Mrs Dalloway

Mrs Dalloway
First edition dust jacket, 1925; cover art by Vanessa Bell
AuthorVirginia Woolf
LanguageEnglish
PublisherHogarth Press
Publication date
14 May 1925
Publication placeUnited Kingdom
Media typePrint (hardback & paperback)
Pages224 (paperback)
ISBN0-15-662870-8
OCLC20932825
823.912 20
LC ClassPR6045.O72 M7 1990b
TextMrs Dalloway at Wikisource

Mrs Dalloway is a novel by Virginia Woolf published on 14 May 1925.[1][2] It details a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, a fictional upper-class woman in post-First World War England.

The working title of Mrs Dalloway was The Hours. The novel originated from two short stories, "Mrs Dalloway in Bond Street" and the unfinished "The Prime Minister". In autumn 1922, Woolf began to think of the "Mrs Dalloway" short story as the first chapter of her new novel,[2] and she completed the manuscript in late autumn 1924.[3]

The book describes Clarissa's preparations for a party she will host in the evening and the ensuing party. With an interior perspective, the story travels forwards and backwards in time to construct an image of Clarissa's life and the inter-war social structure. The novel addresses the nature of time in personal experience through multiple interwoven stories.

In October 2005, Mrs Dalloway was included on TIME Magazine's list of the 100 best English-language novels written since its first issue in 1923.[4]

On January 1, 2021, Mrs Dalloway entered the public domain in the United States.[5]

  1. ^ Whitworth, Michael H. (2005). Virginia Woolf (Authors in Context). Oxford University Press. p. xv. ISBN 9780191516566. Retrieved 19 May 2022.
  2. ^ a b Hussey, Mark (1995). Virginia Woolf, A-Z. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 172–173. ISBN 9780195110272. Retrieved 20 March 2024.
  3. ^ Prose, Francine, ed. (2003). "Introduction". The Mrs. Dalloway Reader (First ed.). Orlando, Florida: Harcourt. p. 2. ISBN 0-15-101044-7. Retrieved 20 March 2024.
  4. ^ Lev Grossman (8 January 2010). "All-Time 100 Novels: Mrs. Dalloway". Time. Retrieved 19 May 2022.
  5. ^ "Public Domain Day 2021 | Duke University School of Law". Archived from the original on 12 December 2020.