With Mrs. Dalloway Virginia Woolf insisted that a life of errands and party-giving was every bit as viable a subject as any life lived anywhere; and that should any human act in any novel seem unimportant, it has merely been inadequately observed. The novel as an art form has not been the same since.-Michael Cunningham, author of The Hours
The modern novel Mrs. Dalloway creates a vivid portrait of a single day in the life of one woman as she orchestrates the last-minute details of a grand party. But before Virginia Woolf wrote her masterwork, she explored in a series of captivating sketches and stories a similar revelry in the mental and physical excitement of a party. Those seven stories collected here make up a kind of writer's notebook, a dynamic and delightful exploration of what Woolf called party consciousness. As parallel expressions of the themes of Mrs. Dalloway, these seminal stories provide a valuable window into Woolf 's writing mind-and a further testament to her extraordinary genius.
Virginia Woolf one of the major literary figures of the twentieth century, transformed the art of the novel with such groundbreaking works as Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse. The author of numerous collections of letters, journals, and short stories, she was an admired literary critic and a master of the essay form.