To The Lighthouse

About the Book

“A sort of transaction went on between them, in which she was on one side, and life was on another, and she was always trying to get the better of it, as it was of her.” On the Isle of Skye in Scotland, the Ramsay family is predicting and contemplating upon a visit to a lighthouse. And from the postponement emerges this incredible portrait of family life. James desires to visit the lighthouse, Mrs. Ramsay searches for permanence, Mr. Ramsay aims to be a successful philosopher, and Lily Briscoe, a passionate artist, is struggling over an incomplete artwork. Will James get to visit the lighthouse? Will the other characters triumph through their difficult times to achieve their aspirations? One of the most successful works of Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse is an exceptional experiment in the stream-of-consciousness literary technique. It is regarded as one of the best English-language novels of the twentieth century.

About the Author
Born as Adeline Virginia Stephen in Kensington, London, in 1882, Virginia Woolf was the daughter of the eminent critic and founding editor of the Dictionary of National Biography Leslie Stephen and Julia Prinsep Duckworth Stephen. Raised by her parents in their literate and well-connected household, she was influenced by the Victorian literary society and the prominent British intellectuals of her time including Henry James, George Henry Lewes, and James Russell Lowell. Virginia began writing in her teens. Her reviews were published anonymously in the Times Literary Supplement and other journals. The Voyage Out, originally titled Melymbrosia, was her first novel published in 1915 by Duckworth. She developed her art and went on to publish a number of novels including Night and Day (1919), Jacob’s Room (1922), Mrs Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), Orlando (1928), The Waves (1931), and The Years (1937). A Room of One’s Own (1929) and Three Guineas (1938) are among her famous non-fiction books. She drowned herself on March 28, 1941, by walking into the River Ouse with her overcoat pockets filled with stones. Her body was found on April 18, 1941. Virginia Woolf’s works have been translated into more than fifty languages. She continues to remain one of the significant writers of the twentieth century.