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  • The Life of Violet: Three Early Stories

    The Life of Violet by Woolf, Virginia; Seshagiri, Urmila;

    Three Early Stories

      • GET 10% OFF

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      • Publisher's listprice GBP 16.99
      • The price is estimated because at the time of ordering we do not know what conversion rates will apply to HUF / product currency when the book arrives. In case HUF is weaker, the price increases slightly, in case HUF is stronger, the price goes lower slightly.

        8 116 Ft (7 730 Ft + 5% VAT)
      • Discount 10% (cc. 812 Ft off)
      • Discounted price 7 305 Ft (6 957 Ft + 5% VAT)

    8 116 Ft

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    Availability

    Estimated delivery time: In stock at the publisher, but not at Prospero's office. Delivery time approx. 3-5 weeks.
    Not in stock at Prospero.

    Why don't you give exact delivery time?

    Delivery time is estimated on our previous experiences. We give estimations only, because we order from outside Hungary, and the delivery time mainly depends on how quickly the publisher supplies the book. Faster or slower deliveries both happen, but we do our best to supply as quickly as possible.

    Product details:

    • Publisher Princeton University Press
    • Date of Publication 7 October 2025
    • Number of Volumes Print PDF

    • ISBN 9780691263137
    • Binding Hardback
    • No. of pages144 pages
    • Size 215x139 mm
    • Language English
    • Illustrations 9 b/w illus.
    • 762

    Categories

    Long description:

    Virginia Woolf’s first fully realized work of fiction—published in its final, revised form for the first time

    A beguiling trio of fantastical and farcical anti-fairy tales about a giantess who builds a magical “cottage of one’s own,” battles a silver-scaled sea monster, and defies governesses and gravity alike

    In 1907, eight years before she published her first novel, a twenty-five-year-old Virginia Woolf drafted three interconnected comic stories chronicling the adventures of a giantess named Violet—a teasing tribute to Woolf’s friend Mary Violet Dickinson. But it was only in 2022 that Woolf scholar Urmila Seshagiri discovered a final, revised typescript of the stories. The typescript revealed that Woolf had finished this mock-biography, making it her first fully realized literary experiment and a work that anticipates her later masterpieces. Published here for the first time in its final form, The Life of Violet blends fantasy, fairy tale, and satire as it transports readers into a magical world where the heroine triumphs over sea-monsters as well as stifling social traditions.

    In these irresistible and riotously plotted stories, Violet, who has powers “as marvelous as her height,” gleefully flouts aristocratic proprieties, finds joy in building “a cottage of one’s own,” and travels to Japan to help create a radical new social order. Amid flights of fancy such as a snowfall of sugared almonds and bathtubs made of painted ostrich eggs, The Life of Violet upends the marriage plot, rejects the Victorian belief that women must choose between virtue and ambition, and celebrates women’s friendships and laughter.

    A major literary discovery that heralds Woolf’s ambitions to revolutionize fiction and sheds new light on her great themes, The Life of Violet is first and foremost a delight to read.

    This volume features a preface, afterword, notes, and photographs that provide rich historical, literary, and biographical context.



    "A fresh perspective on Woolf’s early ‘literary experiments’ . . . . Suffused with delicate magic and penetrating wit, the stories in The Life of Violet foreground a radical world structured by laughter, magic, women’s friendships, and egalitarian social relations."

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