“She had a perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day.”

Wednesday, June 1923; post-war Britain.

“Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.”

And thus begin the preparations of Clarissa Dalloway’s party. As she goes around London, memories of the past embrace her and she is left introspecting about the decisions she has made in life and love.

In another part of the city, Septimus Warren Smith, a veteran of the First World War, is spending the day with his wife. He is suffering from shell shock and hallucinations.

What happens as their day and life entwines?

Narrated in the stream of consciousness mode, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway is a unique novel in that it takes place in a single day. The novel highlights the broken inner state of people after the First World War.

One of her greatest achievements, the book was included in the Time’s list of the 100 best English-language novels written since 1923. The novel has undergone various film adaptations and continues to inspire its readers.

About the Author

Virginia Woolf was born as Adeline Virginia Stephen in Kensington, London, in 1882. Raised by her parents in their literate and well-connected household, she was influenced by the Victorian literary society and the prominent British intellectuals of her time.

Virginia began writing in her teens. Her reviews were published anonymously in the Times Literary Supplement and other journals. The Voyage Out, originally titled Melymbrosia, was her first novel published in 1915 by Duckworth. She developed her art and went on to publish a number of novels including Night and Day (1919), Jacob’s Room (1922), Mrs Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), Orlando (1928), The Waves (1931), and The Years (1937). Mrs Dalloway is one of her best-known works.

A Room of One’s Own (1929) and Three Guineas (1938) are among her famous non-fiction books.

Virginia Woolf’s works have been translated into more than fifty languages. She continues to remain one of the significant writers of the twentieth century.