3.5
The Voyage Out
First published in 1915, "The Voyage Out", Virginia Woolf's first novel, may be her most accessible. It is a witty social satire that chronicles the maturity of the young Englishwoman Rachel Vinrace as she takes a long voyage to South America from London on her father's ship. Rachel encounters an eclectic array of passengers on the boat and through them Woolf satirizes Edwardian life. This physical passage also becomes a journey of self-discovery for Rachel. She takes both a literal and mythical journey as she enters adulthood and moves from the sheltered world of her upbringing to the wide world full of potential and knowledge. While the novel is witty and satirical, it is also haunting and melancholic, with the beautifully flowing language uniquely characteristic of Woolf's writing. Many of the themes that come to dominate Woolf's later works, such as sexuality, consciousness, and death, are first explored in "The Voyage Out." Rachel's coming-of-age tale is that of the spiritual growth of a young woman that spans continents, a journey that paralleled that of Woolf's own life as she left her repressive upbringing to enter the world of art and intellectualism. This edition is printed on premium acid-free paper.
FictionClassics
RELEASED2018
PUBLISHERDigireads.com Publishing
LENGTH282
LANGUAGEEN
Virginia Woolf was an English novelist, essayist, diarist, epistler, publisher, feminist, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century. ([Source][1].) [Comment from Ursula Le Guin on The Guardian][2]: > You can't write science fiction well if you haven't read it, though not all who try to write it know this. But nor can you write it well if you haven't read anything else. Genre is a rich dialect, in which you can say certain things in a particularly satisfying way, but if it gives up connection with the general literary language it becomes a jargon, meaningful only to an ingroup. Useful models may be found quite outside the genre. I learned a lot from reading the ever-subversive Virginia Woolf. > I was 17 when I read [Orlando][3]. It was half-revelation, half-confusion to me at that age, but one thing was clear: that she imagined a society vastly different from our own, an exotic world, and brought it dramatically alive. I'm thinking of the Elizabethan scenes, the winter when the Thames froze over. Reading, I was there, saw the bonfires blazing in the ice, felt the marvellous strangeness of that moment 500 years ago – the authentic thrill of being taken absolutely elsewhere. > How did she do it? By precise, specific descriptive details, not heaped up and not explained: a vivid, telling imagery, highly selected, encouraging the reader's imagination to fill out the picture and see it luminous, complete. > In [Flush][4], Woolf gets inside a dog's mind, that is, a non-human brain, an alien mentality – very science-fictional if you look at it that way. Again what I learned was the power of accurate, vivid, highly selected detail. I imagine Woolf looking down at the dog asleep beside the ratty armchair she wrote in and thinking what are your dreams? and listening . . . sniffing the wind . . . after the rabbit, out on the hills, in the dog's timeless world. > Useful stuff, for those who like to see through eyes other than our own. [1]:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Woolf [2]: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/may/14/science-fiction-authors-choice [3]: http://openlibrary.org/works/OL39360W/Orlando [4]: http://openlibrary.org/works/OL39320W/Flush
3.5
The Voyage Out
First published in 1915, "The Voyage Out", Virginia Woolf's first novel, may be her most accessible. It is a witty social satire that chronicles the maturity of the young Englishwoman Rachel Vinrace as she takes a long voyage to South America from London on her father's ship. Rachel encounters an eclectic array of passengers on the boat and through them Woolf satirizes Edwardian life. This physical passage also becomes a journey of self-discovery for Rachel. She takes both a literal and mythical journey as she enters adulthood and moves from the sheltered world of her upbringing to the wide world full of potential and knowledge. While the novel is witty and satirical, it is also haunting and melancholic, with the beautifully flowing language uniquely characteristic of Woolf's writing. Many of the themes that come to dominate Woolf's later works, such as sexuality, consciousness, and death, are first explored in "The Voyage Out." Rachel's coming-of-age tale is that of the spiritual growth of a young woman that spans continents, a journey that paralleled that of Woolf's own life as she left her repressive upbringing to enter the world of art and intellectualism. This edition is printed on premium acid-free paper.
FictionClassics
RELEASED2018
PUBLISHERDigireads.com Publishing
LENGTH282
LANGUAGEEN
Virginia Woolf was an English novelist, essayist, diarist, epistler, publisher, feminist, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century. ([Source][1].) [Comment from Ursula Le Guin on The Guardian][2]: > You can't write science fiction well if you haven't read it, though not all who try to write it know this. But nor can you write it well if you haven't read anything else. Genre is a rich dialect, in which you can say certain things in a particularly satisfying way, but if it gives up connection with the general literary language it becomes a jargon, meaningful only to an ingroup. Useful models may be found quite outside the genre. I learned a lot from reading the ever-subversive Virginia Woolf. > I was 17 when I read [Orlando][3]. It was half-revelation, half-confusion to me at that age, but one thing was clear: that she imagined a society vastly different from our own, an exotic world, and brought it dramatically alive. I'm thinking of the Elizabethan scenes, the winter when the Thames froze over. Reading, I was there, saw the bonfires blazing in the ice, felt the marvellous strangeness of that moment 500 years ago – the authentic thrill of being taken absolutely elsewhere. > How did she do it? By precise, specific descriptive details, not heaped up and not explained: a vivid, telling imagery, highly selected, encouraging the reader's imagination to fill out the picture and see it luminous, complete. > In [Flush][4], Woolf gets inside a dog's mind, that is, a non-human brain, an alien mentality – very science-fictional if you look at it that way. Again what I learned was the power of accurate, vivid, highly selected detail. I imagine Woolf looking down at the dog asleep beside the ratty armchair she wrote in and thinking what are your dreams? and listening . . . sniffing the wind . . . after the rabbit, out on the hills, in the dog's timeless world. > Useful stuff, for those who like to see through eyes other than our own. [1]:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Woolf [2]: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/may/14/science-fiction-authors-choice [3]: http://openlibrary.org/works/OL39360W/Orlando [4]: http://openlibrary.org/works/OL39320W/Flush
