In the new edition of her highly regarded study, Laura Marcus examines a wide range of Virginia Woolf’s novels, short stories, essays and autobiographical writings in the context of themes and topics of central contemporary relevance and interest: time, history and narrative; modernism and the city; gender, sexuality and identity; art and life-writings. As well as exploring her significance for, and contribution to, feminist debates and to definitions of modernism, the book also includes detailed analyses of all Woolf’s novels an her non-fiction writings, including A Room of One’s Own, Three Guineas and the ‘biography’ Flush. It considers current theoretical approaches to Woolf’s work and also engages with Woolf’s own cultural contexts, exploring, for example, her responses to war, to Freud’s theories, and to early twentieth-century theories of sexuality and gender identity, and the transition from Victorianism to modernity.
