Alternate cover for this ISBN can be foundhereMrs. Dallowaychronicles a June day in the life of Clarissa Dallowaya day that is taken up with running minor errands in preparation for a party and that is punctuated, toward the end, by the suicide of a young man she has never met. In giving an apparently ordinary day such immense resonance and significanceinfusing it with the elemental conflict between death and lifeVirginia Woolf triumphantly discovers her distinctive style as a novelist.Originally published in 1925,Mrs. Dallowayis Woolfs first complete rendering of what she described as the luminous envelope of consciousness: a dazzling display of the minds inside as it plays over the brilliant surface and darker depths of reality.

Society hostess, Clarissa Dalloway is giving a party. Her thoughts and sensations on that one day, and the interior monologues of others whose lives are interwoven with hers gradually reveal the characters of the central protagonists. Clarissa’s life is touched by tragedy as the events in her day run parallel to those of Septimus Warren Smith.