Virginia Woolf : To the Lighthouse : Modern Library Edition 1937 : Dust Jacket

To the Lighthouse

By Virginia Woolf

Published by Random House, New York, 1937. Modern Library Edition. First thus. Hardback book with original dust jacket. 310 pages.

CONDITION
A very good copy. The dust jacket is good and clean with just a few very small closed tears to the edges and some light rubbing to spine ends and corners. Boards and spine are very good. Endpaper clean and there are no previous owner's name or writing to the book. Pages very clean throughout. Overall a very good copy of the Modern Library edition.

To the Lighthouse is a 1927 novel by Virginia Woolf. The novel centres on the Ramsay family and their visits to the Isle of Skye in Scotland between 1910 and 1920.

Following and extending the tradition of modernist novelists like Marcel Proust and James Joyce, the plot of To the Lighthouse is secondary to its philosophical introspection. Cited as a key example of the literary technique of multiple focalisation, the novel includes little dialogue and almost no direct action; most of it is written as thoughts and observations. To the Lighthouse is made of three powerfully charged visions into the life of the Ramsay family—maternal Mrs. Ramsay, highbrow Mr. Ramsay, and their eight children—who live in a summer house off the rocky coast of Scotland. From Mr. Ramsay's seemingly trivial postponement of a visit to a nearby lighthouse, Virginia Woolf examines tensions and allegiances and shows that the small joys and quiet tragedies of everyday life could go on forever. The novel recalls childhood emotions and highlights adult relationships. Among the book's many tropes and themes are those of loss, subjectivity, the nature of art, and the problem of perception.

In 1998, the Modern Library named To the Lighthouse No. 15 on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. In 2005, the novel was chosen by TIME magazine as one of the one hundred best English-language novels since 1923

(Glass Cabinet)