Mrs Dalloway: Hatchards Library Edition

It’s the day of Mrs Dalloway’s party. Old friends, her husband’s Westminster colleagues and even the Prime Minister himself are all invited. Yet it’s the past that fl oods and haunts Clarissa’s mind, especially when her friend Peter arrives out of the blue, back from India. While Mrs Dalloway buys fl owers, considers the books displayed in Hatchards’ window, mends her dress and prepares for the evening ahead, Septimus Smith, a man shell-shocked from the Great War, struggles with his memories too – dead comrades speak to him from the skies above Regent’s Park. Clarissa and Septimus never meet, yet their stories culminate – shockingly – just as the party begins. Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) was the author of nine novels, as well as numerous short stories and essays. Renowned for experimenting with stream-of-consciousness narratives in her fi ction, she was a leading light of the Bloomsbury group.