Rachel Bowlby is Professor of Comparative Literature Emeritus at University College London. Most recently, she is the author of Unexpected Items: Shopping, Parenthood, Changing Feminist Stories (2024) and Émile Zola: Writing Modern Life (2025).

This collection will be invaluable to readers ... Bowlby's words are worth rereading, since studies which acknowledge the diversity and 'unsettledness' of Woolf's work are still few and far between. -- Anna Snaith Beer and Bowlby are theoretically sophisticated and innovative ... Edinburgh has produced fine, large, well-bound volumes ... two of the best recent books on Woolf -- Woolf Studies Annual volume 5 This collection will be invaluable to readers ... Bowlby's words are worth rereading, since studies which acknowledge the diversity and 'unsettledness' of Woolf's work are still few and far between. Beer and Bowlby are theoretically sophisticated and innovative ... Edinburgh has produced fine, large, well-bound volumes ... two of the best recent books on Woolf

• Part One Feminist destinations: "we're getting there" - Woolf, trains and the destinations of feminist criticism; the trained mind; Orlando's vacillation; getting to Q - sexual lines in "To the Lighthouse"; thinking forward through Mrs Dalloway's daughter; Jacob's type; things; Orlando's undoing; partings; the dotted line. Part Two Further essays: "Orlando" - an introduction; Virginia Woolf's "In Love"; walking, women and writing; "A More than Maternal Tie" - Woolf as a woman essayist; "The Crowded Dance of Modern Life".