The Voyage Out

The Voyage Out

Summary

'A strange, tragic, inspired book ... It is absolutely unafraid' E. M. Forster

A party of English people are aboard the Euphrosyne, bound for South America. Among them is a young girl, Rachel Vinrace, innocent and wholly ignorant of the world of politics and society, books, sex, love and marriage. She is a free spirit half-caught, momentarily and passionately, by Terence Hewet, an aspiring writer, but her greatest discovery will be her own self. Virginia Woolf's first novel, published in 1915, is a haunting exploration of a young woman's mind, signalling the beginning of her fascination with capturing the mysteries and complexities of the inner life.

Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Jane Wheare

About the author

Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf, born in 1882, was the major novelist at the heart of the inter-war Bloomsbury Group. Her early novels include The Voyage Out, Night and Day and Jacob's Room. Between 1925 and 1931 she produced her finest masterpieces, including Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, Orlando and the experimental The Waves. Her later novels include The Years and Between the Acts, and she also maintained an astonishing output of literary criticism, journalism and biography, including the passionate feminist essay A Room of One's Own. Suffering from depression, she drowned herself in the River Ouse in 1941.
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