Anyhow, this was Jacob Flanders, aged nineteen. It is no use trying to sum people up. One must follow hints, not exactly what is said, nor yet entirely what is done.Virginia Woolf's third novel, Jacob's Room was her first foray into Modernist literature. Jacob Flander's childhood in Cornwall, his education at Cambridge and his adult life, including the...
Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind. Based on a lecture given at Cambridge and first published in 1929, ‘A Room of One’s Own’ interweaves Woolf’s personal experience as a female writer with themes ranging from Austen and Brontë to Shakespeare’s gifted (and imaginary)...
Every summer, the Ramsays visit their summer home on the beautiful Isle of Skye, surrounded by the excitement and chatter of family and friends, mirroring Virginia Woolf’s own joyful holidays of her youth. But as time passes, and in its wake the First World War, the transience of life becomes ever more apparent through the vignette of the thoughts and...
Clarissa Dalloway is a woman of high-society - vivacious, hospitable and sociable on the surface, yet underneath troubled and dissatisfied with her life in post-war Britain. This disillusionment is an emotion that bubbles under the surface of all of Woolf's characters in Mrs Dalloway.Centred around one day in June where Clarissa is preparing for and...
Written for her lover Vita Sackville-West, 'Orlando' is Woolf's playfully subversive take on a biography, here tracing the fantastical life of Orlando. As the novel spans centuries and continents, gender and identity, we follow Orlando's adventures in love - from being a lord in the Elizabethan court to a lady in 1920s London. First published in 1928,...
The young Rachel Vinrance leaves England on her father’s ship, the Euphrosyne, on a voyage to South America. Despite being accompanied by her father and her aunt and uncle, Helen and Ridley Ambrose, the passage leads to Rachel’s awakening, both as a woman and as an individual. As the ship is wracked by storms, she finds herself romantically entangled with...
Second to the right ... and then straight on till morning! Desperate to hear bedtime stories, Peter Pan waits outside the nursery window of Wendy, John and Michael Darling. When Peter asks Wendy to fly with him to Neverland, the Darling children are whisked away to a world of adventure - of daring fairies, wondrous mermaids and The Lost Boys. But there...
It is with a heavy heart that I take up my pen to write these the last words in which I shall ever record the singular gifts by which my friend Mr. Sherlock Holmes was distinguished. This collection of eleven stories depict Holmes and Watson at their very best and solving some of their most notorious cases, culminating in The Final Problem. In this...
Originally published in 1903–1904, The Return of Sherlock Holmes is the thirteen-story collection of one of the greatest-ever fictional detectives. Three years after the supposed death of Sherlock Holmes and his archenemy Professor Moriarty in the torrent of Reichenbach Falls, Holmes makes a disguised reappearance to Baker Street and his good friend Dr...
Featuring the last 12 stories ever written about the infamous detective, The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes contains some of Conan Doyle’s most villainous and unusual characters. The 1920s was a disenchanting era, and the darker mood of many of these stories reflects the environment at the time. Some even felt that the stories showed Conan Doyle exploring...
Set against the foggy, mysterious backdrops of London and the English countryside, these are the first twelve stories ever published to feature the infamous Detective Sherlock Holmes and his side kick Doctor Watson. They first appeared as stories in the Strand Magazine and feature some of his most famous and enjoyable cases, including A Scandal in...