To the Lighthouse

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) was the world-renowned author of Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, and The Waves, among other works. Margaret Homans is a professor of English and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at Yale University. She is the author of Bearing the Word: Language and Female Experience in Nineteenth-Century Women’s Writing; Royal Representations: Queen Victoria and British Culture, 1837?1876; Women Writers and Poetic Identity: Dorothy Wordsworth, Emily Bronte, and Emily Dickinson; The Imprint of Another Life: Adoption Narratives and Human Possibility; and Virginia Woolf: A Collection of Critical Essays.

"Margaret Homans’ vision of To the Lighthouse is replete. A magnificent array of contexts complements the annotated text, including familial and literary sources for the novel; a chronology of its composition and reception; early reviews; and scholarly interpretations addressing gender, empire, and the role of the artist. The introduction considers the novel’s debt to philosophy, its structure and style, its revelation of the social changes wrought by World War I, and the effect of its Scottish setting. Having studied Woolf with Margaret Homans as an undergraduate, I am delighted that her thoughtful teaching is now widely available in this wonderful classroom edition."