1. Virginia Woolf

About this Lecture

Lecture

In this module, we provide an overview of Virginia Woolf’s life, thinking in particular about: (i) her early childhood, especially the influence of her parents on her later life; (ii) her beginnings as a writer and literary critic as part of the Bloomsbury Group; (iii) her success with novels such as Mrs Dalloway (1925) and To The Lighthouse (1927); and (iv) her mental issues that led to her untimely death in 1941.

Course

In this course, Dr Madeleine Davies (University of Reading) explores Virginia Woolf’s 1925 novel, Mrs Dalloway. In the first three modules, we outline some of the key contexts for the novel, including: (i) the life and career of Virginia Woolf; (ii) Britain in the 19th and 20th centuries; and (iii) literary modernism. After that we turn to the novel itself, focusing in particular on its form and structure, the figure of Clarissa Dalloway, and the themes of connection and isolation, sexuality, war, insanity, and female creativity. We end with some tips for reading Virginia Woolf in general and Mrs Dalloway in particular.

Lecturer

Madeleine Davies is a Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Reading. She specialises in Women's Writing and Feminist Theory, particularly the work of Virginia Woolf and Margaret Atwood. She has published widely on Margaret Atwood in particular, including 'Margaret Atwood's Female Bodies' in C. A. Howells (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Margaret Atwood (2006).