Virginia Woolf. Book 1

Virginia Woolf. Book 1: 1. Night and Day; 2. The Common Reader. First Series; 3. The Common Reader. Second Series.


1. Night and Day

Set in Edwardian London, Night and Day contrasts the daily lives and romantic attachments of two acquaintances, Katharine Hilbery and Mary Datchet. The novel examines the relationships between love, marriage, happiness, and success.

Woolf portrays the fascinations of self-discovery through relationships with other people, and she also looks into the intricacies of love–are we aware of love? Katharine Hilbery is beautiful and privileged but uncertain of her future. She must choose between becoming engaged to the oddly prosaic poet William, and her dangerous attraction to the lower-class Ralph. As she struggles to decide, the lives of two other women - women’s rights activist Mary Datchet and Katharine’s mother, struggling to weave together the documents, events and memories of her father’s life into a biography - impinge on hers with unexpected and intriguing consequences. Virginia Woolf’s light, 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. A superb book that you will remember long after you read it. Making your own discovery is part of its charm.


2. The Common Reader. First Series

Woolf’s first and most popular volume of essays. This collection has more than twenty-five selections, including such important statements as “Modern Fiction” and “The Modern Essay.” 

“Communication is truth; communication is happiness. To share is our duty; to go down boldly and bring to light those hidden thoughts which are the most diseased; to conceal nothing; to pretend nothing; if we are ignorant to say so; if we love our friends to let them know it.” 


3. The Common Reader. Second Series

The Common Reader (1925) was followed by The Common Reader: Second Series (1932; also published as The Second Common Reader).
 She continued writing essays on reading and writing, women and history, and class and politics...
Here, in twenty-six essays, Woolf writes of English literature in its various forms, including the poetry of Donne; 
the novels of Defoe, Sterne, Meredith, and Hardy; 
Lord Chesterfield’s letters and De Quincey’s autobiography. She writes, too, about the life and art of women.