Showing results by author "Virginia Woolf" in All Categories

The collected BBC dramatisations of the fiction of Virginia Woolf, with star casts including Kristin Scott-Thomas, Vanessa Redgrave, Juliet Stevenson, Laura Fraser, Robert Glenister and Fenella Woolgar.... 

Fantasy, love and an exuberant celebration of English life and literature, Orlando is a uniquely entertaining story. Originally conceived by Virginia Woolf as a playful tribute to the family of her friend and lover, Vita Sackville-West, Orlando's central character, a fictional embodiment of Sackville-West, changes sex from a man to a woman and lives throughout the centuries, whilst meeting historical figures of English literature.

The Royal Botanic Gardens in London are lovely, no doubt. Many people wander down the flowered path; couples with children, young men with their elders, working class woman, and dating couples. Regardless of their circumstances, they all take in the beauty around them.

Brought to you by Penguin. This Penguin Classic is performed by Natalie Dormer, best known for her standout role as Queen Margaery in Game of Thrones, as well as her roles in The Hunger Games and Captain America: The First Avenger. A Room of One's Own, based on a lecture given at Girton College...

The principal theme of this ambitious book is time, threading together three generations of the Pargiter family. The story begins on a day in 1880 in the household of Colonel Abel Pargiter, his dying wife, and their seven children, and it ends in the 1930s with a brilliantly depicted party at which the Pargiters, young and old, pass in review. Important events - births, deaths, marriages, wars - occur in the wings; it is the commonplace moments that are captured here in a sequence of perfectly drawn scenes.

Virginia Woolf: The Essays contains the most important and impactful of Woolf's non-fiction writing, including five essay collections and her most renowned essay: A Room of One's Own. Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) was an English novelist and essayist regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century. During the interwar period, Woolf was a significant figure in London literary society and a member of the famous Bloomsbury Group.

The Waves traces the lives of six friends from childhood to old age. It was written when Virginia Woolf was at the height of her experimental powers, and she allows each character to tell their own story, through powerful, poetic monologues. By listening to these voices struggling to impose order and meaning on their lives, we are drawn into a literary journey that stunningly reproduces the complex, confusing and contradictory nature of human experience. It is read with affection and skill by Frances Jeater.

A bumper collection of accessible classics from the perennially popular BBC Radio 4 series This diverse, wide-ranging anthology features readings of 10 of the greatest books in the English language, taken from the BBC's Book at Bedtime and performed by a stellar cast of narrators. Here are...

One of the most famous of all literary dogs, Flush was the golden cocker spaniel belonging to Elizabeth Barrett. In this charming and heartfelt biography, Viginia Woolf tells his story: his early days as Miss Mitford's puppy running across the fields in wild abandon and fathering another, then the years spent in his invalid mistress' bedroom in Wimpole Street.

This feminist essay argues for both a literal and figural space for women writers within a literary tradition dominated by patriarchy. First published on 24 October 1929, the extended essay was based on a series of lectures delivered by Virginia Woolf at Cambridge University in October 1928. While it employs a fictional narrator and narrative to explore women both as writers of and characters in fiction, the manuscript for the delivery of the series of lectures, titled “Women and Fiction”, and hence the essay, are non-fiction. - Summary by Cori Samuel This recording was originally ...

Published in 1937 to commercial success, The Years is a powerful narrative that traces the fortunes of the Pargiter family from the 1880s through to the 1930s, capturing the shifting tides of English society as old traditions give way to modernity. Through Woolf's characteristically lyrical prose and sharp psychological insight, the ordinary rhythms of domestic life – births, deaths, reunions, quiet moments of longing – become heavy with meaning.

This anthology features a wide array of thought-provoking, genre-defining works from the 1900s, showcasing the range of modern storytelling—from existential musings to dark humour and intricate social commentary. These are the stories that have shaped modern literature, offering timeless insights into human nature and society. This collection brings together the finest modernist narratives, political reflections, and social commentaries that have shaped literature as we know it.

A single day becomes the entirety of a life in Virginia Woolf’s enduring exploration of a woman’s soul and purpose. As society hostess Clarissa Dalloway prepares for a party, she also reflects hour by hour on her past, her secret burdens, her safe marriage, and other compromises that have brought her to this moment in time. But elsewhere in London, a stranger, a damaged World War I veteran, makes irreversible choices of his own - choices that will intrude on Mrs. Dalloway’s reverie before the night is over.

Meet Orlando: a young nobleman in Elizabethan England, poet, lover, adventurer—and, after a transformational sleep, a woman. Spanning over 300 years of British history, Orlando bends the rules of time, gender, and narrative as its protagonist navigates shifting societies, identities, and expectations, all while seeking something elusive: the truth of the self. Playful, profound, and radically ahead of its time, Virginia Woolf's groundbreaking novel is part love letter, part satire, and part meditation on the fluid nature of existence.

An extended essay initially written in response to a letter pondering how to end war, Three Guineas eloquently relates women’s equal opportunity to the end of the power structures which contribute to conflict. Using the metaphor of three guineas, Woolf highlights three worthy causes to donate to in order to end violence: rebuilding education for women, supporting professional opportunities for women and the promotion of pacifism.

To the Lighthouse is at once a vivid impressionist depiction of a family holiday, and a meditation on a marriage, on parenthood and childhood, on grief, tyranny, and bitterness. Its use of stream of consciousness, reminiscence, and shifting perspectives gives the novel an intimate, poetic essence, and at the time of publication in 1927 it represented an utter rejection of Victorian and Edwardian literary values.

Here is Virginia Woolf at her most entertaining and informative, relishing the portraits and insights she presents as she surveys a varied collection of individuals in English society and English literature. In The Common Reader Volume 2, (published in 1932), the essay lives on and even more so in this sensitive and engaging book by Georgina Sutton.

The Waves traces the lives of six friends from childhood to old age. It was written when Virginia Woolf was at the height of her experimental literary powers, and she allows each character to tell their own story, through powerful, poetic monologues. By listening to these voices struggling to impose order and meaning on their lives we are drawn into a literary journey which stunningly reproduces the complex, confusing and contradictory nature of human experience.

Mrs. Dalloway, perhaps Virginia Woolf’s greatest novel, vividly follows English socialite Clarissa Dalloway as she prepares for a party in post-World War I London. Four-time Oscar nominee Annette Bening ( American Beauty, The Kids Are All Right) brings Woolf’s stream-of-consciousness style of storytelling to life, exploring the hidden springs of thought and action in one day of a woman’s life in a brilliant performance.

In the aftermath of World War I, Clarissa Dalloway is an upper-class politician’s wife, who longs for the carefree, impassioned days of her youth. Her marriage to a sensible man gives her many opportunities to socialize and progress in society, but this practicality also prevented her from following other romantic and personal passions. These old regrets come to new light as Clarissa is reintroduced to Peter Walsh, a man she loved—and who had proposed to her—in her younger days.