Introduction

Abstract

Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, and The Waves, the novels collected together in this edition, are those on which Virginia Woolf’s reputation as an important modernist writer stands. They are the novels of her middle period. In them she draws repeatedly on events and occurrences in her life and on her emotional and psychological experiences, most notably the trauma of mental breakdown (Mrs. Dalloway, The Waves) and on the joy and security of childhood (To the Lighthouse, The Waves). Linking both, and also all three novels, is the symbolism of the sea, the imagery of the waves, stemming from vivid childhood recollections of being actually by the sea. Through images of the sea Virginia Woolf conveys the psychological experience of mental breakdown, but also her engagement with life and her developing mysticism; and increasingly — from, that is, Mrs. Dalloway to To the Lighthouse and from To the Lighthouse to The Waves — the poetic resonances of her references to the sea become structurally important.