The Years

by VirginiaWoolf (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  1977

  $5.11

• Used

  Paperback
  1992

  $3.37

  As the Pargiters, a middle-class English family, move from the oppressive confines of the Victorian home of the 1880s to the 'present day' of the 1930s, this novel engages with a painful struggle between utopian hopefulness and crippled despair. The efforts of its characters - Eleanor and Kitty, Martin and Sara, Peggy and North - to break free from repression, egotism, and convention are made with awkward difficulty. They are weighed down by the pressures of war, the social structures of patriarchy, capitalism and Empire, and the rise of Fascism. Through the muffled, fragmented textures of the narrative a savage indictment of Virginia Woolf's society begins to be heard. But its bitter sadness is relieved by the longing for some better way of life, where freedom and justice' might really be possible. This is Virginia Woolf's longest novel, written with the greatest difficulty she ever experienced, and yet the most popular of all her writings during her lifetime. With the feminist essay that grew out of it, Three Guineas, it can now be re-read as the most challengingly political, even revolutionary, of all her books. The Years is one of ten World's Classics by Virginia Woolf, and comes with an introducton and notes to provide guidance for readers new to this author.

• New

  Paperback
  1992

  $12.12

  This title presents with introductions by Susan Hill and Steven Connor. The Years follows the lives of the Pargiters, a large middle-class London family, from an uncertain spring in 1880 to a party on a summer evening in the 1930s. We see them each endure and remember heart-break, loss, radical change and stifling conformity, marriage and regret. Written in 1937, this was the most popular of Virginia Woolf's novels during her lifetime, and is a powerful indictment of 'Victorianism' and its values.