Mrs. Dalloway

FROM THE FOREWORD BY PHILIP DOSSICK


Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), one of the greatest authors of the twentieth century, transformed the art of fiction. The author of numerous novels and short stories, she was also an acknowledged master of the essay form, and an admired literary critic. But you already know that. 

The thrill of reading Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway is the feeling of looking into a whirlpool just as something utterly extraordinary and unexpected materializes for the first time: an elegiac day-in-the-life portrait that focuses on Clarissa Dalloway, wife of a wealthy politician, in 1920s London.

The language itself dazzles: vivid, evocative, poetic language, that challenges the best of James Joyce, with Woolf's gift for inner dialogue—the lies her characters relentlessly tell themselves—which in turn reveal them to us. 

Mrs. Dalloway has it all: life, death, fantasies of suicide, homoerotic desire, lesbianism, and the evanescence of time. 

It can be found on countless lists of the finest novels of the 20th century, and is one of Virginia Woolf's major achievements. It is considered her greatest work after To the Lighthouse. 

Stick with it and you’ll find Clarissa’s engrossing centerpiece performance a captivating reward well worth the effort.

Mrs. Dalloway is Virginia Woolf’s rare and genuine masterpiece, deserving of the label in a thousand different ways.


PHILIP DOSSICK




PHILIP DOSSICK is the New York Times critically acclaimed writer and director of the motion picture The P.O.W. He has written for television, including the outstanding drama, Transplant, produced by David Susskind for CBS. His most recent books include Aztecs: Epoch Of Social Revolution, Sex And Dreams, Mark Twain In Seattle, and Raymond Chowder And Bob Skloot Must Die.