To the Lighthouse

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David Rehak, Jul 22, 2016 - Fiction - 112 pages
To the Lighthouse (5 May 1927) is a novel by Virginia Woolf. A landmark novel of high modernism, the text, centering on the Ramsay family and their visits to the Isle of Skye in Scotland between 1910 and 1920, skillfully manipulates temporality and psychological exploration.To the Lighthouse follows and extends the tradition of modernist novelists like Marcel Proust and James Joyce, where the plot is secondary to philosophical introspection, and the prose can be winding and hard to follow. The novel includes little dialogue and almost no action; most of it is written as thoughts and observations. The novel recalls the power of childhood emotions and highlights the impermanence of adult relationships. One of the book's several themes is the ubiquity of transience.

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About the author (2016)

Virginia Woolf was born in London, England on January 25, 1882. She was the daughter of the prominent literary critic Leslie Stephen. Her early education was obtained at home through her parents and governesses. After death of her father in 1904, her family moved to Bloomsbury, where they formed the nucleus of the Bloomsbury Group, a circle of philosophers, writers, and artists. During her lifetime, she wrote both fiction and non-fiction works. Her novels included Jacob's Room, Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, Orlando, and Between the Acts. Her non-fiction books included The Common Reader, A Room of One's Own, Three Guineas, The Captain's Death Bed and Other Essays, and The Death of the Moth and Other Essays. Having had periods of depression throughout her life and fearing a final mental breakdown from which she might not recover, Woolf drowned herself on March 28, 1941 at the age of 59. Her husband published part of her farewell letter to deny that she had taken her life because she could not face the terrible times of war.

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