To the Lighthouse

HarperCollins is proud to present our range of timeless literary classics. Every summer, the Ramsays visit their summer home on the beautiful Isle of Skye, surrounded by the excitement and chatter of family and friends, mirroring Virginia Woolf’s own joyful holidays of her youth. But as time passes, and in its wake the First World War, the transience of life becomes ever more apparent through the vignette of the thoughts and observations of the novel’s disparate cast. A landmark of high modernism and the most autobiographical of Virginia Woolf’s novels, To the Lighthouse explores themes of loss, class structure and the question of perception, in a hauntingly beautiful memorial to the lost but not forgotten. Chosen by TIME magazine as one of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to the present.

HarperCollins is proud to present our range of timeless literary classics. Every summer, the Ramsays visit their summer home on the beautiful Isle of Skye, surrounded by the excitement and chatter of family and friends, mirroring Virginia Woolf’s own joyful holidays of her youth. But as time passes, and in its wake the First World War, the transience of life becomes ever more apparent through the vignette of the thoughts and observations of the novel’s disparate cast. A landmark of high modernism and the most autobiographical of Virginia Woolf’s novels, To the Lighthouse explores themes of loss, class structure and the question of perception, in a hauntingly beautiful memorial to the lost but not forgotten. Chosen by TIME magazine as one of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to the present.

With an Introduction and Notes by Dr Nicola Bradbury, University of Reading. This simple and haunting story captures the transcience of life and its surrounding emotions. To the Lighthouse is the most autobiographical of Virginia Woolf's novels. It is based on her own early experiences, and while it touches on childhood and children's perceptions and desires, it is at its most trenchant when exploring adult relationships, marriage and the changing class-structure in the period spanning the Great War.

When Mrs Ramsay tells her guests at her summer house on the Isle of Skye that they will be able to visit the nearby lighthouse the following day, little does she know that this trip will only be completed ten years later by her husband, and that a gulf of war, grief and loss will have opened in the meantime. As each character tries to readjust their memories and emotions with the shifts of time and reality, this long-delayed excursion will also prove to be a journey of self-discovery and fulfilment for them. Rich in symbolism, daring in style, elegiac in tone and encapsulating Virginia Woolf’s ideas on life, art and human relationships, To the Lighthouse is a landmark of twentieth-century literature and one of the high points of early Modernism.

'I am making up "To the Lighthouse" - the sea is to be heard all through it' Inspired by the lost bliss of her childhood summers in Cornwall, Virginia Woolf produced one of the masterworks of English literature in To the Lighthouse. It concerns the Ramsay family and their summer guests on the Isle of Skye before and after the First World War. As children play and adults paint, talk, muse and explore, relationships shift and mutate. A captivating fusion of elegy, autobiography, socio-political critique and visionary thrust, it is the most accomplished of all Woolf's novels. On completing it, she thought she had exorcised the ghosts of her imposing parents, but she had also brought form to a book every bit as vivid and intense as the work of Lily Briscoe, the indomitable artist at the centre of the novel. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

With an Introduction and Notes by Dr Nicola Bradbury, University of Reading. This simple and haunting story captures the transcience of life and its surrounding emotions. To the Lighthouse is the most autobiographical of Virginia Woolf's novels. It is based on her own early experiences, and while it touches on childhood and children's perceptions and desires, it is at its most trenchant when exploring adult relationships, marriage and the changing class-structure in the period spanning the Great War.

'I am making up "To the Lighthouse" - the sea is to be heard all through it' Inspired by the lost bliss of her childhood summers in Cornwall, Virginia Woolf produced one of the masterworks of English literature in To the Lighthouse. It concerns the Ramsay family and their summer guests on the Isle of Skye before and after the First World War. As children play and adults paint, talk, muse and explore, relationships shift and mutate. A captivating fusion of elegy, autobiography, socio-political critique and visionary thrust, it is the most accomplished of all Woolf's novels. On completing it, she thought she had exorcised the ghosts of her imposing parents, but she had also brought form to a book every bit as vivid and intense as the work of Lily Briscoe, the indomitable artist at the centre of the novel. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

When Mrs Ramsay tells her guests at her summer house on the Isle of Skye that they will be able to visit the nearby lighthouse the following day, little does she know that this trip will only be completed ten years later by her husband, and that a gulf of war, grief and loss will have opened in the meantime. As each character tries to readjust their memories and emotions with the shifts of time and reality, this long-delayed excursion will also prove to be a journey of self-discovery and fulfilment for them. Rich in symbolism, daring in style, elegiac in tone and encapsulating Virginia Woolf’s ideas on life, art and human relationships, To the Lighthouse is a landmark of twentieth-century literature and one of the high points of early Modernism.

When Mrs Ramsay tells her guests at her summer house on the Isle of Skye that they will be able to visit the nearby lighthouse the following day, little does she know that this trip will only be completed ten years later by her husband, and that a gulf of war, grief and loss will have opened in the meantime. As each character tries to readjust their memories and emotions with the shifts of time and reality, this long-delayed excursion will also prove to be a journey of self-discovery and fulfilment for them. Rich in symbolism, daring in style, elegiac in tone and encapsulating Virginia Woolf’s ideas on life, art and human relationships, To the Lighthouse is a landmark of twentieth-century literature and one of the high points of early Modernism.

Described by Virginia Woolf herself as 'easily the best of my books', and by her husband Leonard as a 'masterpiece', To the Lighthouse, first published in 1927, is one of the milestones of Modernism. Set on the Isle of Skye, over a decade spanning the First World War, the narrative centres on the Ramsay family, and is framed by Mrs Ramsay's promise to take a trip to the lighthouse the next day – a promise which isn't to be fulfilled for a decade. Flowing from character to character and from year to year, the novel paints a moving portrait of love, loss and perception. Bearing all the hallmarks of Woolf's prose, with her delicate handling of the complexities of human relationships, To the Lighthouse has earned its reputation – frequently appearing in lists of the best novels of the twentieth century, it has lost not an iota of brilliance.

Described by Virginia Woolf herself as 'easily the best of my books', and by her husband Leonard as a 'masterpiece', To the Lighthouse, first published in 1927, is one of the milestones of Modernism. Set on the Isle of Skye, over a decade spanning the First World War, the narrative centres on the Ramsay family, and is framed by Mrs Ramsay's promise to take a trip to the lighthouse the next day – a promise which isn't to be fulfilled for a decade. Flowing from character to character and from year to year, the novel paints a moving portrait of love, loss and perception. Bearing all the hallmarks of Woolf's prose, with her delicate handling of the complexities of human relationships, To the Lighthouse has earned its reputation – frequently appearing in lists of the best novels of the twentieth century, it has lost not an iota of brilliance.

‘Distance had an extraordinary power …’ Every summer, the Ramsay family visit their holiday home in Scotland. It is where the children find themselves, and where the intricacies of adult relationships are uncovered. However, just a decade later, the family shatters as they fall under the shadow of war, grief and bitterness. Woolf uses shifting perspectives and a stream of consciousness throughout the novel to create an intimate and lyrical essence. About The Virginia Woolf Collection: The Virginia Woolf Collection is comprised of six thought-provoking works. Classics such as Mrs Dalloway , Orlando , To the Lighthouse and many more delve into the historical, political and feminist issues prominent in the twentieth century. Woolf altered the course of modernist writing.

‘Distance had an extraordinary power …’ Every summer, the Ramsay family visit their holiday home in Scotland. It is where the children find themselves, and where the intricacies of adult relationships are uncovered. However, just a decade later, the family shatters as they fall under the shadow of war, grief and bitterness. Woolf uses shifting perspectives and a stream of consciousness throughout the novel to create an intimate and lyrical essence. About The Virginia Woolf Collection: The Virginia Woolf Collection is comprised of six thought-provoking works. Classics such as Mrs Dalloway , Orlando , To the Lighthouse and many more delve into the historical, political and feminist issues prominent in the twentieth century. Woolf altered the course of modernist writing.

'The Lighthouse was then a silvery, misty-looking tower with a yellow eye that opened suddenly and softly in the evening' To the Lighthouse is at once a vivid impressionistic depiction of a family holiday, and a meditation on marriage, on parenthood and childhood, on grief, tyranny and bitterness. For years now the Ramsays have spent every summer in their holiday home in Scotland, and they expect these summers will go on forever; but as the First World War looms, the integrity of family and society will be fatally challenged. With a psychologically introspective mode, the use of memory, 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. The Penguin English Library - collectable general readers' editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century to the end of the Second World War.

'The Lighthouse was then a silvery, misty-looking tower with a yellow eye that opened suddenly and softly in the evening' To the Lighthouse is at once a vivid impressionistic depiction of a family holiday, and a meditation on marriage, on parenthood and childhood, on grief, tyranny and bitterness. For years now the Ramsays have spent every summer in their holiday home in Scotland, and they expect these summers will go on forever; but as the First World War looms, the integrity of family and society will be fatally challenged. With a psychologically introspective mode, the use of memory, 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. The Penguin English Library - collectable general readers' editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century to the end of the Second World War.

A pioneering work of modernist fiction, using her unique stream-of-consciousness technique to explore the inner lives of her characters, Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse is widely regarded as one of the greatest artistic achievements of the twentieth century. This Penguin Classics edition is edited by Stella McNichol, with an introduction and notes by Hermione Lee. To the Lighthouse is at once a vivid impressionistic depiction of a family holiday, and a meditation on marriage, on parenthood and childhood, on grief, tyranny and bitterness. For years now the Ramsays have spent every summer in their holiday home in Scotland, and they expect these summers will go on forever; but as the First World War looms, the integrity of family and society will be fatally challenged. With a psychologically introspective mode, the use of memory, 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. Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) is regarded as a major 20th century author and essayist, a key figure in literary history as a feminist and modernist, and the centre of 'The Bloomsbury Group', an informal collective of artists and writers that exerted a powerful influence over early twentieth-century British culture. Between 1925 and 1931 Virginia Woolf produced what are now regarded as her finest masterpieces, from Mrs Dalloway (1925) to the poetic and highly experimental novel The Waves (1931). She also maintained an astonishing output of literary criticism, short fiction, journalism and biography, including the playfully subversive Orlando (1928) and A Room of One's Own (1929) a passionate feminist essay. If you enjoyed To the Lighthouse , you might like James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man , also available in Penguin Classics. 'Bears endless re-reading ... the sea encircles the story in a brilliant ebb and flow' Rachel Billington

"A classic for a reason. My mind was warped into a new shape by her prose and it will never be the same again." -- Greta Gerwig The authorized, original edition of one of the great literary masterpieces of the twentieth century: a miraculous novel of family, love, war, and mortality, with a foreword from Eudora Welty. From the seemingly trivial postponement of a visit to a nearby lighthouse, Woolf constructs a remarkable, moving examination of the complex tensions and allegiances of family life and conflict between men and women. To the Lighthouse is made up of three powerfully charged visions into the life of the Ramsay family living in a summer house off the rocky coast of Scotland. There's the serene and maternal Mrs. Ramsay, the tragic yet absurd Mr. Ramsay, their eight children, and assorted holiday guests. With the lighthouse excursion postponed, Woolf shows the small joys and quiet tragedies of everyday life that seemingly could go on forever. But as time winds its way through their lives, the Ramsays face, alone and together, the greatest of human challenges and its greatest triumph--the human capacity for change. A moving portrait in miniature of family life, To the Lighthouse also has profoundly universal implications, giving language to the silent space that separates people and the space that they transgress to reach each other.

"A classic for a reason. My mind was warped into a new shape by her prose and it will never be the same again." -- Greta Gerwig The authorized, original edition of one of the great literary masterpieces of the twentieth century: a miraculous novel of family, love, war, and mortality, with a foreword from Eudora Welty. From the seemingly trivial postponement of a visit to a nearby lighthouse, Woolf constructs a remarkable, moving examination of the complex tensions and allegiances of family life and conflict between men and women. To the Lighthouse is made up of three powerfully charged visions into the life of the Ramsay family living in a summer house off the rocky coast of Scotland. There's the serene and maternal Mrs. Ramsay, the tragic yet absurd Mr. Ramsay, their eight children, and assorted holiday guests. With the lighthouse excursion postponed, Woolf shows the small joys and quiet tragedies of everyday life that seemingly could go on forever. But as time winds its way through their lives, the Ramsays face, alone and together, the greatest of human challenges and its greatest triumph--the human capacity for change. A moving portrait in miniature of family life, To the Lighthouse also has profoundly universal implications, giving language to the silent space that separates people and the space that they transgress to reach each other.

A pioneering work of modernist fiction, using her unique stream-of-consciousness technique to explore the inner lives of her characters, Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse is widely regarded as one of the greatest artistic achievements of the twentieth century. This Penguin Classics edition is edited by Stella McNichol, with an introduction and notes by Hermione Lee. To the Lighthouse is at once a vivid impressionistic depiction of a family holiday, and a meditation on marriage, on parenthood and childhood, on grief, tyranny and bitterness. For years now the Ramsays have spent every summer in their holiday home in Scotland, and they expect these summers will go on forever; but as the First World War looms, the integrity of family and society will be fatally challenged. With a psychologically introspective mode, the use of memory, 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. Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) is regarded as a major 20th century author and essayist, a key figure in literary history as a feminist and modernist, and the centre of 'The Bloomsbury Group', an informal collective of artists and writers that exerted a powerful influence over early twentieth-century British culture. Between 1925 and 1931 Virginia Woolf produced what are now regarded as her finest masterpieces, from Mrs Dalloway (1925) to the poetic and highly experimental novel The Waves (1931). She also maintained an astonishing output of literary criticism, short fiction, journalism and biography, including the playfully subversive Orlando (1928) and A Room of One's Own (1929) a passionate feminist essay. If you enjoyed To the Lighthouse , you might like James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man , also available in Penguin Classics. 'Bears endless re-reading ... the sea encircles the story in a brilliant ebb and flow' Rachel Billington

'One of the greatest elegies in the English language, a book which transcends time' Margaret Drabble To the Lighthouse is at once a vivid impressionistic depiction of a family, the Ramseys, whose annual summer holiday in Scotland falls under the shadow of war, and a meditation on marriage, on parenthood and childhood, on grief, tyranny and bitterness. The novel's use of stream of consciousness, reminiscence and shifting perspectives gives it an intimate, poetic essence, and at the time of publication in 1927 it represented an utter rejection of all that had gone before. Edited by Stella McNichol with an Introduction and Notes by Hermione Lee

'One of the greatest elegies in the English language, a book which transcends time' Margaret Drabble To the Lighthouse is at once a vivid impressionistic depiction of a family, the Ramseys, whose annual summer holiday in Scotland falls under the shadow of war, and a meditation on marriage, on parenthood and childhood, on grief, tyranny and bitterness. The novel's use of stream of consciousness, reminiscence and shifting perspectives gives it an intimate, poetic essence, and at the time of publication in 1927 it represented an utter rejection of all that had gone before. Edited by Stella McNichol with an Introduction and Notes by Hermione Lee

To the Lighthouse , considered by many to be Virginia Woolf's finest novel, is a remarkably original work, showing the thoughts and actions of the members of a family and their guests on two separate occasions, ten years apart. The setting is Mr and Mrs Ramsay's house on a Scottish island, where they traditionally take their summer holidays, overlooking a bay with a lighthouse. An experimental work that pushes the limits of what we know about the world and ourselves, Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse is one of the most beautifully crafted of all novels written in the English language. This Macmillan Collector’s Library edition features an afterword by Sam Gilpin. Designed to appeal to the booklover, the Macmillan Collector's Library is a series of beautiful gift editions of much loved classic titles. Macmillan Collector's Library are books to love and treasure.

2023 Reprint of the 1927 edition. The subject of this brilliant novel is the daily life of an English family in the Hebrides. "There are dozens of passages in which the secret relations of men and women, especially women, to the trifling events of life are rendered with convincing and elaborate subtlety. To have written them is to have surpassed, in this one respect, almost every contemporary novelist." -The Saturday Review "Virginia Woolf stands as the chief figure of modernism in England and must be included with Joyce and Proust in the realization of experimental achievements that have completely broken with tradition. -New York Times "To the Lighthouse is one of the greatest elegies in the English language, a book which transcends time." -Margaret Drabble "Without question one of the two or three finest novels of the twentieth century. Woolf comments on the most pressing dramas of our human predicament: war, mortality, family, love. If you're like me you'll come back to this book often, always astounded, always moved, always refreshed." -Rick Moody "[Woolf's] people are astoundingly real...The tragic futility, the absurdity, the pathetic beauty, of life-we experience all of this in our sharing of seven hours of Mrs. Ramsay's wasted or not wasted existence. We have seen, through her, the world." -Conrad Aiken

This Norton Critical Edition includes: • The American edition of the novel, first published by Harcourt Brace in 1927, introduced and annotated by Margaret Homans. • A 1924-28 chronology of To the Lighthouse’s composition, revision, publication and reception. • A rich selection of background materials, thematically organized for ease of reference. Topics include: “Autobiographical Writings,” “Family and Other Contemporary Contexts and Sources,” “Essays by Virginia Woolf,” and “Literary Sources.” • Nine critical assessments of To the Lighthouse, from publication to the present day, by Arthur Sydney McDowell, Louis Kronenberger, Mary Colum, Francis Brown, Erich Auerbach, Adrienne Rich, Rachel Bowlby, Pamela L. Caughie, and Urmila Seshagiri. • A chronology and a selected bibliography

This Norton Critical Edition includes: • The American edition of the novel, first published by Harcourt Brace in 1927, introduced and annotated by Margaret Homans. • A 1924-28 chronology ofTo the Lighthouse’s composition, revision, publication and reception. • A rich selection of background materials, thematically organized for ease of reference. Topics include: “Autobiographical Writings,” “Family and Other Contemporary Contexts and Sources,” “Essays by Virginia Woolf,” and “Literary Sources.” • Nine critical assessments ofTo the Lighthouse, from publication to the present day, by Arthur Sydney McDowell, Louis Kronenberger, Mary Colum, Francis Brown, Erich Auerbach, Adrienne Rich, Rachel Bowlby, Pamela L. Caughie, and Urmila Seshagiri. • A chronology and a selected bibliography

2023 Reprint of the 1927 edition. The subject of this brilliant novel is the daily life of an English family in the Hebrides. "There are dozens of passages in which the secret relations of men and women, especially women, to the trifling events of life are rendered with convincing and elaborate subtlety. To have written them is to have surpassed, in this one respect, almost every contemporary novelist." -The Saturday Review "Virginia Woolf stands as the chief figure of modernism in England and must be included with Joyce and Proust in the realization of experimental achievements that have completely broken with tradition. -New York Times "To the Lighthouse is one of the greatest elegies in the English language, a book which transcends time." -Margaret Drabble "Without question one of the two or three finest novels of the twentieth century. Woolf comments on the most pressing dramas of our human predicament: war, mortality, family, love. If you're like me you'll come back to this book often, always astounded, always moved, always refreshed." -Rick Moody "[Woolf's] people are astoundingly real...The tragic futility, the absurdity, the pathetic beauty, of life-we experience all of this in our sharing of seven hours of Mrs. Ramsay's wasted or not wasted existence. We have seen, through her, the world." -Conrad Aiken

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.

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.

Celebrate a captivating novel with this special edition featuring the original cover created by Virginia Woolf's sister, Vanessa Bell, and the original text first published by The Hogarth Press. There were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark. The Ramseys have always spent their holidays at their summer house on Skye – holidays filled with noise, joy and the stuff of family life that might go on forever. But as time passes, bringing with it war and death, the summer home stands empty until one day the family return to make the long-postponed visit to the lighthouse. To the Lighthouse was published in 1927 and was more commercially successful than any of Woolf’s previous novels. Woolf herself thought it ‘easily the best of my books’. The book printed three times in its first year and went on to become one of Woolf’s best-loved works. The text of this edition of To the Lighthouse is based on the original Hogarth Press edition, published by Virginia and Leonard Woolf on 5 May 1927. The dust jacket features the original cover created by Virginia Woolf’s sister, Vanessa Bell, for the Hogarth Press. Beneath the cover ‘bright blue’ boards printed in gilt take inspiration from the finish of the first trade edition. 'My mind was warped into a new shape by her prose and it will never be the same again' Greta Gerwig ‘Woolf’s groundbreaking novel is still one of the best available accounts of self-mythologising middle-class family life’ Rachel Cusk ‘I reread this book every once in a while, and every time I do I find it more capacious and startling. It’s so revolutionary and so exquisitely wrought that it keeps evolving on its own somehow, as if it’s alive’ Alison Bechdel

Celebrate a captivating novel with this special edition featuring the original cover created by Virginia Woolf's sister, Vanessa Bell, and the original text first published by The Hogarth Press. There were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark. The Ramseys have always spent their holidays at their summer house on Skye – holidays filled with noise, joy and the stuff of family life that might go on forever. But as time passes, bringing with it war and death, the summer home stands empty until one day the family return to make the long-postponed visit to the lighthouse. To the Lighthouse was published in 1927 and was more commercially successful than any of Woolf’s previous novels. Woolf herself thought it ‘easily the best of my books’. The book printed three times in its first year and went on to become one of Woolf’s best-loved works. The text of this edition of To the Lighthouse is based on the original Hogarth Press edition, published by Virginia and Leonard Woolf on 5 May 1927. The dust jacket features the original cover created by Virginia Woolf’s sister, Vanessa Bell, for the Hogarth Press. Beneath the cover ‘bright blue’ boards printed in gilt take inspiration from the finish of the first trade edition. 'My mind was warped into a new shape by her prose and it will never be the same again' Greta Gerwig ‘Woolf’s groundbreaking novel is still one of the best available accounts of self-mythologising middle-class family life’ Rachel Cusk ‘I reread this book every once in a while, and every time I do I find it more capacious and startling. It’s so revolutionary and so exquisitely wrought that it keeps evolving on its own somehow, as if it’s alive’ Alison Bechdel

From English writer Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse explores the relationships and inner thoughts of a family on their visits to the Isle of Sky in Scotland. Considered a benchmark of the modernist tradition, the novel makes experimental use of third-person narration and subjective language. Woolf uses the postponement of a family trip to a nearby lighthouse to flush out the characters and the everyday discomforts and joys of existence. The novel explores the themes of time, memory, and the passage of life, as well as the inner conflicts in relationships and families. To the Lighthouse is often ranked as one of the greatest English-language books ever written.

A collectible hardcover edition of Virginia Woolf's masterpiece, featuring a new foreword by Patricia Lockwood A Penguin Vitae Edition Every summer, Mr. and Mrs. Ramsey and their eight children vacation on Scotland's idyllic Isle of Skye, surrounded by artist friends. They expect these summers will go on forever, but with the arrival of World War I, they are forced to reckon with change, loss, and time's unstoppable march, before making, years later, the long-awaited return to Skye and to its towering lighthouse. An intimate, impressionistic meditation on memory, grief, the brutalities of war, and the tensions of domestic life, revolutionary for its use of stream of consciousness and shifting points of view, and infused with a singular poetic essence, To the Lighthouse is both a landmark in modernist writing and one of the greatest literary works of the twentieth century. Penguin Vitae--loosely translated as "Penguin of one's life"--is a deluxe hardcover series from Penguin Classics celebrating a dynamic and diverse landscape of classic fiction and nonfiction from seventy-five years of classics publishing. Penguin Vitae provides readers with beautifully designed classics that have shaped the course of their lives, and welcomes new readers to discover these literary gifts of personal inspiration, intellectual engagement, and creative originality.

From English writer Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse explores the relationships and inner thoughts of a family on their visits to the Isle of Sky in Scotland. Considered a benchmark of the modernist tradition, the novel makes experimental use of third-person narration and subjective language. Woolf uses the postponement of a family trip to a nearby lighthouse to flush out the characters and the everyday discomforts and joys of existence. The novel explores the themes of time, memory, and the passage of life, as well as the inner conflicts in relationships and families. To the Lighthouse is often ranked as one of the greatest English-language books ever written.

To the Lighthouse is a book of interrelationships among people. Those who reject To the Lighthouse as inferior to Mrs. Dalloway because it offers no one with half the memorable lucidity of Clarissa Dalloway must fail to perceive its larger and, artistically, more difficult aims. They must fail to notice the richer qualities of mind and imagination and emotion which Mrs. Woolf, perhaps not wanting them, omitted from Mrs. Dalloway the story which opens brilliantly and carries on through a magnificent interlude ends with too little force and expressiveness. At any rate the rest of the book has its excellencies . . . Mrs. Woolf makes use of her remarkable method of characterization, a method not based on observation or personal experience, but purely synthetic, purely creational Neither Clarissa nor Mrs. Ramsay has anything autobiographical about her. It is, I think, in the superb interlude called Time Passes that Mrs. Woolf reaches the most impressive height of the book . . . It is inferior to Mrs. Dalloway in the degree to which its aims are achieved; it is superior in the magnitude of the aims themselves

To the Lighthouse is a book of interrelationships among peopl e. Those who reject To the Lighthouse as inferior to Mrs. Dalloway because it offers no one with half the memorable lucidity of Clarissa Dalloway must fail to perceive its larger and, artistically, more difficult aims. They must fail to notice the richer qualities of mind and imagination and emotion which Mrs. Woolf, perhaps not wanting them, omitted from Mrs. Dalloway the story which opens brilliantly and carries on through a magnificent interlude ends with too little force and expressiveness. At any rate the rest of the book has its excellencies . . . Mrs. Woolf makes use of her remarkable method of characterization, a method not based on observation or personal experience, but purely synthetic, purely creational Neither Clarissa nor Mrs. Ramsay has anything autobiographical about her. It is, I think, in the superb interlude called Time Passes that Mrs. Woolf reaches the most impressive height of the book . . . It is inferior to Mrs. Dalloway in the degree to which its aims are achieved; it is superior in the magnitude of the aims themselves

A collectible hardcover edition of Virginia Woolf's masterpiece, featuring a new foreword by Patricia Lockwood A Penguin Vitae Edition Every summer, Mr. and Mrs. Ramsey and their eight children vacation on Scotland's idyllic Isle of Skye, surrounded by artist friends. They expect these summers will go on forever, but with the arrival of World War I, they are forced to reckon with change, loss, and time's unstoppable march, before making, years later, the long-awaited return to Skye and to its towering lighthouse. An intimate, impressionistic meditation on memory, grief, the brutalities of war, and the tensions of domestic life, revolutionary for its use of stream of consciousness and shifting points of view, and infused with a singular poetic essence, To the Lighthouse is both a landmark in modernist writing and one of the greatest literary works of the twentieth century. Penguin Vitae--loosely translated as "Penguin of one's life"--is a deluxe hardcover series from Penguin Classics celebrating a dynamic and diverse landscape of classic fiction and nonfiction from seventy-five years of classics publishing. Penguin Vitae provides readers with beautifully designed classics that have shaped the course of their lives, and welcomes new readers to discover these literary gifts of personal inspiration, intellectual engagement, and creative originality.