Jacob`s Room: A Norton Critical Edition: 0 (Norton Critical Editions)

by Virginia Woolf (Author), Suzanne Raitt (Author)

• New

  Illustrated
  2007

  $17.61

  A generous Contexts section provides extracts from Woolf's diaries and letters as well as comments on the novel from her fellow writers and friends, among them E. M. Forster and T. S. Eliot. Also included are the short stories The Mark on the Wall, Kew Gardens, and An Unwritten Novel, which Woolf viewed as early experiments with the innovative method used in Jacob's Room. An additional short story, A Woman's College from Outside, which Woolf originally intended to be Chapter 10 of Jacob's Room, is also included. Finally, Woolf's classic essay Modern Novels, written shortly before she began work on Jacob's Room, provides insight into her aesthetic and technique. Criticism is divided into two sections: Contemporary Reception and Reviews contains personal responses to the novel, from Lytton Strachey and E. M. Forster, as well as eleven reviews from contemporary periodicals. Critical Essays offers insightful interpretations by Judy Little, Alex Zwerdling, Kate Flint, Kathleen Wall, and Edward L. Bishop. A Selected Bibliography is also included.

• Used

  Paperback
  1992

  $3.23

  Jacob's Room is Virginia Woolf's first truly experimental novel. It is a portrait of a young man, who is both representative and victim of the social values which led Edwardian society into war. Jacob's life is traced from the time he is a small boy playing on the beach, through his years in Cambridge, then in artistic London, and finally making a trip to Greece, but this is no orthodox Bildungsroman. Jacob is presented in glimpses, in fragments, as Woolf breaks down traditional ways of representing character and experience. The novel's composition coincided with the consolidation of Woolf's interest in feminism, and she criticizes the privileged, thoughtless smugness of patriarchy, the other side , the men in clubs and Cabinets . Her stylistic innovations are conscious attempts to realize and develop women's writing and the novel dramatizes her interest in the ways both language and social environments shape differently the lives of men and women. This book is one of ten World's Classics by Virginia Woolf, and comes with an introduction and explanatory notes to provide guidance for readers new to this author.

• New

  Paperback
  2004

  $10.66

  WITH INTRODUCTIONS BY LAWRENCE NORFOLK AND ELISABETH BRONFEN. Jacob's Room is Virginia Woolf's first truly experimental novel. It is a portrait of a young man, tracing his life from childhood, to Cambridge University, and to his early adult life in artistic London. Jacob always yearns for something greater, and embarks on a voyage to the Mediterranean before the war begins and his fate is forever altered. Impressionistic in style, the narrative is as inspired now as it was when it first appeared.