"She could be herself, by herself".
WOOLF, Virginia To the Lighthouse. London: J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd. 1938.
8vo. Original brown wrappers lettered in black to spine and front cover; pp. 242; fragile front wrapper expertly repaired from the inside and lower wrapper replaced and spine relaid; good proof copy.
Proof copy of the first Everyman's Library edition of Woolf s most famous novel.
"What is the meaning of life? That was all- a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years, the great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead, there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark…".
To the Lighthouse is a modernist novel that skillfully plays with the passage of time. It exposes, with a famously meticulous eye, the existence of the Ramsay family and others in the Hebrides during a summer holiday and is radical for its use of stream of consciousness. In excavating the inner lives of the novel's characters; it observes them as they assume their time in the house whilst their private thoughts are secretly fraught with existential inquiry. Through her portrayal of varied relationship constructs and marital dynamics, Woolf posed challenging questions about gender relations and socetial structure, such as the expected 'morality' at a time when human experience and thought, particularly female experience, was not depicted as complex or permitted any kind of eccentricity.
Arguably Woolf's most significant literary accomplishment, the novel draws inspiration from the author's own childhood memories, predominantly the influence of her mother's death. Woolf and her sister Vanessa Bell returned to their home in Cornwall, a place which inspired To the Lighthouse as adults. Although they stared at the windows of Talland House, Woolf would write, "as we well knew, we could go no further. If we advanced, the spell was broken. The lights were not our lights, the voices were the voices of strangers". It was only memory, just as the Ramsey's house is described as a deserted fortress that may as wee have been "left like a shell on a sandhill to fill with dry salt grains now that life had left it".
Virignia Woolf wrote about the emotional earthquakes that are perhaps sentiments which have no socially sanctioned language to be expressed with. She was such a pioneer of Stream of Consciousness that she technically created it.
Since 1906, Everyman's Library published affordable editions of world literature, appealing to a diverse readership. In 1938, Woolf's To the Lighthouse became number 948 in the Everyman s Library series.
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