Mrs. Dalloway is a novel about almost everything. The story of a single day in London after the First World War, it travels backward and forward in time and consciousness, venturing beyond the ordinary world into epic, mythic, and mystical modes. The novel is a work of extraordinary richness, as much for its interwoven webs of meaning as for its moral and psychological vision.

Edward Mendelson explores the novel’s deepest questions, focusing on the core themes of medicine, empire, and love. He traces how Virginia Woolf thought and wrote, considering the complexities and resonances of her works. Mendelson casts Mrs. Dalloway as an extended protest against authorities that wield power over others and a defense of the equality of inner lives. He also examines the place of the book in literary history going back to Homer, Dante, and Shakespeare as well as its influence on later writers from Erich Auerbach through Zadie Smith. Both incisive and passionate, this book is at once a wide-ranging critical study of Virginia Woolf’s writing and a love letter to a great novel.

Edward Mendelson is the Lionel Trilling Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University. His books include Early Auden, Later Auden: A Critical Biography (2017); Moral Agents: Eight Twentieth-Century American Writers (2015); and The Things That Matter: What Seven Classic Novels Have to Say About the Stages of Life (2007). His essays and reviews have appeared in the New York Review of Books, the New York Times Book Review, the London Review of Books, and the Times Literary Supplement.