfully subversive Orlando (1928) and A Room of One's Own (1929) a passionate feminist essay. If you enjoyed The Waves , you might like Woolf's Mrs Dalloway , also available in Penguin Classics . A book of great beauty and a prose poem of genius. ( Stephen Spender ). Full of sensuous touches...the sounds of her words can be velvet on the page. (Maggie Gee, Daily Telegraph ).