To the Lighthouse Paperback - 2022

From the rear cover

One of the most innovative authors and distinguished literary critics of the twentieth century, Virginia Woolf examines family dynamics and the tensions between men and women in her 1927 novel To the Lighthouse. She explores multiple perspectives of the members of the Ramsay family as they navigate experiences of disappointment and loss. Divided into three parts, the story takes place pre- and post-World War I during visits to the Ramsays' summer residence on the Isle of Skye in Scotland.

Virginia Woolf strove to write a new fiction that emphasized the passage of time as both a series of sequential moments and a longer flow of years and centuries, as well as exploring the essential indefinability of character. To the Lighthouse is among her most successful experiments in her pioneering use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device in addition to such groundbreaking novels as Jacob's Room, Mrs. Dalloway, Orlando, and The Voyage Out.

First Edition Identification

To the Lighthouse was first published by Woolf’s own London-based Hogarth Press in May of 1927. Bound in blue cloth, first editions have no additional printings listed on the copyright page. The original cream-colored dust jacket, designed by Vanessa Bell, Woolf’s sister, features a lighthouse amid waves in pale blue and black ink.