The Waves

Virginia Woolf's innovative modernist novel following a group of friends loosely based on her own literary circle

A Penguin Classic

The Waves traces the lives of a group of friends through their development from childhood to middle age. While social events, individual achievements, and disappointments form its narrative, Woolf's renowned modernist work is most remarkable for the rich, poetic language that expresses the inner lives of its characters: their aspirations, their triumphs and regrets, their awareness of unity and isolation. Separately and together, they query the relationship of past to present and the meaning of life itself.

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941), one of the great twentieth-century authors, was at the center of the Bloomsbury Group and is a major figure in the history of literary feminism and modernism. She published her first novel, The Voyage Out, in 1915 and between 1925 and 1931 produced what are now regarded as her finest masterpieces, including Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), and The Waves (1931). She also maintained an astonishing output of literary criticism, short fiction, journalism, and biography, including the playfully subversive Orlando (1928) and the passionate feminist essay A Room of One’s Own (1929).

Kate Flint (editor, introduction, notes) is a professor of art history and English at the University of Southern California. Her books include The Woman Reader, 1837-1914; The Victorians and The Visual Imagination; and Flash!: Photography, Writing, and Surprising Illumination.