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Book Summary and Reviews of To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

To The Lighthouse

The Virginia Woolf Library Authorized Edition

by Virginia Woolf

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  • Published:
  • Dec 1989, 209 pages
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Book Summary

"Radiant as [To the Lighthouse] is in its beauty, there could never be a mistake about it: here is a novel to the last degree severe and uncompromising.

I think that beyond being about the very nature of reality, it is itself a vision of reality."—Eudora Welty, from the Introduction. The serene and maternal Mrs. Ramsay, the tragic yet absurd Mr. Ramsay, and their children and assorted guests are on holiday on the Isle of Skye. From the seemingly trivial postponement of a visit to a nearby lighthouse, Woolf constructs a remarkable, moving examination of the complex tensions and allegiances of family life and the conflict between men and women.

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Is there a book you can name that's influenced your life in some way?
...honest, sometimes angry and sometime mean. Harriet gave me permission to be honest about my feelings (though hopefully not too mean in public!) Also To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf, which I read in the spring semester of my freshman year (1976)-- the first book I'd ever read in an English class by a woman! It was revelatory, as...
-Michelle_H

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Media Reviews

"I reread this book every once in a while, and every time I do I find it more capacious and startling. It's so revolutionary and so exquisitely wrought that it keeps evolving on its own somehow, as if it's alive." —Alison Bechdel, author of Fun Home

"To the Lighthouse is one of the greatest elegies in the English language, a book which transcends time." —Margaret Drabble, author of The Witch of Exmoor

This information about To The Lighthouse was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

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Author Information

Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) was one of the major literary figures of the twentieth century. An admired literary critic, she authored many essays, letters, journals, and short stories in addition to her groundbreaking novels, including Mrs. Dalloway, To The Lighthouse, and Orlando.

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