A collectible hardcover edition of Virginia Woolf's engulfing portrait
of one day in a woman's life, featuring a foreword by Jenny Offill, the
New York Times bestselling author of Weather and Dept. of
Speculation
A Penguin Vitae Edition
Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself. It's one of the
most famous opening lines in literature, that of Virginia Woolf's
beloved masterpiece of time, memory, and the city. In the wake of World
War I and the 1918 flu pandemic, Clarissa Dalloway, elegant and
vivacious, is preparing for a party and remembering those she once
loved. In another part of London, Septimus Smith is suffering from
shell-shock and on the brink of madness. Their days interweave and their
lives converge as the party reaches its glittering climax. In a novel in
which she perfects the interior monologue and recapitulates the life
cycle in the hours of the day, from first light to the dark of night,
Woolf achieves an uncanny simulacrum of consciousness, bringing past,
present, and future together, and recording, impression by impression,
minute by minute, the feel of life itself.
Penguin Vitae--loosely translated as Penguin of one's life--is a deluxe
hardcover series from Penguin Classics celebrating a dynamic and diverse
landscape of classic fiction and nonfiction from seventy-five years of
classics publishing. Penguin Vitae provides readers with beautifully
designed classics that have shaped the course of their lives, and
welcomes new readers to discover these literary gifts of personal
inspiration, intellectual engagement, and creative originality.
