The Waves (Wordsworth Classics)

by Deborah Parsons (Introduction), Dr Keith Carabine (Series Editor), Virginia Woolf (Author), Deborah Parsons (Introduction)

• New

  Paperback
  2000

  $6.72

  Introduction and Notes by Deborah Parsons, University of Birmingham. 'I am writing to a rhythm and not to a plot', Virginia Woolf stated of her eighth novel, The Waves. Widely regarded as one of her greatest and most original works, it conveys the rhythms of life in synchrony with the cycle of nature and the passage of time. Six children - Bernard, Susan, Rhoda, Neville, Jinny and Louis - meet in a garden close to the sea, their voices sounding over the constant echo of the waves that roll back and forth from the shore. The subsequent continuity of these six main characters, as they develop from childhood to maturity and follow different passions and ambitions, is interspersed with interludes from the timeless and unifying chorus of nature. In pure stream-of-consciousness style, Woolf presents a cross-section of multiple yet parallel lives, each marked by the disintegrating force of a mutual tragedy. The Waves is her searching exploration of individual and collective identity, and the observations and emotions of life, from the simplicity and surging optimism of youth to the vacancy and despair of middle-age.

• Used

  Paperback
  1996

  $3.40

  On a June morning in 1923, Clarissa Dalloway, the glittering wife of a Member of Parliament, is preparing for a grand party that evening. As she walks through London, buying flowers, observing life, her thoughts are in the past, and she remembers the time when she was as young as her own daughter Elizabeth; her romance with Peter Walsh, now recently returned from India; and the friends of her youth. Elsewhere in London, Septimus Smith is being driven mad by shell shock. As the day draws to its end, his world and Clarissa's collide in unexpected ways.

• Used

  Hardcover
  1992

  $4.15

  Woolf described this work on the title-page of the first draft as the life of anybody . The Waves (1931) traces the lives and interactions of seven friends in an exploratory and sensuous narrative. It was conceived, brooded on, and written during a highly political phase in Woolf's career, when she was engaged in speaking on issues of gender and of class. This was also the period when her love affair with Vita Sackville-West was at its most intense.

• New

  Paperback
  1978

  $18.44