The Waves

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0156949601 ISBN 13: 9780156949606

Publisher: Harvest Books, 1978

An innovative work of modernist fiction ahead of its time, Virginia Woolf's The Waves traces the lives of a group of friends against the backdrop of the sea.

Set on the coast of England against the vivid background of the sea, The Waves introduces six characters—three men and three women—who are grappling with the death of a beloved friend, Percival. Instead of describing their outward expressions of grief, Virginia Woolf draws her characters from the inside, revealing their, inner lives: their aspirations, their triumphs and regrets, their awareness of unity and isolation. 
 

Book Description:

This edition will be the most extensive and authoritative, the most fully collated, scrupulously researched and explicated text available to scholars to date, and for considerable time to come. Based on the first edition of Woolf's most challenging novel, this volume is an essential purchase for libraries and scholars.

From the Back Cover:

"Clear, bright, burnished, at once marvelously accurate and subtly connotative. The pure, delicate sensibility found in this language and the moods it expresses are a true kind of poetry." "The New York Times
""The Waves" is often regarded as Virginia Woolf's masterpiece, standing with those few works of twentieth-century literature that have created unique forms of their own. In deeply poetic prose, Woolf traces the lives of six people from infancy to deathas theyfleetingly unite around the unseen figure of a seventh, Percival. Allusive and mysterious, "The Waves" yields new treasures upon each reading.
Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), one of the major literary figures of the twentieth century, transformed the art of the novel. The author of numerous novels, collections of letters, journals, and short stories, she was an admired literary critic and a master of the essay form.
Mark Hussey, general editor of Harcourt's annotated Woolf series, is professor of English at Pace University in New York City and editor of the Woolf Studies Annual.
Molly Hite is professor of English at Cornell University. She is the author of" Ideas of Order in the Novels of Thomas Pynchon, The Other Side of the Story: Structures and Strategies of Contemporary Feminist Narrative," and two novels, "Class Porn "and "Breach of Immunity." She has written articles on postmodernist and modernist fiction, feminist theory and practice, and academic culture.
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