Mrs. Dalloway - Broadview Edition by Woolf, Virginia; Wallace, Jo-Ann;

Short description:

Virginia Woolf’s influential novel explores the depth of meaning in a seemingly ordinary day of one woman’s life.

Long description:

Mrs. Dalloway takes place on one day in the middle of June 1923. Its plot is seemingly thin: a middle-aged society hostess is having a party; she hopes the Prime Minister will attend; she reconnects with old friends from her youth. From these slimmest of premises a whole world unfolds. Of all of Virginia Woolf’s novels, it is Mrs. Dalloway that appears to speak most intimately to our own time.

Selected contemporary reviews, both positive and negative, are included in the appendices of this edition, as are materials on the literary, political, medical, and educational contexts of the novel.

“With its annotated contemporary reviews, newspaper articles, and historical and medical documents, Broadview’s Mrs Dalloway is an ideal student text.” — Maggie Humm, University of East London, editor of The Edinburgh Companion to Virginia Woolf and the Arts

“Jo-Ann Wallace’s superb edition of Mrs. Dalloway offers students, scholars, and common readers a richly contextualized framework for Woolf’s fourth novel. Brief, clear, and unobtrusive annotations cover geographical, historical, economic, social, and literary allusions. A thorough yet readable introduction covers Woolf’s biography and reputation, her novel’s modernist and experimental features, and its status as a war novel. Excellent appendices capture a wide range of contemporary reactions, locate the novel within Woolf’s fictional and nonfictional canon, and give readers entry into the lived experience of the time through political, medical, educational, and social documents. The select bibliography and brief chronology are also helpful.” — Beth Rigel Daugherty, Otterbein University

“In both her introduction and her annotations, Wallace does an excellent job of explaining the genesis of Mrs. Dalloway as an aspect of Woolf’s emergent modernism. … Writings by Woolf’s own doctors, George Savage and Henry Head, as well as by W. H. R. Rivers on shell-shock, and information on Morley College and working men’s colleges complete this very well thought-out and richly detailed edition that is eminently suitable for both undergraduate and graduate classes.” — Mark Hussey, Virginia Wolf Miscellany

Table of Contents:

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Virginia Woolf: A Brief Chronology

A Note on the Text

Mrs. Dalloway

Appendix A: Contemporary Reviews

1. From John W. Crawford, “One Day in London the Subject of Mrs. Woolf’s New Novel,” The New York
   Times Book Review (10 May 1925)


2. From Richard Hughes, “A Day in London Life,” Saturday Review of Literature (16 May 1925)


3. From [Arthur Sydney McDowall,] “A Novelist’s Experiment,” Times Literary Supplement (21 May 1925)


4. From Gerald Bullett, “New Fiction,” The Saturday Review (30 May 1925)


5. From “New Novels,” New Statesman (6 June 1925)


6. From J.F. Holms, The Calendar of Modern Letters (July 1925)


7. From E.M. Forster, “The Novels of Virginia Woolf,” The Criterion (April 1926)


8. From Edwin Muir, “Contemporary Writers: Virginia Woolf,” Nation and Athenaeum (17 April 1926)

Appendix B: Literary Context

1. From Virginia Woolf, The Voyage Out (1915)


2. Virginia Woolf, “Mrs. Dalloway in Bond Street,” The Dial (July 1923)


3. From Virginia Woolf, Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown (1924)


4. From Virginia Woolf, “Modern Fiction” (1925)

Appendix C: Political Context

1. From J. Ramsay MacDonald, War and the Workers: A Plea for Democratic Control (1915)


2. “German Women in London,” The Times (13 May 1915)


3. From Sir Valentine Chirol, “India Old and New. I. Mr. Gandhi’s Teaching,”
   The Times (23 December 1920)


4. “Prime Minister’s Appeal. ‘Only Practicable Solution,’ Call to Electors”
   The Times (5 December 1923)


5. List of British Prime Ministers from 1916 to 1937

Appendix D: Medical Context

1. From George H. Savage, “Moral Insanity” (July 1881)


2. From W.H.R. Rivers, “Psychiatry and the War” (18 April 1919)


3. From Henry Head, “An Address on the Diagnosis of Hysteria” (1922)

Appendix E: Educational and Social Context

1. From Cicely Hamilton and Lilian Baylis, The Old Vic (1926)


2. “Sir W. Anson on Workmen’s Colleges,” The Times (20 September 1905)


3. From the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act (1919)

Works Cited and Select Bibliography