The Voyage Out
Book 1 of The Virginia Woolf Library
Language: English
Publisher: Mariner
Published: Jan 1, 1915
Pages:
375
Book Details
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Description:
A young woman learns about life, and love found and lost, in this thought-provoking debut novel by one of the twentieth century's most brilliant and prolific writers -- with an introduction by Elisa Gabbert, author of The Unreality of Memory “Absolutely unafraid . . . Here at last is a book which attains unity as surely as Wuthering Heights, though by a different path.” -- E. M. ForsterLondon, 1905: Twenty-four-year-old Rachel Vinrace is a free spirited but painfully naïve young woman when she embarks on a sea voyage with her family to South America. Arriving in Santa Marina, a town on the South American coast, Rachel and her aunt Helen are introduced to a group of English expatriates, among them the sensitive Terence Hewet, an aspiring writer who is drawn to Rachel's unusual and dreamy nature. The two fall in love, unaware of the tragedy that lies ahead. With hints of Jane Austen, The Voyage Out is a softer and more traditional novel than Virginia Woolf's later work, even as its poetic style and innovative technique -- with detailed portraits of characters' inner lives and mesmeric shifts between the quotidian and the profound -- reflect Woolf's signature style.The Modern Library Torchbearers series features women who wrote on their own terms, with boldness, creativity, and a spirit of resistance.
The Modern Library is proud to include Virginia Woolf's first novel, The Voyage Out--together with a new Introduction by Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Michael Cunningham. Published to acclaim in England in 1915 and in America five years later, The Voyage Out marks Woolf's beginning as one of the twentieth century's most brilliant and prolific writers.Less formally experimental than her later novels, The Voyage Out none-theless clearly lays bare the poetic style and innovative technique--with its multiple figures of consciousness, its detailed portraits of characters' inner lives, and its constant shifting between the quotidian and the profound--that are the signature of Woolf's fiction. Rachel Vinrace, Woolf's first heroine, is a motherless young woman who, at twenty-four, embarks on a sea voyage with a party of other English folk to South America. Guileless, and with only a smattering of education, Rachel is taken under the wing of her aunt Helen, who desires to teach Rachel "how to live."Arriving in Santa Marina, a village on the South American coast, Rachel and Helen are introduced to a group of English expatriates. Among them is the young, sensitive Terence Hewet, an aspiring writer, with whom Rachel falls in love. But theirs is ultimately a tale of doomed love, set against a chorus of other stories and other points of view, as the narrative shifts focus between its central and peripheral characters. E. M. Forster praised The Voyage Out as "a book which attains unity as surely as Wuthering Heights, though by a different path."This edition includes a new Introduction by Michael Cunningham, bestselling author of The Hours. Cunningham at once unfolds an engaging short essay of Woolf's early life and career, an insightful exploration of the themes to which Woolf returns again and again in her fiction, and a spirited defense of the relevance and lasting importance of her art. Katherine Anne Porter wrote of Woolf: "The world of arts was her native territory; she ranged freely under her own sky, speaking her mother tongue fearlessly."