Night and Day (World's Classics)

by VirginiaWoolf (Author), SuzanneRaitt (Editor)

• Used

  Hardcover
  1992

  $5.90

  Katherine Hilbery, torn between past and present, is a figure reflecting Woolf's own struggle with history. Both have illustrious literary ancestors: in Katherine's case, her poet grandfather, and in Woolf's, her father Leslie Stephen, writer, philosopher, and editor. Both desire to break away from the demands of the previous generation without disowning it altogether. Katherine must decide whether or not she loves the iconoclastic Ralph Denham; Woolf seeks a way of experimenting with the novel form that still allows her to express her affection for the literature of the past. Night and Day is the most traditional of Woolf's novels, yet even here we can see her beginning to break free; in this, her second novel with its strange mixture of comedy and high seriousness, Woolf had already found her own characteristic voice. This edition is one of ten World's Classics by Virginia Woolf, and comes with an introduction and notes to provide guidance for readers new to this author.

• Used

  Paperback
  1978

  $4.33

• New

  Paperback
  1996

  $12.57

  An immaculately-observed social comedy that explores the boundaries between personal freedom and the demands of love, the Penguin Classics edition of Virginia Woolf's Night and Day is edited with an introduction and notes by Julia Briggs. Katharine Hilbery is beautiful and privileged, but uncertain of her future. She must choose between becoming engaged to the oddly prosaic poet William Rodney, and her dangerous attraction to the passionate Ralph Denham. As she struggles to decide, the lives of two other women - women's rights activist Mary Datchet and Katharine's mother, Margaret, struggling to weave together the documents, events and memories of her own father's life into a biography - impinge on hers with unexpected and intriguing consequences. Virginia Woolf's delicate second novel is both a love story and a social comedy, yet it also subtly undermines these traditions, questioning a woman's role and the very nature of experience. This edition of Night and Day includes a detailed introduction by Julia Briggs, which considers the key themes of the novel and its place in the tradition of social comedy, a map of central London of the period and notes. Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) is regarded as a major 20th century author, a great novelist and essayist, and a key figure in literary history as a feminist and modernist. and became 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.