About the author ' . . . along
streets which had once been trod by Virginia Woolf. She had moved back to Bloomsbury
the year before Mrs Dalloway was published and would have passed this way with thoughts of her novel
in her head, of Clarissa Dalloway preparing for her party.' (p. 166) (Mrs Dalloway was originally to be called
The Hours, as in the novel by Michael
Cunningham (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998)
and the film based on it.)
Words and pictures:
(p.7) Stanley Spencer
(p.31) Augustus John
(p.41) Cranach 's Eve
(p.140) Gainsborough
(p.166) Mrs Dalloway
(p.188) Lucio Fontana
(p.264) Gwen John
Publisher and agentAfter Anjelica (detail)
From Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway (Hogarth Press, 1933):
'It rasped her, though, to have stirring about in her this brutal
monster! to hear twigs cracking and feel hooves planted down in the depths of
that leaf-encumbered forest, the soul; never to be content quite, or quite
secure, for at any moment the brute would be stirring, this hatred, which,
especially since her illness, had power to make her feel scraped, hurt in her
spine; gave her physical pain, and made all pleasure in beauty, in friendship,
in being well, in being loved and making her home delightful rock, quiver, and
bend as if indeed there were a monster grubbing at the roots, as if the whole
panoply of content were nothing but self love! this hatred!
'Nonsense,
nonsense! she cried to herself, pushing through the swing doors of Mulberry’s
the florists.'
. . .
'And as she began to go with Miss Pym from jar to jar, choosing,
nonsense, nonsense, she said to herself, more and more gently, as if this
beauty, this scent, this colour, and Miss Pym liking her, trusting her, were a
wave which she let flow over her and surmount that hatred, that monster,
surmount it all ...'