Virginia Woolf's Best Essays and Novels

Virginia Woolf was one of the two finest writers of 20th century literary Modernism (the other is James Joyce). She developed the innovative rhetorical style of "stream-of-consciousness" to a level never surpassed. And she authored two of the classics of feminist philosophy, A Room of One's Own (1929) and Three Guineas (1938). In this SDG, we will begin with an overview of her life - the daughter of an eminent literary biographer and a woman of exceptional beauty who died early, she grew up in a blended family within which she suffered both from mental disease (she was bi-polar) and sexual abuse. She became a founding member of the Bloomsbury Group (a community of economists, philosophers and artists who defined avant-garde intellectual life in Britain in the early 20th century). We will read her two feminist tracts, several of her most interesting essays and critical reviews, and three of her best-known novels: Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), and Between the Acts (1941), novels famous not only for their stylistic innovations but also for their searing portraits of women's lives and the cultural impact of World War I.