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Virginia Woolf
Mrs. Dalloway
Mrs Dalloway (published on 14 May 1925) is a novel by Virginia
Woolf that details a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway in post-
World War I England. Mrs Dalloway continues to be one of
Woolf's best-known novels.
Created from two short stories, "Mrs Dalloway in Bond Street" and
the unfinished "The Prime Minister", the novel's story is of
Clarissa's preparations for a party of which she is to be hostess.
With the interior perspective of the novel, the story travels forwards
and back in time, and in and out of the characters' minds, to
construct a complete image of Clarissa's life and of the inter-war
social structure.
Virginia Woolf
The Waves
One of Woolf’s most experimental novels, The Waves presents six
characters in monologue - from morning until night, from childhood
into old age - against a background of the sea. The result is a
glorious chorus of voices that exists not to remark on the passing
of events but to celebrate the connection between its various individual
parts.
Virginia Woolf
A Haunted House
Virginia Woolf's intention to publish her short stories is carried
out in this volume, posthumously collected by her husband,
Leonard Woolf. Containing six of eight stories from Monday or
Tuesday, seven that appeared in magazines, and five other stories,
the book makes available Virginia Woolf's shorter works of fiction.
Virginia Woolf
Between the Acts
In Woolf’s last novel, the action takes place on one summer’s day
at a country house in the heart of England, where the villagers are
presenting their annual pageant. A lyrical, moving valedictory.
Virginia Woolf
The Years
Oscar Wilde
The Picture of Dorian Gray
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Oscar Wilde's story of a fashionable young man who sells his soul
for eternal youth and beauty is one of his most popular works.
Written in Wilde's characteristically dazzling manner, full of stinging
epigrams and shrewd observations, the tale of Dorian Gray's
moral disintegration caused something of a scandal when it first
appeared in 1890. Wilde was attacked for his decadence and corrupting
influence, and a few years later the book and the aesthetic/
moral dilemma it presented became issues in the trials occasioned
by Wilde's homosexual liaisons, trials that resulted in his
imprisonment. Of the book's value as autobiography, Wilde noted
in a letter, "Basil Hallward is what I think I am: Lord Henry what
the world thinks me: Dorian what I would like to be--in other
ages, perhaps."
James Joyce
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a semi-autobiographical
novel by James Joyce, first serialized in The Egoist from 1914 to
1915 and published in book form in 1916. It depicts the formative
years in the life of Stephen Dedalus, a fictional alter ego of Joyce
and a pointed allusion to the consummate craftsman of Greek
mythology, Daedalus.
A Portrait is a key example of the Künstlerroman (an artist's
bildungsroman) in English literature. Joyce's novel traces the intellectual
and religio-philosophical awakening of young Stephen
Dedalus as he begins to question and rebel against the Catholic
and Irish conventions he has been brought up in. He finally leaves
for Paris to pursue his calling as an artist. The work pioneers some
of Joyce's modernist techniques that would later come to fruition
in Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. The Modern Library ranked Portrait
as the third greatest English-language novel of the twentieth
century.
James Joyce
Ulysses
Ulysses is a novel by James Joyce, first serialized in parts in the
American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December
1920, then published in its entirety by Sylvia Beach on February 2,
1922, in Paris. It is considered one of the most important works of
Modernist literature.
Ulysses chronicles the passage through Dublin by its main character,
Leopold Bloom, during an ordinary day, June 16, 1904. The
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title alludes to the hero of Homer's Odyssey (Latinised into
Ulysses), and there are many parallels, both implicit and explicit,
between the two works (e.g., the correspondences between Leopold
Bloom and Odysseus, Molly Bloom and Penelope, and Stephen
Dedalus and Telemachus).
Edith Wharton
The Age of Innocence
The Age of Innocence centers on one society couple's impending
marriage and the introduction of a scandalous woman whose
presence threatens their happiness. Though the novel questions
the assumptions and mores of turn of the century New York society,
it never devolves into an outright condemnation of the institution.
In fact, Wharton considered this novel an "apology" for the
earlier, more brutal and critical, "The House of Mirth". Not to be
overlooked is the author's attention to detailing the charms and
customs of this caste. The novel is lauded for its accurate portrayal
of how the nineteenth-century East Coast American upper class
lived and this combined with the social tragedy earned Wharton a
Pulitzer - the first Pulitzer awarded to a woman.
Marcel Proust
Swann's Way
In Search of Lost Time or Remembrance of Things Past (French: À
la recherche du temps perdu) is a semi-autobiographical novel in
seven volumes by Marcel Proust. His most prominent work, it is
popularly known for its extended length and the notion of involuntary
memory, the most famous example being the "episode of
the madeleine". Still widely referred to in English as Remembrance
of Things Past, the title In Search of Lost Time, a more accurate
rendering of the French, has gained in usage since D.J.
Enright's 1992 revision of the earlier translation by C.K. Scott-
Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin.
Swann's Way is the first volume.
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