Mrs Dalloway: Biography of a Novel
(Hardback)
Publishing Details
Mrs Dalloway: Biography of a Novel
By (Author) Mark Hussey
Manchester University Press
Manchester University Press
20th August 2025
United Kingdom
Classifications
General
Non Fiction
809
Physical Properties
Hardback
232
Width 156mm, Height 234mm, Spine 19mm
467g
Description
The first book in the 'Biography of a novel' series offers a compelling account of Virginia Woolf's masterpiece.
The fourth and best-known of Virginia Woolf's novels, Mrs Dalloway is a modernist masterpiece that has remained popular since its publication in 1925. Its dual narratives follow a day in the life of wealthy housewife Clarissa Dalloway and shell-shocked war veteran Septimus Warren Smith, capturing their inner worlds with a vividness that has rarely been equalled.
Mrs Dalloway: Biography of a novel offers new readers a lively introduction to this enduring classic, while providing Woolf lovers with a wealth of information about the novel's writing, publication and reception. It follows Woolf's process from the first stirrings in her diary through her struggles to create what was quickly recognised as a major advance in prose fiction. It then traces the novel's remarkable legacy to the present day.
Woolf wrote in her diary that she wanted her novel 'to give life & death, sanity & insanity... to criticise the social system, & to show it at work, at its most intense.' Mrs Dalloway: Biography of a novel reveals how she achieved this ambition, creating a book that will be read by generations to come.
Reviews
Mark Husseys fascinating biography of Mrs Dalloway is truly astounding in its encyclopaedic range and depth: taking the reader on a riveting journey through the composition, publication and global afterlives of this iconic novel.
Anna Snaith, Professor of Twentieth-Century Literature, Kings College London
Author Bio
Mark Hussey is Distinguished Professor of English Emeritus at Pace University in New York. He is founding editor of Woolf Studies Annual and general editor of the Harcourt Annotated Edition of the Works of Virginia Woolf, for which he edited To the Lighthouse. His recent publications include Clive Bell and the Making of Modernism (2022) and Modernism's Print Cultures (with Faye Hammill, 2016).
