Until you’ve consumed all of the best Virginia Woolf books, can you even claim to be a true fan?
- To the Lighthouse (1989)
- Mrs. Dalloway (1990)
- Orlando: A Biography (1973)
- A Room of One’s Own (1989)
- The Waves (1950)
- A Writer’s Diary (2003)
- Moments of Being (1985)
- The Complete Shorter Fiction of Virginia Woolf: Second Edition (1989)
- Flush: A Biography (2013)
- The Common Reader: First Series, Annotated Edition (2002)
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To the Lighthouse (1989)
“Radiant as [To the Lighthouse] is in its beauty, there could never be a mistake about it: here is a novel to the last degree severe and uncompromising. I think that beyond being about the very nature of reality, it is itself a vision of reality.”—Eudora Welty, from the Introduction.The serene and maternal Mrs. Ramsay, the tragic yet absurd Mr.
Mrs. Dalloway (1990)
In Mrs. Dalloway, the novel on which the movie The Hours was based, Virginia Woolf details Clarissa Dalloway’s preparations for a party of which she is to be hostess, exploring the hidden springs of thought and action in one day of a woman’s life. The novel “contains some of the most beautiful, complex, incisive and idiosyncratic sentences ever written in English, and that alone would be reason enough to read it.
Orlando: A Biography (1973)
In her most exuberant, most fanciful novel, Woolf has created a character liberated from the restraints of time and sex. Born in the Elizabethan Age to wealth and position, Orlando is a young nobleman at the beginning of the story-and a modern woman three centuries later. “A poetic masterpiece of the first rank” (Rebecca West). The source of a critically acclaimed 1993 feature film directed by Sally Potter. Index; illustrations.
A Room of One’s Own (1989)
In A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf imagines that Shakespeare had a sister—a sister equal to Shakespeare in talent, and equal in genius, but whose legacy is radically different. This imaginary woman never writes a word and dies by her own hand, her genius unexpressed. If only she had found the means to create, argues Woolf, she would have reached the same heights as her immortal sibling.
The Waves (1950)
Set on the coast of England against the vivid background of the sea, The Waves introduces six characters—three men and three women—who are grappling with the death of a beloved friend, Percival. Instead of describing their outward expressions of grief, Virginia Woolf draws her characters from the inside, revealing their, inner lives: their aspirations, their triumphs and regrets, their awareness of unity and isolation.
A Writer’s Diary (2003)
An invaluable guide to the art and mind of Virginia Woolf, drawn by her husband from the personal record she kept over a period of twenty-seven years. Included are entries that refer to her own writing, others that are clearly writing exercises; accounts of people and scenes relevant to the raw material of her work; and comments on books she was reading. Edited and with a Preface by Leonard Woolf; Indices.
Moments of Being (1985)
A collection of five memoir pieces written for different audiences spanning almost four decades, Moments of Being reveals the remarkable unity of Virginia Woolf’s art, thought, and sensibility.
The Complete Shorter Fiction of Virginia Woolf: Second Edition (1989)
Woolf continually used stories and sketches to experiment with narrative models and themes for her novels. This collection of nearly fifty pieces brings together the contents of two published volumes, A Haunted House and Mrs. Dalloway’s Party; a number of uncollected stories; and several previously unpublished pieces. Edited and with an Introduction by Susan Dick.
Flush: A Biography (2013)
2013 Reprint of 1933 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. “Flush: A Biography,” an imaginative biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s cocker spaniel, is a cross-genre blend of fiction and nonfiction published in 1933.
The Common Reader: First Series, Annotated Edition (2002)
Woolf’s first and most popular volume of essays. This collection has more than twenty-five selections, including such important statements as “Modern Fiction” and “The Modern Essay.” Edited and with an Introduction by Andrew McNeillie; Index.
Best Virginia Woolf Books You Should Enjoy
We highly recommend you to buy all paper or e-books in a legal way, for example, on Amazon. But sometimes it might be a need to dig deeper beyond the shiny book cover. Before making a purchase, you can visit resources like Library Genesis and download some virginia woolf books mentioned below at your own risk. Once again, we do not host any illegal or copyrighted files, but simply give our visitors a choice and hope they will make a wise decision.
All the Lives We Ever Lived: Seeking Solace in Virginia Woolf
Author(s): Katharine Smyth
ID: 2321799, Publisher: Crown, Year: 29 Jan 2019, Size: 4 Mb, Format: epub
Modernist Waterscapes: Water, Imagination and Materiality in the Works of Virginia Woolf
Author(s): Marlene Dirschauer
ID: 3602543, Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan, Year: 2023, Size: 4 Mb, Format: pdf
Modernists and the Theatre: The Drama of W.B. Yeats, Ezra Pound, D.H. Lawrence, James Joyce, T.S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf
Author(s): James Moran
ID: 3222914, Publisher: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, Year: 2022, Size: 3 Mb, Format: pdf
Please note that this booklist is not definite. Some books are really record-breakers according to Los Angeles Times, others are written by unknown writers. On top of that, you can always find additional tutorials and courses on Coursera, Udemy or edX, for example. Are there any other relevant books you could recommend? Drop a comment if you have any feedback on the list.