The Waves By Virginia Woolf

ISBN : 9781840224108

Wordsworth Editions; New edition (June 5, 2000)

soft cover, 172 pages

Introduction and Notes by Deborah Parsons, University of Birmingham.\n\n'I am writing to a rhythm and not to a plot', Virginia Woolf stated of her eighth novel, The Waves. Widely regarded as one of her greatest and most original works, it conveys the rhythms of life in synchrony with the cycle of nature and the passage of time. Six children - Bernard, Susan, Rhoda, Neville, Jinny and Louis - meet in a garden close to the sea, their voices sounding over the constant echo of the waves that roll back and forth from the shore.\n\nThe subsequent continuity of these six main characters, as they develop from childhood to maturity and follow different passions and ambitions, is interspersed with interludes from the timeless and unifying chorus of nature. In pure stream-of-consciousness style, Woolf presents a cross-section of multiple yet parallel lives, each marked by the disintegrating force of a mutual tragedy.\n\nThe Waves is her searching exploration of individual and collective identity, and the observations and emotions of life, from the simplicity and surging optimism of youth to the vacancy and despair of middle-age.\n\nEditorial Reviews\n\nAbout the Author\nVirginia Woolf was born in London in 1882. From 1915 onward, she maintained an astonishing output of fiction, literary criticism, essays and biography. She married Leonard Woolf and in 1917 they founded the Hogarth Press. She died in 1941.