LW Recommends

LW | Recommends

BOOK

Mrs Dalloway

by Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf’s celebrated novel, Mrs Dalloway, takes place a 100 years ago, in one single day in June 1923. It’s an insight to a society struggling to adapt after the First World War. Much of the stream of consciousness concerns Mrs Dalloway herself, preparing for a society party but there are myriad anxieties emerging both from her day and some of the parallel lives captured. It gives insights not only to the characters but to how cultural change is occurring.

You can hear an audio version of the book

PODCAST/ AUDIO

BBC Radio 4 - Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

There’s an excellent analysis of the book in a YouTube video from Professor Elaine Showalter. It uses images from the streets of London including around the British Library and Bloomsbury area where Virginia Wollf lived for part of her life. https://youtu.be/QM-fyF7xFtk

Melvyn Bragg guests discuss Woolf’s essay ‘A Room of One’s Own’ in the In Our Time series (March 2023). They consider the two lectures she gave at Cambridge University in 1928 and it was on the basis of these two talks that she published her influential book.

In Our Time - A Room of One's Own - BBC Sounds

FILM

Finally, if you want to know more about her life you can stream the 2018 film Vita and Virginia, starring Gemma Arterton, Elizabeth Debicki and Isabella Rosselini . It concerns the love affair between the socialite Vita Sackville-West and Woolf.

Vita & Virginia (2018) - IMDb

PODCAST/ AUDIO

Not interested in Virginia Woolf? Then try this podcast discussing the pros and cons of hybrid work.

Is hybrid work a trap for women? | Financial Times (ft.com)