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First Edition: Mrs Dalloway

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Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf was published in 1925 and was actually created from two short stories – Mrs Dalloway in Bond Street, and The Prime Minister. It is one of Woolf’s best known novels as all the action takes place on one day in June 1923. The story moves backwards and forwards in time, and in and out of character’s minds, as a picture of Clarissa’s life is constructed. Virginia Woolf

A first edition of the Hogarth Press 1925 edition [above right] is for sale at Peter Harrington, at time of going to press, for £1,750. Around 2000 copies of the first printing were produced.
A rare first edition of the American book [below] with the Vanessa Bell dust jacket, published in 1925 by Harcourt, Brace and Company, is for sale at Raptis Rare Books for $5,500. Virginia Woolf

The story
Clarissa Dalloway is making preparations for a party she will host that evening. The day reminds her of her childhood spent in the countryside at Bourton and makes her wonder at her choice of husband. She married reliable Richard Dalloway rather than the demanding Peter Walsh. When Peter arrives, the tension of her old decision resurfaces.

The film
A 1997 film starred Vanessa Redgrave in the title role of Clarissa Dalloway, with her younger self played by Natasha McElhone and Michael Kitchen as Peter.Virginia Woolf

Watch the trailer here.

Other editions

Virginia Woolf

 

‘Mrs Dalloway’ by Virginia Woolf [UK: Vintage]

If you like old books, check out these:-
‘The Moonstone’ by Wilkie Collins
‘Jane Eyre’ by Charlotte Bronte
‘Rebecca’ by Daphne du Maurier

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
First Edition: MRS DALLOWAY by Virginia Woolf #oldbooks via https://wp.me/p5gEM4-39X @SandraDanby

Great opening paragraph…61

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haruki murakami - dance dance dance 10-6-13“I often dream about the Dolphin Hotel.

In these dreams, I’m there, implicated in some kind of ongoing circumstance. All indications are that I belong to this dream continuity.

The Dolphin Hotel is distorted, much too narrow. It seems more like a long, covered bridge. A bridge stretching endlessly through time. And there I am, in the middle of it. Someone else is there too, crying.

The hotel envelops me. I can feel its pulse, its heat. In dreams, I am part of the hotel.”
‘Dance Dance Dance’ by Haruki Murakami [translated from the Japanese by Alfred Birnbaum]

Great opening paragraph…60

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Lord Jim - OP
“He was an inch, perhaps two, under six feet, powerfully built, and he advanced straight at you with a slight stoop of the shoulders, head forward, and a fixed from-under stare which made you think of a charging bull. His voice was deep, loud, and his manner displayed a kind of dogged self-assertion which had nothing aggressive in it. It seemed a necessity, and it was directed apparently as much at himself as at anybody else. He was spotlessly neat, apparelled in immaculate white from shoes to hat, and in the various Eastern ports where he got his living as ship-chandler’s water-clerk he was very popular.”
‘Lord Jim’ by Joseph Conrad

Great opening paragraph… 59

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the unlikely pilgrimage of harold fry - GOP 5-6-13
“The letter that would change everything arrived on a Tuesday. It was an ordinary morning in mid-April that smelt of clean washing and grass cuttings. Harold Fry sat at the breakfast table, freshly shaved, in a clean shirt and tie, with  slice of toast that he wasn’t eating. He gazed beyond the kitchen window at the clipped lawn, which was spiked in the middle by Maureen’s telescopic washing line, and trapped on all three sides by the neighbours’ closeboard fencing.”
‘The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry’ by Rachel Joyce

Great opening paragraph… 57

5 Replies

iris murdoch - the philosopher's pupil 10-6-13“A few minutes before his brainstorm, or whatever it was, took place, George McCaffrey was having a quarrel with his wife. It was eleven o’clock on a rainy March evening. They had been visiting George’s mother. Now George was driving along the quayside, taking the short-cut along the canal past the iron foot-bridge. It was raining hard. The malignant rain rattled on the car like shot. Propelled in oblique flurries, it assaulted the windscreen, obliterating in a second the frenetic strivings of the windscreen wipers. Little demonic faces composed of racing raindrops appeared and vanished. The intermittent yellow light of the street lamps, illuminating the grey atoms of the storm, fractured in sudden stars upon the rain-swarmed glass. Bumping on cobbles the car hummed and drummed.”
‘The Philosopher’s Pupil’ by Iris Murdoch

Great opening paragraph…56

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Lord of the Flies“The boy with the fair hair lowered himself down the last few feet of rock and began to pick his way towards the lagoon. Though he had taken off his school sweater and trailed it now from one hand, his grey shirt stuck to him and his hair was plastered to his forehead. All round him the long scar smashed into the jungle was a bath of heat. He was clambering heavily among the creepers and the broken trunks when a bird, a vision of red and yellow, flashed upwards with a witch-like cry; and this cry was echoed by another.”

‘Lord of the Flies’ by William Golding

#BookReview ‘Burial Rites’ by @HannahFKent #historical #crime

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So much has been written about Burial Rites by Hannah Kent, I feel pretty sure that by now you know it is the fictionalised story of an Icelandic woman found guilty of murder in the 1820s. You may possibly also know that this book, rich in Icelandic saga and with Iceland present on every page of the story, is written by a young Australian. Hannah KentIf this book does not win a drawerful of awards, it will make me lose faith in literary awards. The confidence with which the story is told defies the knowledge that this is a debut novel, any allowances I had mentally made for a debut are not required. Not only does Kent write a historical novel set in a foreign country with a difficult language, from page one you are in Iceland. Put aside the names of people, the names of the farms [the map at the front of my edition was much thumbed in the beginning, then forgotten], Iceland surrounds you as you read the story of Agnes Magnúsdóttir. You sit with her in the badstofa, the smell of the dung walls in your lungs, the dirt under your fingernails.
“The herb plot of Kornsá is overgrown and wild, surrounded by a rough stone wall that has toppled to the ground at one end. Most of the plants have gone to seed, frostbitten roots rotting in the warmer weather, but there are tansies, and little bitter herbs I remember from Natan’s workshop at Illugastadir, and the angelica smells sweetly.” Natan is the man Agnes is found guilty of murdering. Whilst awaiting arrangements for her execution she is placed with a local family – as is the tradition, this being a rural area with no prisons, no police stations, justice is managed locally – who receive a little extra silver in recompense for their service. Her story is told through a series of official letters about the trial, Agnes own voice and that of Tóti, the reverend she requests to prepare her for execution.
Agnes is made to work for her keep, she is not shackled or locked away. The family is poor, an extra pair of hands to work the land is valuable, even if they watch her every minute. Agnes, for her part, enjoys the fresh air during harvest. “I let my body fall into a rhythm. I sway back and forth and let gravity bring the scythe down and through the grass, until I rock steadily. Until I feel that I am not moving myself, and that the sun is driving me. Until I am a puppet of the wind, and of the scythe, and of the long, slow strokes that propel my body forward. Until I couldn’t stop if I wanted to.”
I was gripped from page one, wanting to know the end of the story, not wanting it to end. Kent has combined poetry with a murder mystery – by the way don’t listen to those reviews which class it as Scandi-crime, this is so much more than that.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK

See my reviews of two other Hannah Kent novels:-
DEVOTION
THE GOOD PEOPLE

If you like this, try:-
‘Rush Oh!’ by Shirley Barrett
‘Sweet Caress’ by William Boyd
‘Freya’ by Anthony Quinn

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview BURIAL RITES by @HannahFKent via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-101

Great opening paragraph… 52

6 Replies

clare morrall - astonishing splashes of colour 10-6-13“At 3.15 every weekday afternoon, I become anonymous in a crowd of parents and child-minders congregating outside the school gates. To me, waiting for children to come out of school is a quintessential act of motherhood. I see the mums – and the occasional dads – as yellow people. Yellow as the sun, a daffodil, the submarine. But why do we teach children to paint the sun yellow? It’s a deception. The sun is white-hot, brilliant, impossible to see with the naked eye, so why do we confuse brightness with yellow?”
‘Astonishing Splashes of Colour’ by Clare Morrall

To read an interview in The Independent with Clare Morrall about her latest book, After the Bombing, click here.

COMING SOON: my review of After the Bombing.

Great opening paragraph… 51

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iris murdoch - the sea, the sea 10-6-13“The sea which lies before me as I write glows rather than sparkles in the bland May sunshine. With the tide turning, it leans quietly against the land, almost unflecked by ripples or by foam. Near to the horizon it is a luxurious purple, spotted with regular lines of emerald green. AT the horizon it is indigo. Near to the shore, where my view is framed by rising heaps of humpy yellow rock, there is a band of lighter green, icy and pure, less radiant, opaque however, not transparent. We are in the north, and the bright sunshine cannot penetrate the sea. Where the gentle water taps the rocks there is still a surface skin of colour. The cloudless sky is very pale at the indigo horizon which it lightly pencils in with silver. Its blue gains towards the zenith and vibrates there. But the sky looks cold, even the sun looks cold.”
‘The Sea, The Sea’ by Iris Murdoch

Great Opening Paragraph… 50

9 Replies

deborah moggach - these foolish things 10-6-13 [1 pic]“Muriel Donnelly, an old girl in her seventies, was left in a hospital cubicle for forty-eight hours. She had taken a tumble in Peckham High Street and was admitted with cuts, bruises and suspected concussion. Two days she lay in A&E, untended, the blood stiffening on her clothes.”
‘These Foolish Things by Deborah Moggach