Katherine Hilbery, torn between past and present, is a figure reflecting Woolf's own struggle with history. Both have illustrious literary ancestors: in Katherine's case, her poet grandfather, and in Woolf's, her father Leslie Stephen, writer, philosopher, and editor. Both desire to break away from the demands of the previous generation without disowning it altogether. Katherine must decide whether or not she loves the iconoclastic Ralph Denham; Woolf seeks a way of experimenting with the ...

Waste is a key category for understanding cultural value. It is not just the 'bad stuff' we dispose of; it is material we constantly struggle to redeem. Cultures seem to spend as much energy reclassifying negativity as they do on establishing the negative itself. The huge tertiary sector devoted to waste management converts garbage into money, while ecological movements continue to stress human values and 'the natural.' But the problems waste poses are never simply economic or environmenta...

The Implicit Relation of Psychology and Law brings an innovative, feminist analysis to these affiliated fields. In addition to the explicit relationship between the two fields, they argue that there is an unrecognised implicit relation existing within the intersection of psychology and law which they find works to the disadvantage of women.

By refusing to directly depict its protagonist, this novel revolutionized the art of characterization in the 20th century. The narrative follows the life of Jacob Flanders through the eyes of the women who love him and the letters he leaves behind, creating a silhouette rather than a portrait. Woolf explores the disconnect between how we see ourselves and how we exist in the minds of others, set against the backdrop of a pre-war world hurtling toward destruction. It is an elegiac experimen...

"An analytical study of sexual depravity" and "an epic of vice" were two of the critical expressions which greeted the publication of "Women in Love". Yet Lawrence regarded this novel as his best book and F. R. Leavis considered it Lawrence's supreme masterpiece. The novel tells of the relationships of two sisters, Ursula and Gudrun, who live in a Midland colliery town in the years before the First World War. Ursula falls in love with Birkin (a thinly disguised portrait of Lawrence himself...

When Buddy Pancake and his buddies stumble across the Wish List website, they jokingly post their "impossible" wishes. Imagine their surprise when the wishes start coming true! But Buddy and his pals neglected to read the fine print and now must pay the price for the wishes they've been granted. Wish List is a compelling, nail-biting, laugh-out-loud thriller.

The marriage of Gertrude and Walter Morel has become a battleground. Repelled by her uneducated and sometimes violent husband, delicate Gertrude devotes her life to her children, especially to her sons, William and Paul - determined they will not follow their father into working down the coal mines. But conflict is evitable when Paul seeks to escape his mother's suffocating grasp through relationships with women his own age. Set in Lawrence's native Nottinghamshire, Sons and Lovers is a hi...

Virginia Woolf's Flush: A Biography is a playful yet incisive experiment in biographical form, recounting the life of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's cocker spaniel while quietly reimagining Victorian literary culture from an oblique, nonhuman perspective. Blending mock-heroic wit, lyrical impressionism, and social satire, Woolf transforms the conventions of biography into a meditation on class, gender, sensory experience, and domestic confinement. The book belongs to her most inventive 1930s...

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 a...

Mrs. Dalloway takes place over the course of a single day in a woman's life in 1920's London. There are flowers to buy, outfits to choose, but also a visit from a past lover, and the tragic fate of a young war veteran who cannot adjust to life in post-war London. Virginia Woolf's supple and mesmerizing account of an ordinary day draws the reader into the minds, perceptions, and emotions of an astonishingly varied and vivid cast of characters. Woolf reminds us that each day, hour, ...

Depicted through letters, Lady Susan tells the story of the titular character as she seeks husbands for herself and her daughter while maintaining a clandestine relationship with a married man. It is believed that Austen wrote Lady Susan in 1794, although it was not published until 1871, long after Austen’s death in 1817. Although written in Austen’s trademark style, Lady Susan is remarkable among Austen’s canon as Lady Susan pursues matches significantly younger...