MRS DALLOWAY'S PARTY

This summer many of us will be celebrating one hundred years since the publication of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway, but there’s more to this novel than meets the eye. 

Mrs Dalloway began as a short story titled Mrs Dalloway in Bond Street. It was published in 1923 and led to Woolf writing one of the 20th century’s best loved books. Few people realise that when she completed Mrs Dalloway, she felt compelled to return to the scene described in its final pages and wrote six stories about Clarissa’s party and her guests. In these works (not published until after her death) we meet a host of characters both new and familiar: there’s Mrs Vallance, who reminisces about her past in Scotland, Lily Everit, who is glowing after having received a good mark on a college essay, and (of course) Clarissa Dalloway herself, who flits through the room – there one minute and gone the next. 

You do not have to have read any Woolf or be familiar with Mrs Dalloway to enjoy this study. Some may wish to make this preparatory reading for the novel, while others will want to use it to expand on their understanding of the text. This also serves as background reading for To the Lighthouse, the novel Woolf wrote after completing these stories. Looking through them we might notice several similar themes such as nostalgia, the figure of the hostess, and the archetype of the young, intellectual woman who struggles in her shadow.

JOINING DETAILS:

• Four meeting study led by Karina Jakubowicz on Zoom
• Tuesdays, 10 June – 1 July, 6.00-8.00 pm (BST)
• Schedule:
  10 June – Mrs Dalloway in Bond Street paired with the opening of the novel Mrs Dalloway
  17 June – The Man Who Loved His Kind and The Introduction
  24 June – Ancestors and Together and Apart
  1 July – The New Dress and A Summing Up
• Texts will be provided
• £130 for four sessions
• Please use this link to share details