To the Lighthouse. 1st edition

1927

Special Collections PR6045 O72 T6 1927

London: Published by Leonard and Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press

Virginia Woolf attempts to fix ‘moments of being’ amidst life’s ‘incessant shower of innumerable atoms.’ Her visionary moments are not ‘great revelations’; rather, she describes them as ‘little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark.’ Despite their everyday character, these ‘moments of being’ have ‘inexplicable significance’ in Woolf’s work. In To the Lighthouse, Woolf’s Lily Briscoe experiences such moments as she completes her portrait of Mrs Ramsay and James; her work allows her to reconstruct the past and reveal its inner meaning.